The Art of Touching Tables by a Restaurant Manager

There are two sides – Technical and Hospitable Hospitable Hospitality….A warm personal and engaging style of guest service.  The important part of being hospitable is understanding what your guest’s wants and needs are before they have to ask for it.  Body language is very important to read and understand your guests; it tells the truth…

Zone Management in a Restaurant

Zone Management is a state of mind, an awareness of everything happening in your zone.  Zone Management is not just table touching, but an ability to distinguish the guest and the staff’s needs.  This can only happen by Manager’s constant presence in their Zone.  Only then can there be an intuitive understanding and an ability to perceive…

Management Standards

Managers must become technically competent whether they are training to be or are an accountant, engineer, chemist, restaurant manager, etc.  People with the above skills are ‘a dime a dozen’. What separates a good accountant from a controller, an engineer from an engineering manager, server from a restaurant manager or a cook from a chef…

The Importance of the Guest Experience

The guest experience is the new marketing norm for today’s consumer. In 2010, 36% of companies expected to compete mostly on customer experience but in 2016 89% of companies expect to compete mostly on the guest experience. In today’s modern world where social media feedback sites and online communities significantly influence customer spending, the experience you…

Building High-Performance Teams

There are many groups of people who work at a company in the same department, on the same shifts, with the same people, and they function as a work group. As a leader and manager, you can take a work group and mold them into high performance teams. There are four common elements in high…

The Power of Visualization

The goal of visualization is to create images in your mind of what you want to be able to do and mentally practice them over and over again. This might sound crazy to you, but research has shown us that the technique of visualization is just as effective in creating an auto-pilot routine as actually…

The Cost of a Negative Guest Experience

The cost of a negative customer or guest service experience can be staggering to a business. According to an American Express survey in 2011, 78% of customers who are involved in a transaction and have a negative service experience will stop the transaction and walk away without making a purchase, 58% of guests who have…

Time Stacking

I believe that hospitality and technology are a modern day oxymoron. There is truly nothing hospitable about modern day technology. Think about it, how often have you walked down a corridor or hallway and almost bumped into somebody that wasn’t paying attention because they were on their phone, or how many times have you been…

Our Perception of the Job We Do

I always tell my team that perception is reality.  If a guest has a great experience or a bad experience, that is their perception, and that is their reality.  I also tell my team members that my perception of the job I do is the least important perception there is.  If I think I’m really…