Author Archive

Every budget conversation in hospitality should start with one question: is every single line item in this budget Guest-focused? Not customer-focused. Not revenue-focused. Not cost-focused. Guest-focused. Does every goal for the front of house and the back of house connect back to the Guest Experience? Does every pre-shift meeting, every line check, every vendor conversation, […]

For years I heard gurus tell operators to think outside the box. I resisted it. Not because outside the box thinking is wrong. Because I kept looking at the businesses around me and seeing that nobody had exhausted their inside the box thinking first. How do you move beyond something that is not even working? […]

Most operators would answer yes if you asked whether they are working to improve their Guest Experience. The dishwasher, the server, the cook, the manager on duty — every one of them would claim they are contributing to a better Guest Experience. And they might be. But individual effort is not a Guest Experience program. […]

First and most important: you do not define it. The Guest does. The Guest Experience is how a Guest thinks of you after considering every interaction they have ever had with you — from the moment they first became aware of your operation to every visit, every meal, every interaction with your cast, every review […]

After four decades of hiring, developing, and coaching thousands of cast members, I have learned to look for specific behaviors that separate the remarkable ones from the merely competent. Not credentials. Not experience. Behaviors. Here is what A Players actually do. They go beyond service to produce hospitality. The steps of service are not enough […]

Most operators think of fun as a cultural nicety — something that happens when the work goes well, a byproduct of a good shift rather than a design requirement for a productive operation. They have the sequence backwards. Fun creates enjoyment. The cast member who finds genuine enjoyment in the work is not performing enthusiasm. […]

Most interview questions reveal what a candidate wants you to know. One question reveals what they would rather you did not. Tell me about the worst mistake you ever made — and what it cost your employer. That is it. One question. Four things it tells you immediately. The magnitude of the mistake reveals the […]

QFO: “I’d like my business to provide great customer service, but staffers don’t seem to grasp the concept. Can it be taught?” Danny Meyer offered this answer: “The most important thing you can do is make the distinction between customer service and guest hospitality. Customer service entails getting the right food to the right person […]

There is a service recovery script making the rounds in hospitality training circles that sounds like empathy and produces the opposite of it. “I can see how angry this makes you.” When was the last time you were genuinely upset with a service failure and the person responsible for fixing it responded by narrating your […]

The impulse is understandable. You see something being done and you know you could do it better. More carefully. More consistently. With more attention to detail and more genuine care for the outcome. And you probably could. The market will not care. Better is a comparison. It requires the Guest to evaluate your version against […]

Someone told an operator I was working with that 75% of food and beverage businesses lose money or break even indefinitely — and that F&B is a loss leader by nature. I nearly lost my mind. This is not a market reality. It is a belief system. And it is a belief system that produces […]

Most operators who lose Guests do not lose them dramatically. There is no scene. No complaint. No scathing review. The Guest simply stops coming back — and the operator never finds out why because the Guest never told them. Here is what they experienced on the way out. The server who wrote nothing down. The […]

The costliest item in most restaurant operations does not appear on the P&L. It is not food waste, not labor variance, not rent. It is the empty chair. Not the chair that was empty because the restaurant was not full. The chair that was empty because the operation did not produce a Guest experience compelling […]

You do not. That is the entire answer. And it is the answer most operators have never accepted because it removes the comfortable illusion that the right training program, the right incentive structure, the right motivational speech will produce a cast that cares about the work. It will not. You cannot make people care about […]

QFO: “Since most loyalty programs involve some sort of comp (discount) what do you propose instead as the incentive?” Answer: Whatever the Guest actually wants — except your margin. The assumption embedded in the question is that the incentive has to be financial. That Guests are loyal because of what they save. That the relationship […]