Article

A Culture of Service... The Foundation of a Great Guest Experience

Over time, restaurants have continually adapted their budgets, menus, operations, branding, and more. Regardless of these changes, there have always been two constants to enduring success: great food and great service.

Whether your restaurant is full-service, quick-service, or even primarily delivery or take-out, ultimately you are serving a customer. Creating a culture of service in your concept ensures that everyone on the team is looking out for their experience, whether they are dining on-premises or at their kitchen table.

These two things make the foundation of a great restaurant. Sure, atmosphere, décor, a nice bar, perhaps a decent wine list, is important, but above all, if the food and service don't cut it, the guests will know it. Some say service is even more important than the food. If you have great food but terrible service, that's a sure way to ruin an experience. If you have an off-night with your food but the service was excellent, that can sometimes make up for the mediocrity.

"During the economic downturn in 2006, restaurateurs began to think more about their operation, and that includes service," says Matthew Mabel, founder and president of Surrender, a Dallas-based restaurant consulting firm since 1991. "People first tried to cut, cut, cut, including their staff. But I think many businesses found you can't cut your way to growth. You have to learn how to run more efficiently and really think about, what is special about my restaurant, and how can I accentuate that?"

For many restaurants, that special thing was service. "Culture of service was number one," Mabel says. "We partner with the Texas Restaurant Association, and what I've found in our discussions with them about challenges is that culture is the No. 1 issue, slightly ahead of sales and profitability. That tells me that understanding the relationship you have with your guests is how you protect your market share."

Make It Your Mission

Still, creating a culture of service doesn't come easy and, in fact, can become forgotten about amid other talk of sales, management and marketing. "I recently went to a manager's meeting at a very successful, longtime operator's headquarters where nobody talked about the guest," he says. "They talked about process and policy and staff and sanitation and production scheduling. At one point I thought to myself, surely we'll start talking about the guest sometime soon." It never happened.

I don't think anything is more important than how a manager treats his staff… If a manager cares about you as an individual and a team member, there is nothing that can substitute for that.

Talking about the guest is one of the key ways to create that culture of hospitality. "What we teach our clients to do is literally every time they make a statement or announce a change in their manager meeting, they have to complete that statement by saying 'the benefit for the guest is X,'" Mabel says. "If they can't find a benefit for the guest in their statements, maybe they shouldn't be making those changes."

At The Common Man Family of Restaurants, a decades-established chain with 18 restaurants throughout New Hampshire, the word "guest" applies to both the external guest – the diner, or "guest for life" who "pays our bills," and the internal guest – the employees, or "stars," as they're called. Both are just as important to the company's mission, says Chief People Officer Cindy Bates.

That focus on the external "guest for life" and on hospitality has to be there "from the moment the guest walks in the door all the way through until the moment they leave; basically, anytime the guest has a chance to form an impression about you," Bates says. Waiting for 40 minutes on a 20-minute quote, a dirty bathroom, unkempt landscaping, or trash in the parking lot – good or bad service extends beyond just the dining table.

But above all, creating a culture of service starts with a clear mission statement reiterated every day. "Our culture has been developing throughout the years. Owner Alex Ray had strong ideas about what the Common Man experience would look like – the four pillars of our mission statement are to provide Common Man WOW! service, honest food at an honest price, practice helping hands in our community, and provide challenging and creative opportunities for our Stars in an enjoyable workplace."

The Common Man restaurants define a WOW! experience, as in, "We want every guest to walk out the door and say, 'Wow, I love that place,'" Bates says. That mission is then reinforced year after year, day after day.

Treat Staff Well

"Our core belief is that our stars are the most important asset we have in the restaurant business," Bates says. "I can't imagine an environment where employees aren't treated well and then you expect them to turn around and treat their customers well."

Bates says "stars" is the word the company uses to refer to all of its associates. Call it campy, but it works. Many of these "stars" have stuck around for decades.

Treating staff well, making sure they are well-fed during family mealtime, providing benefits and insurance where possible, paying adequately, and providing opportunities for upward growth not only helps retention, it makes your business an attractive place to work and a way to recruit the best and the brightest.

"All of our stars have the option of health and dental insurance if they maintain 25 hours a week," Bates says. "Our salaried stars receive 100 percent paid health insurance as well as a 401(k) program that matches 25 percent once fully vested."

Providing insurance and benefits is a hot topic right now – some believe minimum wage, health insurance and sick days should absolutely be provided to all employees, while others vehemently oppose any such requirements for restaurants. In short, Bates says, treating your employees the way you expect to be treated only helps them – and you – create that culture of service, making both staff and guests happy. And happier guests mean returning guests.

Hire the Right People

You can't get to "stars" without making the right hiring decisions in the first place, Bates says. In some cases, hospitality needs to be ingrained at an early age." We start with kids in the ice cream scooping stage at 15 and teach them how to look people in the eye, shake hands, speak first and speak last," Bates says.

"We teach respect and work ethic and consequences when you don't show up. That training follows all these kids up until the point when we're teaching them wine training and fine dining etiquette. Some of our staff has been with us since we opened our first restaurant in 1972."

Hiring is an important process and listening to potential recruits' stories rather than just saying "yes" to everyone is the key to developing a talented and loyal staff, according to Mabel. "It's about not allowing yourself to say I'm two servers short and I need to hire someone for this week, but rather truly hiring people who can exemplify service in everything they do. It takes a real commitment to look at your staff and say I'm not going to have one person on the floor who can't exemplify what I want to do for my guests."

That might mean selecting servers based on whether their personality matches your "personality" and mission of hospitality and service. Hiring great managers is the most important part of this process, Mabel says.

"I don't think anything is more important than how a manager treats his staff," Mabel says. "If a manager cares about you as an individual and a team member, there is nothing that can substitute for that."

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to management recruitment and training, Mabel says. One is that you take care of people and the guests because that's good business. The other is that you take care of people be- cause they deserve it and the byproduct of that is good service. "Both approaches work, but you need to know which one you are," he says.

Service Training Fundamentals

Of course, the actual training is the meat of creating that culture of service. There are many foundations, but a few Bates has followed over the years as a training director and member of the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers (CHART), an association with more than 400 members from more than 300 multiunit restaurant and hotel companies. Bates says she's learned more from the sharing of other trainers, managers and restaurant owners in that association than in any textbook or management course, even though those help, too.

The Common Man restaurants has a series of "non-negotiable basics" that all stars must follow: Look everyone in the eyes and smile; speak first and last; look sharp; know your stuff; discover and delight, and make it right. By "discover and delight," Bates says that means finding out something about your guest that will go above and beyond and turn them into regular customers. The restaurant also abides by the 10/4 rule, which means a star must always be within 10 feet of a guest moving about the property, and during that time, welcome them with eye contact, a smile, or warm words such as "thank you for coming" or even a simple "hello." It's about making people feel special and welcome, the true definition of hospitality, Bates says.

"Making it right" with guests means handling mistakes appropriately. "Some of our locations do 600 meals in a meal period, so chances are we know we're going to make a mistake at some point," Bates says. "It's not always what you say or do that people remember, but how you made them feel."

When it comes to handling those mistakes, therefore, the restaurant chain encourages staff to do whatever it takes to make the guest feel happy and want to come back. "We use the acronym LATE, which stands for listen, apologize, take action and ensure satisfaction."

"LATE" could mean comping an appetizer or the whole meal, bringing out a special dessert, offering a discount for a return visit, or finding other ways to make sure the guest leaves on a positive note, "at a profit if we can and at a loss if we must," according to the motto. The guest for life philosophy is that if a guest comes to the restaurant twice a week and spends about $25 a week, over the course of the year they will spend roughly $1,250. It's very much to the restaurant's business advantage to make sure that guest is happy each and every time.

Reiterating the Mission

One of the easiest places to train and reiterate the business philosophy and mission is at the pre-shift meeting, as most owners and managers know. But it's important to remember just how important these meetings are, both Bates and Mabel say.

During pre-shift meetings it's necessary to talk about where service could be improved, but sharing positive stories is just as important to improving that overall positive morale.

"We think of our pre-shift meetings as a pep rally," Bates says. "We talk about our specials and service needs – if there is anything special going on like the governor coming in for a birthday, but we also celebrate our successes."

One example of exemplary service was the story of a mother who came in with her children and paid in cash out of an envelope that was the only money she had for her Christmas gifts and breakfast. She then left, got home and realized she had left the money at the restaurant. When she went back, the server and head cook went in the trash and found the money and returned it to the woman. The relationship with this guest went even further; the restaurant "adopted" the family for Christmas, buying the children gifts, and inviting them back for Christmas dinner, on the house. While this was an extreme case, it clearly shows the restaurant's dedication to that culture of caring and hospitality.

Pre-shift meetings, just like the mission statement and management meetings, should start off with talk about the guest, Mabel says. "Usually, what owners talk about is P&L so we taught them to talk about the guest first, creating a guest-centric environment. There should be a bounty of stories about guest interactions and special things that happened, anything from remembering what a particular guest likes to eat to just paying attention to the table."

Using mystery shoppers is a great way to gather this feedback and anecdotal evidence back to management, Mabel says. Even just asking servers to share positive stories on a daily basis, or gathering that information from mentors and management about what was observed. The Common Man restaurants use a weekly e-newsletter as another place to share success stories and compliment stars.

The Common Man restaurants expect their staff to "know their stuff" but they have to set up the situation for success. That means regular food and wine tastings during pre-shift and monthly meetings, even trips out to certain vineyards to learn more about the wine selection as well as multiple training sessions throughout the year.

Pre-shift and monthly meetings are also a time for servers to go into the kitchen and see how dishes are prepared in order to know every single ingredient in each dish. Regular "quizzes" and reminders also help servers learn the menu, which is particularly important for citing potential allergens and gluten.

And, including the back of the house as much as the front in discussions about service helps the BOH staff understand the needs of servers and vice versa when it comes to the ultimate goal: providing a stellar experience for the guest, according to Mabel. "We like to let the entire staff in on back-of-the-house successes whenever there was feedback from the guests about the food being great or the back of the house accommodated a special request or allergy with flare. The back-of-the-house are making the product that goes out to the guest so they need to have that pride in their work as much as front of the house."

Offering Incentives

"If you hire the right people, they are motivated to be a part of something that they care about and are proud about," Mabel says.

Regular incentives, therefore, can help employees work to continuously improve and advance. The Common Man restaurants have what they call a "Common Man Cash" pro- gram, where stars can earn play money for every positive guest feedback, selling the monthly special wine, or other shows of great service and sales. Then, at the end of each month they can cash in their dollars to use for free meals at the restaurant, bottles of wine and other prizes.

In the fall at the company's Starfest, stars can bid on bigger prizes like DVD players and trips with their Common Man Cash. Outside of Common Man Cash, stars also get regular opportunities to come in and eat with their families as guests throughout the year so they can both be rewarded for their efforts and understand the guests' needs from their perspective.

Peer mentoring and shadowing is another form of an incentive. The opportunity to become a mentor to another server is considered an honor at the Common Man restaurants. "We actually hand-select people who are not just good at training others, but who want to train others. There's nothing worse than having the excitement of someone walking in the door and then seeing the schedule and saying, 'ugh, I'm training today?'"

Mentors actually have to apply for the position; even write an essay. But the rewards have a payoff: higher pay, better benefits, seniority when it comes to scheduling and hours.

The benefits to the trainee are realized too; Bates and Mabel both have found that constructive criticism and learning from peers can be more effective than management. There's an opportunity to talk and share experiences, suggestions and ideas more candidly and in a more approachable setup.

Marketing the Mission

Simply talking about your mission and philosophies becomes folklore. "It's important to memorialize it," Bates says, and this can be done through marketing materials, on the website, through customer signage, and through regular communication methods such as internal emails and newsletters, staff boards and other areas.

"You want to make these aspects of your culture part of your policies and procedures," she says. Your mission statement is essentially your most powerful marketing tool, according to Mabel. Backing up the "talk" of the mission with actions in everything you do is how you create that lasting culture of service.

Says Bates, "You have to live and breathe the culture you create and celebrate it." Remembering the guest and your employees first and foremost will help get you there.