Introduction:

Hey restaurant owners and employees, I’ve got a pretty serious question for you. Do you love your guests? In today’s video, we are going to talk more about this subject and why it’s so important to the success of your business.

There are two different kinds of ways that we can love our guests:

The first way that we can love our guests: money. They pay us money and we love money. So guests equals money, which equals love. The problem with this is that’s the end of the process. When a guest walks through the door you see dollar signs, your servers see dollar signs, and your cooks see more work. That’s the problem with creating a culture like this. Often we say things like, “You shouldn’t be angry when a guest walks in the door because that equals money.” It does, but that’s not the culture that I encourage you to create at your restaurant. 

Let’s look at a second way to love your guests. We love our guests and their satisfaction is why we choose to serve. In this example smiles = guests = love, love = smiles, smiles = guest, guest = love, and the process repeats over and over because it’s not about the money, the money will come. If you truly love to serve and put smiles on your guests faces, they’re going to tell other people about it. They’re going to want to come back and that feeling is gonna be infectious. 

Here’s the difference: when a guest walks through the door you see an opportunity to make someone’s day. Your servers see a new friend and your cooks get excited for somebody to taste their food. I used to love when people walk through the front door, yeah it was more work and sometimes late at night, but I love getting my food in front of people. I love talking to someone who walks through the door grumpy and having them leave with a huge smile on their face. I love talking to my guests and creating relationships with them. I love hearing about the connections that we help them form at our restaurant. 

I genuinely love our guests and anyone that works with me here in my business. Not just because of the financial reward I get, but because what I want is to fill their bucket so full. I want to give them so much value and success. I want to give them everything I’ve got so that when their bucket is full, they are going to be happy to send me some of their hard earned money. That’s very different than selling someone a service or selling someone a program. That’s not what I’m about in my business and that’s not what I was about in our restaurant. I want to encourage you to think about this a little differently. 

Summing it up:

There are two ways to get what you want in this world: 1)You can take what you want from others, or 2)You can give others what they need to the point where they have so much extra energy that they can now give you what you need. The first one is selfish and creates a one-time life cycle.  So fill your customers’ and your employees’ buckets first. They will have more to give to you. Stop seeing your guests as dollar signs.