Electronic House Call - April 4, 2003

ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - April 4, 2003

My life as a blur proceeds. Today I am in Albany to talk to a group of distributor sales reps in preparation for seminars I will do at their spring food show later in the month. Tomorrow I am off to Sacramento to address a chapter of the National Speakers Association. (I should probably talk about how to accumulate frequent flyer miles!) Monday I head to Connecticut to speak at the Governor's Conference on Tourism and then attend a marketing seminar in Cleveland!

Our annual corporate meeting in Italy is only five weeks away! I will be SO ready ...

DON'T YOU LOVE IT?
I must admit that I really like spring (and for my friends down under, I admit this is a decidedly Northern Hemisphere dissertation!) The weather suddenly has a warm edge to it, nature is waking up and the world seems rife with possibilities. Even with the turmoil in the Middle East, there seems to be an edge of hope to things.

NEVER SAY NEVER
I dined at an upscale steak house a few nights ago. Most of their wines by the glass were around $9 but they had a Cabernet Sauvignon at $13 that had me curious. When I ordered it, the server explained that they were out of it ... and the state liquor store was out of it ... so they couldn't sell it to me. What's wrong with this picture?

I checked their wine list and found another Cab listed at the same price per bottle as the one they were out of. I asked it if was in stock. "Oh yes, I'm sure we have that one," I was assured. So what was keeping them from making a simple substitution? Here I was, wanting to give them an extra $4 for a glass of wine ... why not find a way to let me spend the money? Wouldn't it have been easier (on everyone) to say, "We have sold out of the Merryvale Cabernet but I can offer you a glass of the DeLoach Special Reserve at the same price. Would you like to try it?"

This is not a call that I would expect most servers to make -- although in a restaurant of mine they would be rewarded for their ingenuity and initiative in doing so -- but certainly someone in management knew that the stock of Merryvale was gone and could easily have formulated a Plan B. My point here is that we should never say never to a guest unless what they ask is illegal. As Don Smith would say, "The answer is Yes. What's the question?"

(By the way, you always SELL out, you never RUN out. When you sell out, that indicates a popular item. When you run out, that indicates sloppy management. Words are powerful.)

IN MY HUMBLE OPINION ...
Speaking of wine, for years the hot wine in restaurants was Chardonnay. (Remember the 70's when you could hardly sell anything but white wine?) Then Merlot seemed to capture the imagination of the dining public. I think that Syrah (or Shiraz as my Aussie colleagues call it) is going to be the next Merlot. If you are not already offering it on your list, particularly by the glass, you are missing an opportunity. Once you turn a guest on to this grape, they will remember you (fondly) forever. That is my story and I'm sticking to it!

I WAS REMINDED AGAIN ...
... how bad it looks for a bartender to be eating, drinking or smoking behind the bar ... how bad table lighting strains the dining experience, particularly for older diners ... how few servers seem to have been taught the proper way to carry a loaded tray ... how lame it sounds when we make excuses for anything ... how bad the first impression when the decal in the front door says you were a member of the restaurant association (or Chamber of Commerce or anything) in 1989 ... how important it is for the service staff to move with the speed of the room ... how important it is to be AT the table when you are AT the table.

I will expand on some of these points in future YOGA exercises. For the uninitiated, YOGA means Year of Guest Awareness and the YOGA exercises are what you get every week when you subscribe to the Year of the Guest program by donating to Share Our Strength. I think it is the best twelve bucks you will ever spend. I may be biased, but the reports from subscribers are universally positive. How far wrong can you go for twelve bucks ... particularly when 100% goes to a worth cause?

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