" You must BE who you really are, then, DO what you need to do in order to HAVE what you want."

Margaret Young*

* from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron

"Guests define 'value' by the totality of the restaurant experience: its ambience, flavor, hospitality, décor, presentation and quality and by the memory it creates. These memories generate 'word-of-mouth' that get shared and can make you king or kill you slowly. Memorable experiences do not 'just happen'. They are not the products of special effects. They get defined, created, orchestrated, rehearsed and communicated as a single, unique and structured theatrical performance. They are built note by note, scene by scene and act by act. Done right, they create loyal guests and very profitable restaurants. In the last year, the average restaurant consumer went out to eat 3% less often, spending their money elsewhere. They are telling us something, folks. We're beginning to bore them.

The trickiest, most critical component of Method Marketing lies ahead. You have done a yeoman's work by defining your concept as a synthesis of your passions/values and the guest's perceptions/emotional triggers. You have transformed that unique, synthesized personality into a restaurant, while making sure to affect all five cognitive senses through design, ambience, menu development and food presentation. You have done the requisite homework to understand where you make your money and how to best position your most profitable "WOW" items to be seen and purchased by delighted guests. You are on the way to fame & fortune and PE ratios in excess of 60 times earnings. All you need is for your people to perform, to deliver on the promise contained in all that preparation. And you thought you had gotten through the difficult part!

We now make the Great Leap from the land where you control the variables to a land where adolescents and those for whom English is a misunderstood second language determine your life. And it does not get easier as the level of your cuisine's difficulty increases.

I once asked Chris Schlesinger, of East Coast Grill fame, the secret of his success. I assumed the answer would be "the food". What else could it be? His is a world class culinary mind, which devises 'to die for', authentic dishes from around the equator and composes mixtures of contrasting flavors in orgasmic harmonies. He pays scrupulous attention to the grinding of spices and the 'fresh, from scratch' preparation of salsas and condiments. He has mastered the art of dry rubs and wet marinades on fish, meat or foul. He divines the subtleties of grilling over hard wood almost as a shaman might. But I was wrong. Instead of "the food", he responded, "I hire the friendliest people, so that my restaurant is the friendliest in town." These magic words stunned me. No lengthy dissertation on the need to balance grill with sauté or the relative merits of coriander seed as a pickling agent.

Friendly people? Nah, you gotta be kidding. "It's true. That's what I care about.", Chris continued, "That's what my guest cares about. I educate my staff, train them in the intricacies of the menu and what wine to suggest, treat them like family, but I always start with friendly." It is absolutely true. At the East Coast Grill, both the front of the house and kitchen staff are the friendliest, quirkiest, most exuberant, funniest, well-informed group of entertaining people with whom I love to dine.

I have heard enough talks and read enough treatises on the labor crunch and associated ills affecting our industry. The idea of focusing on "friendly" may seem well meaning but wishful thinking to all the cynics out there. But, trust me, The East Coast Grill continues to pack them after umpteen years. The road to El Dorado begins with the first step. You must embrace the end-state when you start. If you have practiced the First Golden Rule: Know Thy Guest as Thyself, then you know who you are. Now, let's work on ways to get others on the same trip. In the next issue we begin the journey.

Go to: Part II

 

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Part I - Deliver on Your Promise
Part II - Deliver on Your Promise
Part III - Deliver on Your Promise
Part IV - Deliver on Your Promise
Part IV - Deliver on Your Promise