Guest Relationships: Critical to your restaurant's success

Guest Relationships: Critical to your restaurant’s success

By: Bob Tousey, FMP, MBA

Those of us who remember the television show Cheers remember that the title of the theme song was “Where everybody knows your name”. Cheers was centered around a neighborhood bar with plenty of regulars who engaged in friendly banter with each other and the bar owner. This was quite common in years gone by as many bars and restaurants were family owned and the bond between owners and guests were very strong.

My great grandfather owned and operated a bar and grill like Cheers in the early 1900’s. From what I am told he remembered every guest’s birthday and wedding anniversary. He not only wished them well but provided them with a take home gift.  Now with many restaurants being corporately owned and run by managers the neighborhood feel of restaurants is no longer common place. In my view, this is not a good development. For long term success it is important for the operator, whether owner or manager, to be the face of the restaurant in the community. This means the operator must be active in the community outside the restaurant as well as in the “front of the house”.  He or she should be attending community events, greeting guests, visiting tables and getting to know the regular guests and the restaurant’s neighbors.

There are many ways this can happen and in a future post I will explore ways to be a good neighbor and establish great relationships. In this post I will share one story which demonstrates how important these relationships are to the restaurant and their guests.

About ten years ago, I was a manager for a large corporately owned restaurant. I enjoyed getting to know my guests and this story demonstrates how creating these relationships helped a family as well as defused what could have been a challenging situation.

The restaurant is located near a hospital and a family became mid afternoon regulars. As they often came in during off peak hours it was easy to take some time to get to know them. As I got to know them I learned they had a relative who was seriously ill in the hospital and that the family shared my strong Christian faith. This knowledge became very helpful when a new server told me that a family was very upset and nothing she could do would please them. I immediately went out to see what I could do to make their visit better. As I approached the table I realized they were my friends with the relative in the hospital. We were all very comfortable with each other, so I was able to sit at the booth and ask them about their relative. I learned he had taken a turn for the worse and they did not expect him to survive.  With my knowledge of our shared faith it was instinctive to ask them if they wanted to share a prayer, which they did. We then talked as friends about the news they just received. It turns out our service and food were fine they were just upset about the news they received, and it affected their perception of how things were going. Without any prompting from me they apologized to the server and a nice bond developed.

After their relative passed they were no longer daily guests but did visit regularly. Having gotten to know this family allowed me to speak to them as friends and me from responding defensively.  Normally, I would not offer to pray with guests, but because of our relationship, I knew that they valued prayer and we had a shared faith, so I was comfortable doing that. It meant a lot to them and the server appreciated it as well. Becoming friends with your guests allows you to serve them in extraordinary ways.