Question:
We open at 5:30 p.m. for dinner service, and I typically open the door a few minutes before for guests to trickle in. Last week, a guest with a 5:30 reservation was furious that I “locked him out in the cold” until right when we opened. He tipped low and left a bad review. Our hours are posted and we honored the reservation. It seems like we are doing our part.
– Manager, fine dining, New York City
Answer:
I think there are two ways to think about this scenario:
- You can’t win them all. Some guests are just difficult and unhappy. Often that has nothing to do with you—maybe he had a bad day, has a sick family member, or was dreading this date/meeting. Of course, it’s not right for you or your restaurant to be the outlet for his crankiness. But that’s the people business.
- The feedback—however unpleasant—is an opportunity to re-examine your system.
Before assuming that No. 1 is the case, I think you are doing the right thing by considering the second option.
One thing that jumps out at me is that by opening both the door and your first reservation at 5:30, you may be setting yourself up for a service of delayed seatings. It is a struggle to encourage a complete party to be on time for their reservation to begin with. By discouraging early arrivals, will they learn their lesson and start arriving late for future visits?
How is their experience waiting outside? It is a blustery winter in New York. Is the neighborhood pleasant and safe for your guests? Is there a bar or cafe nearby where a guest could warm up or pregame? Access to a restroom?
My advice is to use this negative interaction as a nudge to ask these questions. I suspect going through that process will have you changing your system to adopt one of two solutions:
- Consider opening the door and/or the bar area at 5:00 or 5:15 if the first reservation is at 5:30. That will allow guests to gather, allows for additional sales opportunities for a predinner drink and extends hospitality, especially in inclement weather.
- If that is not feasible, include your hours in the reservation confirmation and speak with a neighboring operation that is not a direct competitor about their interest in accommodating early or overflow guests.
In short, empathy for the guest experience can help you think through the best system for your operation, balancing cost controls (you don’t want to fully staff a sparse restaurant) with hospitality (come in, warm up, and have a drink!). After asking these questions, the answer may indeed be that you have a difficult-to-please, cranky guest; but I suspect he did you a favor in raising an aspect of your hospitality that could be improved.
More on hours of operation here.