PROMISE

When we’re looking at consistently delivering we first figure out – what’s the promise? What is the promise that our restaurant makes to you as a guest. Anytime a guest comes into your restaurant, there is a promise that needs to be met or exceeded.

What is your promise?  I suggest you write down and converse with your staff and and determine what we promise our guest when they walk through our doors?  Then, obviously, deliver on that promise.

PROCESS

I talked about choreographing service so what’s your process for delivering on that promise? What’s your greeting when they walk in? How do you walk them to a table?  If your counter service, quick service, or fast food, what’s your greeting? What are your standard upsells? What is your thank-you process? What’s your order delivery process?

So what’s your process for choreographing the delivery? Is it documented, trained, practiced, and role-played?

I just had a customer in Australia who is having trouble with his staff doing upsells. When he’s there, check averages are through the roof but when he’s not there they’re not. And they’re trying to do the upsells, but they’re struggling with them. So he literally grabbed one of the staff members and got him on the phone with us and we did an upsell practice and it was a huge fail. Because this person had never really practiced it, he would say “Yeah, oh no, I totally get it. I understand.” But then when it came down to role-playing and actually doing it. The words were bubbling out of his mouth. So make sure you practice that process.

PROMOTE

Always be upselling, always be offering more to your customers, not just upselling but also – are we giving them what they want? Are we asking the questions we need to ask that ensures that we’re giving them the right product? It’s not always about price. Maybe what they want is cheaper, maybe what they want is more expensive. When I say promote, yeah part of that is upselling them and getting more dollars in your pocket, but part of that is also promoting the right products to them.

If I’m going to spend $50 on a bottle of wine anyways, I’d rather spend $55 and get the wine that I want, rather than $50 on a wine that wasn’t very good. Don’t ever feel bad if you’re upselling to people. If they look at a bottle of wine and you think that they’re picking up based on price, maybe offer a few others and say something like – I just want to let you know this other one is seven dollars more than that bottle or a few dollars more, but I really, really think it’s going to blow your mind. Do you like this style of wine or this style wine? and if they say they like this style then say, I think this other one is great for you. I know it’s a few dollars more and if you don’t love it, I’m only going to charge you the other price. Or they might say, no I really like this style of wine, and you know what – then your first one was the right one.

So here’s what happens and where we can fail on this. If we take develop talent out of the equation, if we just exceed expectations and consistently deliver, then we create an average experience. Some of you are there right now, some of you are doing a great job of exceeding expectations and some of you are very consistent.

When we do all three we have that wow service. Some of you are missing out on that wow factor maybe because you’re not developing your talent properly. Some of you might be in a position where you’re doing a great job consistently delivering and you have great talent. But you’re just not exceeding the customer expectations – then you’re relying on luck – maybe you get it right today, maybe you don’t but you’re relying on luck.