Increasing Your Service Advantage

For customer-driven businesses like yours and mine, life is never “easy”.

We always face larger, cheaper competitors. However, an important difference between our businesses and theirs is how cost-driven competitors respond to economic headwinds.

Reading restaurant industry news, it sounds like some price-oriented chains are feeling an economic pinch from several factors:

1) Labor costs have increased as many state and local governments have raised “minimum wage rates.” Still, finding qualified help is more challenging than ever.

2) In terms of “supply and demand,” many cost-oriented chains have too many seats relative to realistic customer demand.

Because chains mainly target “price-shopper” consumers who put cost ahead of quality, those experiencing soft customer counts have further cut food costs (i.e. quality) and slashed employee headcounts. Some multiunit operators are shuttering underperforming locations.

Independents face many of the same challenges. However, unlike cost-driven chains, Independents depend on attracting loyal repeat customers who value quality and service over price.

Most Independents I know already run lean operations, so reducing headcounts is not typically an option. Most also recognize that sacrificing ingredient quality to save pennies per serving is self-defeating.

As my Uncle Dino was fond of saying, “Opportunity often arrives cleverly disguised as an unsolvable problem”.

For Independent businesses like yours and mine, wage rates and industry overcapacity are “unsolvable problems.” But as cost-oriented chains respond by further decreasing quality and service, they create golden opportunities for Independents to further widen your competitive advantages in those areas!

This is especially true with service because attentive thoughtfulness toward customers is free, regardless of prevailing wage rates.

In fact, reinforcing a team culture of hospitality (welcoming and appreciating customers) does not just attract loyal repeat customers, it can also make it easier to keep good employees who seek a sense of purpose from impacting the lives of others!

If you are looking for ways to elevate your service game, check out the book “Unreasonable Hospitality” by restaurateur Will Guidara. I received a copy from one of our restaurateur customers and have already read it twice. It is an amazing story about taking a business from “Really Good” to “Great.”

In his book, Guidara explains that the food at his fine dining restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, was already top quality, and the service was very good. However, in 2006, he focused his team on embracing a culture of “unreasonable hospitality” aspiring to be the best. This strategic shift helped to elevate his place from a two-star New York Times review to a three-star Michelin rating and even being voted number one in the world in 2017!

Guidara’s service philosophy is simple. Surpassing competitors to become truly “best of the best” in your area requires going beyond what most people define as “good service” (getting the right plate to the right person) to genuinely engaging every guest on an emotional level. People may forget what we do or say, but they never forget how we made them feel.

For example, for many restaurant guests, receiving a free dessert on their birthday is nice, but it is commonly expected. An “unreasonable hospitality” mindset would seek other unexpected ways to transform their special celebration into a lasting memory.

Guidara also emphasizes that it is not the lavishness of a gesture that counts, but its pricelessness. For example, a steakhouse where he had worked early in his career created an amazing “to die for” calamari appetizer but kept it off the menu. Its sole purpose was to give servers a special way to reward a table, making it uniquely priceless.

How you choose to make every guest feel especially appreciated is up to you and your situation. But in my experience, treating customers special is simply a more rewarding way of doing business!

Until next time,
Ciao!

Tom Cortopassi, President and Co-Owner