The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - October 27, 2000

Greetings from Orlando where I am doing some concept development work for a hotel property with an under-performing restaurant.

YOU NEVER KNOW
I received this note from Ron Scott concerning the discussion about handling guests who "camp out" (see the EHC of October 6, 2000 http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/ehc/ehc140.html)

When I was a Chef at a western property, I had a gentleman upset with the new management of my closest competitor. He used to sit and drink coffee and order nothing more than dry wheat toast. Because of this my competitors asked him to leave. He was rather unkempt and seldom left more than a 50 cent tip. After hearing his story I told him he was welcome at any time and we would take care of his simple needs. The waitresses learned to like him and treated him in a friendly and accepting way. After about 4 months of this, he appeared at my office one morning and wanted to talk to me. It turned out that he was president of the State Sheep Farmers association and wanted to book their annual banquet for 900 guests. Now that's payback.

A note from the Doc:
I think it is dangerous to have different levels of service for different guests. Why not make it easy and just do a terrific job for everyone all the time? What goes around, comes around.

I AM PUZZLED
The National Coffee Survey sits just above 425 responses at the moment. Frankly, I am surprised that more folks wouldn't take two minutes to get a shot at $2000 in cash, but with 1800+ subscribers to the EHC right now, it is either that nobody needs the money or that nobody is reading this thing! I'll keep plugging away because we need 1000 responses before we can draw for the cash prizes, but If you have not yet given us your thoughts, please take a second to do so. You can enter the survey at http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/survey/ and you can check on its progress at http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/survey/view.html

DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK
I just ran into Bonny Doone Framboise, a lovely raspberry dessert wine for the first time. The missed opportunity was that the restaurant only had it available by the half bottle ($15) but it is really too intense for more than one glass. It could easily have been sold in 1-2 ounce portions for $3-4 and worked better for both the guests and the bottom line.

FINALLY
The Management Insight Series interview for November is with Banger Smith of Menus for Profit in Seattle. Banger is my guru when it comes to squeezing the maximum profit from a menu and subscribers will find lots of "ahas" in what he has to say. If you are not presently a subscriber to MIS, you can find out more information at www.restaurantdoctor.com/MIS.html

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