Sunday, August 17, 2003

I'm sitting here, still in my Sqwires shirt and tie, still sweaty and tired, still wearing my, by now, stinky shoes on my sore swollen feet, but I feel the need to write right now about restaurant econonomics, partly to purge the bile in my system from one of my tables tonight, partly in hopes that some diner, looking for reasons why he or she had an unpleasant dining experience, or even for naive diners who pretty consistently have unpleasant dining experiences. Number one on that list is if you can't afford the menu, don't go out to a restaurant you can't afford. It's okay to not be able to afford to go out, just be cognizant of your own limitations before you waste a restaurant's time and money. If you're planning on going out and getting a chicken caesar, for gosh sake, go to Denny's, where you'll get your dream chicken caesar for half the price you'll pay at a fine dining restaurant, and the servers there are accustomed to being stiffed on their tips, so it won't matter if you screw them. Two, don't ever, ever, ever order a glass of White Zinfandel. Even if you are dressed up for fine dining, you might as well have walked in with a "My Mom was on Jerry Springer and all she brought back was a lousy t-shirt." You have just announced to your server that you do not know food. Not that there's anything wrong with not knowing food, just don't go to a place that serves GOOD food. Go to a place that serves food. One way to get around the White Zin faux pas is to ask if the server can recommend a sweeter white. Maybe even giggle a little and say you're not a real wine drinker. Nothing wrong with it. Ordering a white zinfandel with conviction announces that you don't know that you're not a wine drinker, and that is an unfortunate move. Three, show up on time for your reservation with the number of people for whom you made reservations. When you make a reservation at a restaurant, you are making a contract. You are taking up someone's sales territory for the evening. And when you make a reservation for prime dining hours and don't show up on time, or show up with fewer people than you made reservations for, you have just screwed potentially dozens of people from having dinner during, before or after that time frame and screwed the server and the restaurant from making that income. Not showing up on time can also detract from your dining experience and that of your fellow diners when you throw off the pacing of the evening for everyone. Not showing up with everyone in your party also means that you've taken a limited section and a limited amount of time and stretched it even thinner by forcing your server to take care of you in waves. Four, don't be nasty. You may think you are getting more attention when you are nasty, but servers are not only thinking about the monetary economics of their evenings, but the scarcity of their emotions as well. If I have to choose between spending more time with a nasty table or more time with a nice table, guess who is going to get the better service, just by merit of being pleasant and cooperative. I myself will typically ignore a table that is rudely motioning for me, or looking around impatiently, when I was just at their table. I don't do this to be rude or nasty, but in consideration for other tables, who not only deserve my presence and have earned it, but because nasty tables do, no matter how aware I am of their inappropriateness, take some of the wind out of my sales. Five, order the best food the place has to offer.Understand that if you come into a fine dining restaurant and order $8-$10 entrees off the bar menu instead of the $17 to $27 entrees off the regular menu, that no one will be happy to have you in the restaurant, least of all the owner. Don't expect sympathy. Don't expect us to be sorry if you decide never to come again. Thank you for spreading the word to your friends. Again, there is nothing wrong with not being able to afford to dine out at a fairly expensive restaurant. Just don't do it if you can't. Go someplace where you and friends can drink and have good time on the cheap, like TGIF or Houlihans. Six, tip generously, especially if you expect to return. My rule is that I remember those who tip fairly. If you come back into the restaurant and I don't remember you and you rememember me waiting on you, chances are, that while you will get good service, you will not get a piece of my soul, the experience that makes people hug me and ask for me by name when they make reservations, and want to take pictures of me with their group. If you are a verified bad tipper, I will give you good food service, but the economics of the restaurant demand that I spend more time with tables who have earned a better overall dining experience by being either generous tippers, or by having the potential, if they are first timers, to be good tippers. Seven, understand that you are in a social compact with your server. S/he is not a mind reader. Nor is s/he your slave for the evening. Communicate. Be polite. If you understand that the server is in control of the table, and your dining experience, so much the better. You are ultimately a guest of the restaurant. A good server will be highly motivated to treat you to wonderful evening. Try your best to situate yourselves and communicate with the server as if you are in his or her own home, enjoying the food the restaurant is excited to offer you. If you come into a restaurant to make up your own dishes or play power games, you will only be disappointed, unless you have a low quality server, who allows you to control the table. And then, while your psychological needs may be fulfilled, you will have unwittingly had poorer service than you would have otherwise. That's all I can really think of right now. There really should be ten, but mainly, understand that both the restaurant and your server really, really want you to have the best dining experience possible, which makes for a more pleasant experience for you as a diner, more money for the restaurant and the server, and a better experience for your fellow diners. My twelve top which became an 8 top which ordered off the bar menu and paid no attention to me when I was servicing the table, and complained that I was never around, probably cost the restaurant, conservatively, $400 to $600 tonight. Which means I effectively lost what would have been an additional $80 to $120 in tips. Fortunately, my other tables were patient, but they could also have disrupted my tip revenue from them, and it's likely that I missed a small amount of dessert sales as a result of strange pacing resulting from having a table of 9 functioning as four separate tables. I felt like stopping in the middle of their experience and explaining the economic impact they had on me personally that evening, and on the restaurant itself, let alone the four to eight additional reservations we could have taken were it not for theirs. I think Bethany would have been fine if I'd suggested they not come back, and tell their friends not to come back. We effectively subsidized their meals tonight, by serving them at a loss. While it wasn't a concious decision on my part, more a reality generated by their constant one timing me on drinks and orders as the party rolled in, the reality is that if it came down to it, the fact is, the economic reality is that they did not deserve good service tonight. They violated every single rule of good dining, and there is a vindictive side of me that would love to own a restaurant someday just so I could throw people like them out. Politely of course. Or at least have "in fairness to all the guests we do not have room to serve in the main dining room, the bar menu is not available outside of the bar area" policy.    1:50:48 AM