Here’s the bottom line – everyone makes mistakes. If a customer’s experience in your restaurant was completely ruined or just didn’t exceed their expectations, nothing is ever going to make up for that.

See, when it happens, we usually go out of our way to do or say something in an attempt to make it right, but the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter. People will forget what you did and they’ll forget what you said.

The whole purpose of a restaurant is to add or enhance some kind of feeling or emotion. When something goes wrong, what really matters is whether or not you enhance the customer experience.

Write this down: people choose restaurants based on emotion.

When I ran my restaurant, I always wanted to be the “connector”. The place people came to meet for lunch. They’d walk away remembering the connections that were made over the meal in the restaurant. When someone came in for dinner, I wanted people to make memories and walk away remembering that night.

It’s the little things that can make a huge impact. We’d give everyone in the restaurant a little taste of a new dessert, or we’d pop a bottle of champagne for no reason and give everybody a little taste. It didn’t cost a fortune, and wasn’t a grandiose gesture, but they did impact the emotions and memories that the guest had when they were in the restaurant.

We tried our best to make them feel good, like you would for a guest in your home.

Action STEP:

Come up with 1 idea that you can do on a regular basis that will create an emotional connection between your restaurant and your customers.

LET’S CONNECT

QUESTIONS & COMMENTS:

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