Last night I watched The Chopping Block, a TV show that pits 2 restaurants against each other in a bid to win $20 000.
There is a food critic involved and a professional chef who coaches the restaurant chefs. There's $5000 for each restaurant, to do a mini makeover.
I
n last night's episode, Sophocles, a Greek Restaurant was up against La Bella Vista, with an Italian flavor.
On the big night of the food critic's visit, things went awry with the automated ordering system at both restaurants. Neither worked, so both restaurants had to do all the ordering manually.
This slowed things down both in front of house and in the kitchen, resulting in quite a bit of stress and panic, and frustration for the guests.
In the end, the contest came down to which restaurant handled the problem of the ordering system the best. The critic observed that La Bella Vista explained the situation to guests, but were still warm and friendly. Their personalities saw them through.
At Sophocles, things were a bit more tense. Key staff arrived late and some customers left as they'd been waiting for an hour for their meal. Then the staff, "aired their dirty linen" with the guests. Bad luck for them, that one of the people they vented to was the critic.
That was a shame, as the Sophocles staff were nice too, and were just having a bad night.
But it does go to show that for customers, the only night they care about is the one when they're there. They don't care how good things are on other nights.
The other lesson here is about teamwork and problem solving, and how the way you handle it can affect a customer's perception.
» Kitchen Nightmares - Lessons For Business To Move With The Times from SmallBizMentor
I've been watching a run of cooking shows lately... the sort where the professional chef comes in and helps turn around ailing businesses.Kitchen Nightmares, a British with professional chef, Gordon Ramsay at the helm, came to the rescue of chef,... [Read More]
Tracked on: March 13, 2008 8:23 AM | Permalink to Trackback