The Restaurant Doctor - Electronic House Call

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - March 23, 2001

Off to Tel Aviv tonight (Thursday) for three presentations at a hospitality/tourism conference on Sunday. The sponsors of the event have translated three of my books into Hebrew and wanted "the guy" to be there for the official kick-off! Still, a lot of travel for a short visit.

FOOT AND MOUTH AND BEYOND
If you haven't paid much attention to the concern over Foot and Mouth Disease, you had best start to pay attention. There is still no immediate threat in the US that we know of, but the media is all over it and it will be creating concern for some of your guests. How much do you and your staff know about it? Could you answer a guest's questions knowledgeably? If your menu is heavy on red meat, have you expanded alternative offerings to give nervous guests a wider choice? The National Restaurant Association just put together a concise treatment on this subject that I have on my webpage at http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/fmd.html. My thanks to the Oregon Restaurant Association for sending it along.

THINK ABOUT IT
Lee Cockerell, Executive Vice President of Walt Disney World, once told me, "You can't deliver a higher level of service than you have experienced." It's an interesting point. If you haven't seen it, how are you going to model it? How can you even begin to understand what I mean when I try to explain it to you?

What is the highest level of service that you regularly experience? Are you always checking out operations comparable to yours or are you visiting folks who are performing at a higher level? How can you get better without a clear idea of what better looks like?

What do you suppose is the highest level of service the members of your staff have experienced? If you want to see material improvements in guest service, they are going to have to visit restaurants that operate at a higher level of than yours and get a first-hand experience of what is possible. What operations in your market might serve as that sort of model for your crew? What should you be doing to promote (or even subsidize) their learning process in this regard?

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
I was at a restaurant in Kalamazoo last night. The waiter came to the table next to me with a fully-loaded tray . . . and a tray jack that was so flimsy that I was expecting the entire tray to topple over before he could get the meals served! He moved very gingerly (read that as slowly) so as not to disturb the delicate balance of this disaster-in-waiting. It made me wonder how much productivity was being sacrificed to save a couple of buck for a sturdy tray jack. It also made me wonder why the situation was allowed to exist at all? Had the staff failed to mention it to the manager . . . or had the manager just blown it off as whining? What did you learn from YOUR staff today?

Shalom.

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