PODCAST: How Hiring the Best Impacts Your Restaurant Marketing
Restaurant marketing 101 dictates that if you want guests coming back, you’ve got to hire the best. Don’t be satisfied with the “alright” employees or the “good enough.” Make sure you meet people who believe in what you’re trying to accomplish.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Why Don’t Americans Eat Horse?
Not exactly a question we ponder over often, but Eater decided to ask & answer the question. While horse is a popular red meat among many cultures, it’s not in America. Here’s a history lesson in how it’s part of some culture cuisines and not in others.
Breaking Down the Home Alone Pizza Scene
Christmas is here which means Christmas-themed movies. Home Alone is definitely popular among Millennials and Munchies decided to break down the sub-2:00 pizza delivery scene. Because reasons.
Fined for Tweeting
The New York Giants have fined cornerback Eli Apple for tweeting on the sidelines during the game against the Dallas Cowboys. One of his tweets was sharing an article about Cowboys running back scoring a long TD against the Giants. Oops. Celebrating your own team’s failure on Twitter during the game is definitely bad form.
GO WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME [Song]
Why it matters to you: Imagine recognizing every guest as they enter.
With the advent of Apple’s Iphone X, facial recognition has hit the mainstream. Fast casual operators are the first to enjoy the benefits of this smart feature in POS. A guest makes a first visit to your restaurant and uses the kiosk. They are prompted to save themselves into the system for ease of ordering on their next visit. When they return the software recognizes them, offers them their previous order, and shepherds them through the ordering process. It also appears that guests really enjoy the feature.
Why? Because it saves them precious time and improves their experience. It’s the irony of all ironies, people don’t actually want to interact with other human beings if they can avoid it. There may one day be a place for this in full-service dining. A guest approaches the host stand and a screen behind the podium pops up their picture and other relevant service preferences.
Obviously, we’d prefer to recognized guests without technology tricks, but the reality is that both turnover and a lack of interest can make that unlikely in many restaurants. Consequently, an aid like this would improve the response of hosts and servers to the guest, but also expedite their remembering someone. We can only hope that this tech is waiting in the wings to help us to the next level of recognition.
SERVE FOR YOURSELF
Why it matters to you: Are your servers committing these bad acts?
When it comes to bad customers, you can get any manager, bartender or servicer to commiserate ceaselessly. Unfortunately, when the tables are turned, and you have a bad server doing bad things at the table, we don’t spend enough energy. While this hot take from Thrillist has some over the top examples of servers “falling short,” it is rings very true for any of us that have actually worked in a restaurant.
Some of their highlighted complaints are obvious, such as a server spills something on you or they behave poorly when faced with a special request. Yet most of their list rings 100% true. Whether a server behaves irritably by dietary/allergy restrictions or is simply absent because the restaurant is slow, this blog hits the nail on the head.
The hard part for managers is catching the bad behavior to correct it. There is only one way to do this and that is via the table visit. As a manager, asking the guest a direct question about their service experience is an incredibly powerful gesture. Guests naturally want to share, and they will tell you the whole truth. This way you can use that feedback to help your servers avoid the pitfalls described in the Thrillist post. Otherwise, these things may be happening, and you may never know.
