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| June 03, 2003 | NATION'S RESTAURANT NEWS |
Vanishing service could make restaurants' profits disappear
As a longtime business journalist covering the restaurant industry, I may be more sensitive than the average customer to poor service a problem that many fullservice restaurateurs admit is their most difficult to solve. Yet some of the bad experiences I've had in restaurants would be hard to ignore by even the most easygoing patron.
The most glaring faux pas occurred on a recent trip to the Florida Gulf Coast, which is especially popular with Midwesterners seeking respite from their long, nasty winters. The incident nearly ruined one evening of my hard earned vacation. The waitress at an independent dinnerhouse, which had been recommended by a local resident, was delivering our orders when she accidentally dropped a plate, spilling tomato sauce on my husband's white pants. Granted, my husband lost his temper, but the server, who supposedly is used to customers behaving badly, also lost her cool and didn't even apologize. Offering only to give our party free desserts as compensation, she left in a huff and returned shortly with a bill, which she threw on our table without any desserts. She made no offer to pay for dry cleaning, which we thought would have been adequate. We had to hunt down the manager to get those desserts, and he wasn't apologetic either. What a contrast to an earlier experience at New Orleans' famed Antoine's, where a waiter once spilled wine on my husband's beige suit jacket. Not only did the captain immediately offer to pay for dry cleaning, he even took the jacket to the cleaners for us. Several recent incidents have involved not merely bad service, but no service at all. One occurred at a dinnerhousechain restaurant in a Chicago suburb. The hostess seated me during lunchtime at a decent table, but none of the servers who walked right past me bothered to say a word to me, not even, "Be with you shortly" After 10 minutes of being ignored, I walked out and went to the Panera Bread restaurant next door, where everything went smoothly. A similar disappearing waiter incident happened during lunchtime at a white tablecloth restaurant in downtown Chicago. My companion and I were seated promptly, but no one appeared to take our order. We managed to flag down a manager after about 20 minutes, who promised to send over a server. Ten more minutes passed, but no server stopped at our table. The same manager came by again, and we told her we were still waiting. Only then did she reluctantly take our order herself, even though it wasn't her job. The rest of the meal ensued as expected, although we lost valuable time we didn't really have to spare on a busy workday. Another waiter disappeared at a casual dinnerhouse unit on the United Airlines concourse of O'Hare International Airport, where almost everyone has limited time to cat before catching a flight. My order was taken and delivered in a timely manner, but after I'd finished eating, no one delivered the check. Eye contact between servers and customers was almost nonexistent, but I finally attracted a waiter's attention, just in time to hurry to my gate. Why do such lapses in service times and courtesy happen? I usually assume the fault lies in inadequate training. And if that's true, restaurant owners and managers have their work cut out for them. It shouldn't be that difficult or time consuming to train servers in the basics before giving them a station and then follow up on their performance. For someone like me who knows how to cook as well as pack a lunch, eating out all the time isn't a necessity. If I can't count on getting served in a reasonable amount of time or even on receiving an apology from a server who spills something on me, I'm likely to decrease my dining out frequency. In these times when many consumers are economizing on restaurant meals anyway, operators can ill afford to offend them. Those disappearing server acts just might extend to restaurants' profits. | |