I’ll often tell my audience that I want them to think about the last time they went out to a special-occasion dinner, whether it’s with a great group of friends, family members, or a significant other. I tell them to imagine that it was an amazing experience. The food was incredible, the drinks were delicious, the service was fantastic. I then ask “The next day, how many people do you tell?” The response is typically, “We tell everyone.”

Then I thank them and tell them to think about the last time they went out to a special-occasion dinner, whether it’s with a great group of friends, family members, or a significant other. At that point, I ask them to imagine how brutal the experience was. The food was disgusting, the drinks were toxic and the service was horrible and nonexistent. Halfway through their dinner, they went to the bathroom and when they came back to the table, they exclaimed how disgusting the bathrooms were and if the bathrooms looked that horrible, what did the kitchen look like! I tell my audience that it was so bad, it was almost like it was orchestrated to be that bad, as if Ashton Kutcher was going to show up at the table and scream “Punked!” As the audience settles in with that mental picture, I ask, “The next day, how many people did you tell?” The replies are loud and animated as almost everyone in the audience screams “EVERYONE!!”

I am convinced that, in hospitality, people might talk about their good experiences but everyone will talk about their bad experiences. I train my teams to err on the side of caution and make sure no guest leaves unhappy. I’ve learned that the guest is not always right, and quite often, they are flat wrong. But none of that matters if they leave unhappy because they will share that news.

I had the pleasure of attending the Life is Beautiful festival in downtown Las Vegas for the third year in a row.  Unfortunately, I could only go for one of the three days due to work commitments.

I started the day off by checking out Royal Blood, a British two-piece band that put out incredible sound. From there I saw Meg Meyers, Clean Bandit and Metric. Probably one of my favorite acts of the day was Soja a Washington, D.C. based reggae band that rocked the crowd.

After Soja, I went back to the main stage and took in Duran Duran. They were so tight and for a band that is 35 years old, they still rock it. They played all of the hits plus a bunch of songs from their new album.

To top the day off, I attended the headliner Imagine Dragons. I had never heard of Imagine Dragons prior to seeing them perform at the first Life Is Beautiful event two years ago but became an instant fan. They are a local Las Vegas band that hit it big and rightly so, as they have great songs. I have seen Imagine Dragons two other times at the Hard Rock Hotel and love the new album Smoke and Mirrors. They did not disappoint. They were the highlight of the day.

Check out some of these great photos I snapped of the bands.

I often ask teams that I train if it’s ok to tell their guest or client “I don’t know.” Typically, I get emphatic “NOs” from my audience, to which I reply, “Well, what if you don’t know?”

I’m a firm believer that it’s almost impossible to know everything and at some point, a team member will get asked a question that they don’t know the answer to.

The way I see it, if a guest asks you a question and you don’t know the answer, you still own the question. You have two choices:

• Find the answer
• Bring them to someone that can help them find the answer

It’s ok to say “I don’t know” but it’s not ok NOT to do anything about it or, even worse, try to BS your way through an answer that you’re not sure of.

Our team at Kelley Jones Hospitality is pleased to inform you of our partnership with Goodwin Hospitality! This company works closely with clients to identify areas of business improvement through management and executive level recruiting, mystery shops, guest satisfaction surveys and technology to enhance location audits. 

In 1999, Eric Goodwin founded Goodwin Hospitality, as a way to be a better father and spend more time with his two children. Goodwin spent his early years working in restaurant operations for companies like Common Man and Chili’s, and now owns his own restaurant group. Eric’s unique experience in the restaurant industry allowed him to gain a different perspective, and see an opportunity to improve the way management recruiting was done in the industry.

When Goodwin Hospitality first began, Eric had a local focus assisting restaurants in the greater Concord, NH area. Since the start of that solo operation, Goodwin Hospitality has expanded to over forty recruiters nationwide and grown beyond management recruiting into mystery shopping, guest surveys and field audit technology.

The success of Goodwin Hospitality can be attributed to the personal relationship that each partner at Goodwin makes with their clients. Goodwin Hospitality takes the time to understand their clients’ unique needs knowing that every client is different. The company takes pride in meeting with both clients and candidates in person and taking a personal approach, the way Eric did when he first got started. Our goal is to positively contribute to our clients’ business success and our candidates’ career success.

Goodwin Hospitality means it when they say, whether you are a hospitality professional seeking a new position to advance your career, or an operator that needs new talent or services to improve your business, they are here to help you create and execute a plan.

When performing leadership training, I often ask my audience, “Who has ever learned anything from speaking?” Quite often, a few hands will go up in the room. My response is, “I would challenge that this is not accurate. If you’re speaking, you’re just confirming what you think you already know, when in reality, nobody learns from speaking. People only learn from listening.”

Sadly, most people listen with the intent to reply—not with the intent to understand. Think about it—have you ever been in a spirited debate with someone and you’re just waiting for your chance to respond, and when you do, the person that you’re debating with replies “I just said that.” Quite often, we don’t listen to understand and therefore, miss opportunities to learn. Listen and Silent have the same letters because you aren’t truly listening until you’re silent.

It is so sad to see the deterioration of guest service in America. Odds are, if you walk into a convenience store to buy a coffee or a soda, more than likely, the only interaction you’ll get from the clerk behind the counter is “Three dollars.” Whatever happened to simple niceties in this instance such as:

• How are you today?
• Did you find everything you need?
• Is there anything else I can help you with?
• That’ll be three dollars. Have a great day- I hope to see you soon!

All of these simple niceties are important for a guest to feel good.

I often ask my audiences if they’ve seen the movie Back to the Future. Most people raise their hands and then I ask, “Did you see Back to the Future in the movie theater?” as the movie has just reached its 30^th year anniversary. The reason I ask this is because when I saw Back to the Future in the movie theater, one of the funniest scenes was when Michael J. Fox is back in the 1950s and he walks by a gas station, a car pulls around behind him and pulls into a gas station next to the pump, goes over the little black line and a DING! DING! is heard and four people sprint to the car. One guy pumps the gas, one guy washes the window, one guy checks the oil and one guy checks the tire pressure. The theater erupts in laughter. Why? Because nowadays you’re lucky if the guy behind the bulletproof glass even looks at you when he takes your money at a gas station. Sadly, that’s what we’ve come to accept as service in America.

I am convinced that people will spend their money in a business that might not have the best product or the best pricing, but the business that makes you feel good!

When I do hospitality and guest service training, I often rotate through my audience and ask individuals “What is your job?” In my business, I get numerous answers such as Server, Bartender, Cook, Host, manager. After I illicit numerous responses, I turn to my

audience and let them know that they’re all wrong.

In the hospitality industry, the definition of our job is warm, personal, engaging service. So I let my audience know that their job is to take care of their guest and ensure their satisfaction. How they do that job is by being a Server, Bartender, Cook, Host, or Manager. In hospitality, everyone’s job function is ultimately to service the guest and ensure that they leave satisfied.

In the hospitality world, I like to train my teams on “moments of truth.” A moment of truth is simply that whenever a guest comes into contact with a person or product in your company or organization, they keep a running scorecard. It is how your team handles and executes the Moments of Truth that separate you from your competitors. The Moments of Truth are all the individual touch points that your guest or client experiences. Evert single interaction is an opportunity to exceed the guest’s expectation. Studies have shown that it takes 10 positive Moments of Truth to make up for one negative Moment of Truth.

Back when I was just starting in my career in 1987, I moved to Stanford, CT, in typical Kelley fashion, I had not thought certain logistics through—like where I was going to sleep. The first week working at the Sterling Ocean House, as a newly promoted sous chef, I slept in my car in the parking lot and took baths in the bathroom sink.

On my very first day, unfortunately like in most restaurants, I was put on the “garde mangier” station by myself. Obviously, as it was my first day, I had never seen any of the menu items, so I was making it up as I went along. We started to get busy and to say that I was in the weeds would have been an understatement. It was pretty demoralizing to watch the look on the servers’ faces as they watched me try to just get through the shift. Halfway through service, I ran out of smoked salmon and asked Chef where I could get more, to which he replied, “In the freezer, straight ahead, top shelf.” I went through the walk-in, opened up the freezer door, saw the smoked salmon, stepped on a box, grabbed the salmon and went back to work. At the end of the lunch shift, I looked across the kitchen and I saw the owner, Brian Walters, and Chef Jeff looking at me and talking. Jeff approached me, asked to see the bottom of my shoe and took me into the walk-in freezer, where he opened the box that I had stepped on and inside was a crushed wedding cake that the pastry chef had just finished and put into the freezer to set for a wedding the next day. Jeff made me call the pastry chef to come back in and fix the cake and after getting him on the phone, I retreated into the bathroom and cried like a baby. Needless to say, my first day, I made many enemies.

Throughout the next six months, Jeff taught me more about food than I had ever thought I could know. He encouraged me to be creative and that is when I began my passion for collecting cookbooks. The moral of this story is that you learn more from your brutal mistakes than your successes.

As Don Shula says “Success is not forever and failure is not fatal”.