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Par Excellence: Hallmarks of Great Service

How do independent restaurant owners ensure great service in their concepts? That's simple, and it can be summed up in three steps.

First, they pay attention to the big picture. The difference between good and great restaurant service is a culture of passion, says Jeffrey Bank, CEO of Alicart Restaurant Group, which operates Carmine's Italian Restaurant and Virgil's Real BBQ, with locations in New York City, Atlantic City, Washington D.C., Las Vegas and the Bahamas. "We all know and have our 'steps of service,' but to translate them into an incredible guest experience your staff needs to have passion and want to be in the hospitality business," Bank says.

Great service is something you remember and tell stories about for years to come.

Second, they pay attention to the fine details. "The difference between good and great service is the little things," says Tania Arthur, director of operations for Between the Buns/Curve Café in Osceola and Elkhart, Indiana. "A genuine smile and greeting when people walk in or out your door, knowing people by name - and it is OK to ask. It's going the extra mile. If you have it, serve it. [It requires] individuality at each table. Make your guests feel like they are your only table, at every table. It requires knowing the guests who provide repeat business. It's knowing a guest's name, what they like to drink, how they like their eggs, asking about the vacation they just got back from."

And third, they pay attention to everything in-between. And that is because "everyone expects good service," says Jason Neve, culinary director for B&B Hospitality Group in Las Vegas, which operates OTTO Enoteca Pizzeria, B&B Ristorante, B&B Burger and Beer and other concepts.

The Right Thing Out of Genuine Concern

So, OK; maybe delivering great service is not as simple as 1-2-3; however, it isn't beyond the grasp of any operator with a commitment to his or her guests. As Joe Marsco, operations director at Las Vegas' Andre's and Alizé restaurants says, great service is "doing the right thing because you have a genuine concern for the guest experience by encompassing a passion for hospitality."

Superior service, he says, is "all-encompassing hospitality and can resonate to perfect execution in any segment, concept or price point. It has more to do with the trust of service than it does about the transaction. The guest must always know you are on their side."

The great irony in the restaurant business is, even though everyone expects it, when they receive it, guests often treat it as an unexpected pleasure. "Great service is something you remember and tell stories about for years to come," Neve says.

And never underestimate the power of the story. It is the basis for effective word-of-mouth marketing.

Not Exclude to Exclusive concepts

People dine out for a variety of reasons. A good meal and pleasant experience is one of them. Sometimes dining out is a matter of convenience. People are hungry, and a drive-thru fills that need.

Even quick-service concepts, such as Chick-fil-A and Starbucks have figured out that people appreciate great service, even if it just comes with a sandwich and fries or a latte and scone. And it is part of their story, and it contributes to their market leadership.

"Top-flight" service, Arthur says, has "very little if anything" to do with price or segment. "Sure, you have a few people who will never be happy because of the prices, but great service wins over pricing any day of the week."

Bank agrees that superlative service has nothing to do with a restaurant's price level or segment. "It's the opposite of what you may expect. If you deliver a proper experience serving great food with great service you can charge the price that you dictate. This is something that Starbucks has proven with a cup of coffee there versus your local deli."

Neve agrees with those sentiments, as well. "There's no reason fast or casual concepts can't be done right," Neve says. "We are programmed to think a higher cost means better, so of course we expect more when we pay more. However, a lot of times that expected experience can make us overly judgmental and instead of leaving our mind open for the unexpected wow factor we are consumed with overanalyzing."

Still, while guests are delighted by good service at their local drive-thru, they demand it at upscale concepts. Those operators better deliver it to remain a viable business. Stuart Gray, the founder and principal of Hospitality Rocks recruitment and training firm based in Jordan, Minnesota, has found that the segment does, indeed, have an effect on service.

"When we go to a higher-end restaurant we have different service and hospitality expectations," Gray says. "My clients that compare themselves by just a number on a Google or TripAdvisor review have to also compare the experience."

Find a Need, Fill a Need

Creativity and empathy are important elements of serving the public. A robot can deliver food to a table.

Some of the largest and most successful companies in the world today use a process called "Design Thinking" in product and service development. It is taught as leading business schools, and leans heavily on identifying a need and figuring out a novel way to fill it.

In some ways, restaurants with successful service have management and staff that do this on a continual basis. The difference between good and great is often "anticipating the customers' need before they even ask," says Scott Frost, president of Titan Branding, which operates Hussong's Cantina and Slice of Vegas restaurants in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. "Regardless of the segment, good service can bridge the gap between any price point."

And if you hope to build this kind of culture, it starts with attracting the right employees -- not robots. Building an organization that excels in service is like climbing a ladder, each run leading to the next. And at the base of the ladder is the ability to find the right people.

Exceptional service is the emotional connection that is created when the service provider shares from their heart and connects with the heart of their guest.

"Fantastic service does begin with hiring," Arthur says. "Use your instincts. You can train for many things but you can't teach a person to care. Hire for that smile, hire for that enthusiasm, hire for the excitement about being here. You can train for everything else."

The hiring process is one of the biggest challenges for restaurants, as finding and recruiting the right talent becomes increasingly difficult, says Mike Lester, president of The

Melting Pot Restaurants Inc. in Tampa, Florida, the fondue-based chain with 136 units open or in development around the world.

"We often find ourselves spending more time talking about the brand's culture during the interview process in order to determine if the candidate is a good fit," Lester says. "We feel that if there's a cultural fit, the prospective employee can be trained to succeed in all areas from the front to the back of the house."

A comparison between good and great service is "a very personal evaluation," says Steven Costello, operations director for London-based Burger & Lobster U.S. in New York City. The company owns and operates 17 locations in England, Wales, Dubai, Kuwait, Stockholm and New York City. "Great service means different things to different people, including restaurateurs," Costello says. "But I can tell you there's no such thing as great or even good service without a terrific team a team that is upbeat, completely onboard with the restaurant's brand and happy to be of service."

Costello says the road to superb service not only begins with hiring but "it can end there if you don't hire the right people. If you don't select great people and stay ahead of your hiring needs you're in trouble." Hiring and retaining employees need to be constant processes, he says, and one that involves doing everything in one's power "to keep a good person and to hire someone you know is terrific, if even you do not yet necessarily need to fill a slot. The key is to never hire in panic. Doing so guarantees you'll make unfortunate decisions."

Finding the Right People

Gray says that past performance dictates future behavior, and that the hiring process has five major components: attraction, selection, orientation, engagement and retention. "The first three are critical in creating a guest experience people want more of," he says. "The last two are based more on the effectiveness of the leadership team, brand and culture."

Service is a skill, not a commodity, Neve says. A restaurateur's job is to find the people with the right skills and the passion to use those skills to their best ability. "You don't just grab the next application on the top of the stack and hire as if you were grabbing a box of cereal off the shelf," he says.

He insists that character should be weighed equally, if not more, when hiring prospective restaurant employees. "We can train you how to do your job," Frost says, "but we can't train character. We particularly look for people who are aligned with our core values during the interview process."

Training focuses on shadowing seasoned employees, together with a good amount of coaching, Frost says. "From management level, we try hard to catch people doing things right early on, which reinforces a positive work atmosphere."

Melanie Corey-Ferrini, CEO of Dynamik Space, a consultancy in Seattle, has found that passionate people looking to promote and be excited about a restaurant is an important characteristic in hiring a great service-oriented member of your staff. "That excitement will be conveyed to the customer," Corey-Ferrini says. "It will make the customer want to come back to be a part of your community."

Putting candidates through a few paces can pay off. "I have known owners who conduct the final interview of all servers, hosts, and bar staff," says Chris Tripoli, FCSI, president of A'La Carte Foodservice Consulting Group in Houston. "They might arrange to have a dirty fork or napkin on the floor next to the chair the applicant is in. If the applicant doesn't stop to pick it up, the owner believes he is not a person that is very aware of their surroundings or who doesn't care about the little things. They wouldn't get selected because great service is found in the consistent delivery of the little things."

Delivering the Right Training

Finding people who can deliver a high level of service is only half the challenge. Regardless of their native skills, without training that helps them apply those skills to the specific concept, they can never rise to their true potential and neither can your restaurant.

Too often, server training is minimal and perfunctory, especially if the candidate has prior experience. That lack of effort is a mistake that can ruin a restaurant. "Training is a welcome investment for those wishing to provide great service," Tripoli says. "It is an ongoing educational process that begins with the initial training of the position and its expectations." It is followed by daily reminders and service discussions during pre-shifts, where service staff demonstrates and learns from one another.

It also includes educational meetings and presentations every 60-90 days where purveyors and guest service specialists visit with staff members to keep them current on product trends and guests' buying habits.

The best restaurants train their staffs according to a detailed plan that thoroughly explains the operations process, according to Lester. "Great organizations never cut corners and perform their training with an absolute and detailed discipline," Lester says. "Once a training program is in place, it needs to be properly executed. At The Melting Pot, we have a Learning & Communications department that provides both new and current restaurant employees with ongoing training and development opportunities."

Training the service staff begins with knowing the service staffers. "Know your audience," Bank says. "What works with a 40-year-old does not work with millennials. Back of house has a different language and approach than front of house."

Arthur says she believes in one-on-one training with the staffer who cares the most. "Give them a taste of all aspects of the restaurant, even a dishwasher's job. This way they can have some respect for each position and know what others are going through." Doing so, she says, makes for a more cohesive restaurant and helps with morale and teamwork. She is also a proponent of leading by example.

"As the leadership in the restaurant you can't have 'bad' days," Arthur says. "You can have a bad moment here or there, but bad days brings the staff down and also tells them it is OK to be like that in the restaurant. Enough 'bad days' can bring the atmosphere of the restaurant down very quickly." When there is a so-called bad moment, "you need to make sure you apologize so that your staff knows you recognize there was an issue and it is not acceptable behavior," she says.

Corey-Ferrini says that a restaurant's brand is its menu. "That is your 'product' and what makes you unique," she says. Great service starts with the staff understanding "the voice of the brand, why the restaurant is unique, and 'communicating' that through service experience and engagement with the customer," Corey-Ferrini says. "That will lead to a memorable experience with your restaurant."

Corey-Ferrini says the best restaurants schedule preopening training for at least one month. This allows staff the time to understand the menu, the brand, the operations, the flow, and the unique attributes of your experience. "It also allows for social media and staff to start working together and pushing out messages as a community," she says.

Gray says service is "the expectation and what the guest is paying for. Hospitality is the emotional connection when the experience moves beyond the delivery of services to create what we call heart-to-heart hospitality."

Culture is "an intentional act of creating a space that is consistent and designed to elevate the guest experience," Gray says. "The translation of the word restaurant is to restore; the culture is a big part of that process."

"Training is never derailed because we are short or didn't accurately prepare for seasonal revenue periods," Gray says. "Your guests don't care. The best restaurants train and develop their people on a per-shift basis daily."

In fact, a company's culture can work either for or against a restaurant. As Neve says, "It either sterilizes the experience by wiping out the personal touch and care that make service magical, or conversely it can be based on believing in the strengths of its individual workers or empowers them to be better by providing a greater support structure."

Frost says that Titan Brand is invested heavily in instilling a corporate culture based on practicing several positive human attributes. "It sounds simple, but to get people to internalize our core values makes them better people in front of the customers as well as outside of work," Frost says.

Exceptional service is the emotional connection that is created "when the service provider shares from their heart and connects with the heart of their guest," Gray says. "I feel that hospitality is inherent in each of us, and as effective leaders in the industry we need to develop a culture where our people are encouraged to showcase their gifts. When our people are performing at those levels, be sure to recognize them that day. It is silly to wait till the holiday party in front of the whole team."

Talk to Your Guests

In many ways, however, great service is not that complicated.

Costello says that he once worked for a restaurant company that had seemingly endless meetings about the service experience "rather than actually touching it and becoming involved in it."

He says he grew so frustrated that he suggested during a meeting that management go out and talk to some customers rather than talk about them. "The suggestion was met with complete, somewhat shocked silence. I thought I might be fired, but I wasn't," Costello says. Management started spending time talking to guests, ultimately finding out a lot about what they expected and wanted from their experience.

CHECKLIST: 10 SURE-FIRE SERVICE KILLERS

Even restaurateurs with the best of intentions and work ethics can veer off in the wrong direction on the way to superior service. Here are 10 common service killers.

AVOID THEM -- SERIOUSLY.

1. Forget that you are a business first. "While individual, friendly, family-like service is what you are striving for, never forget these guests are still customers," says Tania Arthur, operations director for Between the Buns/Curve Café in Osceola and Elkhart, Indiana. "They are still paying you to do your job. While they might really like to see pictures of your grand babies, they also want their food hot and fast, and their coffee refilled."
2. Keep dysfunctional staff. Stuart Gray, the founder and principal of Hospitality Rocks recruitment and training firm based in Jordan, Minnesota, says not to allow "manipulative, self-centered" team members to negatively affect your brand in the market. "Those folks need to represent your competition," he says.
3. Don't treat every guest as an individual. "Every guest is different," says Jason Neve, culinary director for B&B Hospitality Group in Las Vegas, "so don't think they can all be served the same way."
4. Ignore the guest's needs. "Not being able to read the guest's needs" can be a costly miscue, says Joe Marsco, operations director at Las Vegas' Andre's and Alizé restaurants says. "Great service is very instinctual over time, and you become able to anticipate needs before the client does."
5. Don't consider how you might want to be treated. "One can Google a hundred things to avoid," says Tim Kempke, front-of-house manager of Henry's at the Farm in the historic Hudson Valley of New York. A key focus must be on the customer. "Never stray away from imagining you, the server, are the guest," Kempke says. "How would you want to be treated? How would you not want to be treated?"
6. Ignore social media complaints. "Never discount the power of social media," says Jami Zimmerman, corporate communication director at RAVE Restaurant Group Inc. "The old saying used to be that an unhappy customer is likely to tell 10 people about their experience, as opposed to telling one person about a good experience. Today, with social media and review sites, guest feedback has become a powerful form of advertising. Consumer feedback on public sites can drive business or negatively affect traffic depending on their overall experience. This is just another reason why each and every guest experience is important."
7. Don't let service slide during busy times. "One of the most critical mistakes to avoid in the restaurant industry is neglecting to provide high-quality service during busy hours," says Mike Lester, president of The Melting Pot Restaurants Inc. in Tampa, Florida. "Customers rightfully expect the highest standards of service and quality during all time periods and that's what the restaurant must deliver, regardless of whether or not it is at full capacity."
8. Be impersonal. "First, you have to make sure the customer knows the server or bartender's name," says Scott Frost, president of Titan Branding, which operates Hussong's Cantina and Slice of Vegas restaurants in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. "This begins the interaction on a more personal level. Without it they are just nameless strangers."
9. Tell your guests anything to make the sale. "Never say 'everything (on the menu) is good,'" Frost says. "Customers want to know what's good, and servers have to have at least two or three favorites to recommend."
10. Drop and run. Lastly, Frost says, operators should avoid what he calls the drop and run. When presenting the food let the customer know what they are getting. Double-check that everything looks like what they ordered. Finally, check if they need anything else."