Photo courtesy istockphoto.com
Over the years that we've spent surveying hundreds of thousands of diners, one fact becomes clear: Service is *the* weak link in the restaurant industry. How do we know? Roughly 70% of all complaints we receive relate to service. Collectively, complaints about food prices, noise, crowding, smoking, and even parking make up only 30%. Moreover, the average rating for food on our 30-point scale is usually two points higher than the average rating for service. Given the fact that identical people are voting, and that there are hundreds of thousands of them, this deficit is dramatic.
It's easy to complain, but how should the industry correct the problem? To start, it's necessary to understand that there are two elements of good service. The first is hospitality. If you're warmly received by a restaurant, starting with the reservationist, you'll automatically feel better. The most successful restaurants understand this, and make sure to fill their staffs with likeable people (I'm thinking of NYC's Danny Meyer, Chicago's Rich Melman, and the New Orleans Brennan family). One famous restaurateur we know says that he never hires anyone unless he thinks his wife would like them.
Our suggestion is that we create front-of-the-house divisions at every culinary school in the country, which would elevate the quality of service in the hospitality industry.
The second element is professionalism, e.g. where to put the utensils, which side to serve from, and being able to explain what you're serving.
How to rectify this? It's helpful to look at the recent history of restaurants in the United States. 25 or 30 years ago there were very few middle-class Americans who wanted to become chefs, and there were hardly any professional culinary schools. Today there are over 100 culinary schools across the country producing thousands of bright young chefs each year. The public now perceives chefs as respected professionals--celebrities, even. Besides having a 24-hour TV channel devoted to cooking, there are food shows focusing on chefs on the major networks and myriad cable stations. No wonder chefs are seen as stars. But when was the last time you saw a show that focused on waiters or maitre d's, and how many schools pride themselves on teaching service skills?
Our suggestion is that we create front-of-the-house divisions at every culinary school in the country. These schools would elevate the professionalism and the respectability of service in the hospitality industry. They would save restaurants the enormous cost of training wait staff from scratch and reduce the high turnover most restaurants face. In addition, the schools should adopt many of the restaurant management courses that are already in the curriculum for chefs.
In light of the Obama administration's focus on creating jobs and providing necessary education for those careers, I can't think of a more useful program to support. It wouldn't just help the restaurant business. It could help many other "service" industries--retail alone is a big, and struggling, sector. (Just think of the prices you might be willing to pay if your gas-station attendant were polite and actually serviced your car.)
Bear in mind the number of restaurant jobs is vast--well into the millions--and there is a restaurant around almost every corner that needs well-trained help. The only thing they need to remember is that likeability should be a preliminary requirement for the job; after all, we're talking about hospitality.
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Even though on average service in America may score low, it is here that we find some of the best trained wait staff. Places like The French Laundry and Per Se outshine comparable European restaurants like Arzak when it comes to the front of the house. Even casual elegant dining spots like Delfina and Range in SF offer outstanding service without any fuss. The front of the house deficit is not greater than the food itself. The difference is that, for most diners, it's easier to criticize the servers than the food, after all, in summer-job America, the majority of people have spent time in the front of the house, but rarely worked in the kitchen.
This is all fine and well to say but the major problem you miss is that being or becoming a Chef is career for most who take up the task. Being a waiter or a hostess is not. Most servers and bartenders are trying to do something else. The places with the best service usually have professional waiters and bartenders who work there. Those folks also tend to make a lot more money than the average hospitality worker, including most managers. You could create a school for bartending and waiting tables but who would go? The overwhelming majority of bartenders and waiters (i'd say over 95%) have no intention of being in the hospitality biz for the rest of their lives.
While restaurants must always strive to improve their service, I'd have to disagree with the premise of the post and suggest that the "service issue" is not so much a systemic problem for the restaurant industry as it is a question of our dining culture. I am not "in the industry," but I witness far more "diner fouls" than I do "service fouls."
To get right to the core of it, I believe our dining culture in America to be one of entitlement, mismanaged perceptions and disconnection from our food. Dining attitudes are far too transactional, "I'm paying my hard earned money, I deserve the best." Before, only the professional critic had a voice that carried. Now, individual diner opinions have been amplified by the internet, and we often develop a false confidence in our own expectations of the dining experience. While there are a significant minority of diners who eat out not to "play critic", but to get to know a restaurant and staff and enjoy what they do, there's little incentive for the diner to put in any effort into the experience.
Over time, the diner gains more power over the restaurant. Whether it be our "merit-based" gratuity system, the rise of message boards, food blogs, and aggregated, rated reviews...it seems that there is little recourse for restaurants. And the more we, as diners, squeeze them to our increasingly unreasonable whims, the less restaurants are able to provide their vision of a dining experience.
If we only considered ourselves "guests" at restaurants and conducted ourselves as such, I think we'd see a significant improvement in the service that we receive.
you are my hero!
I am a restaurant owner, and I think what you wrote is completely accurate!
My observation is that the restuarnts that keep their staff and have great servers are restaurants where they actually train their staffs themselves. It isn't just a matter of "likeable" people. Most people in ANY job are more likeable when they are comfortable in thier jobs, and have had some training. I have had charming people as servers in restaurants and they were clueless.......nice but clueless!
We got to Emerils in New Orleans many years ago, just as they were about to seat people for dinner. There was a staff meeting and they were touting the specials for the evening and trying to make sure their ervers knew the details on the food they were about to serve.It makes a difference when the staff knows something about the food and wine they are serving.
I disagree with the Zagats, a school to train these people might help but it is not likely there would be huge market for those schools. What might help is if the restaurants trained their staffs well and if in this country we respected people who wait on us.......in restaurants, hotels etc.
Beyond the basics, another key attribute for restaurant staff is observation. A server needs to watch the table, notice the mood and tempo of the diners. Dining out is a bit theatrical - we eat in public, yet we behave as if we were at a private table; the kitchen is serving many diners, yet we expect to be catered to as individuals. The front of the house bridges this divide. Some of us like to know all about food preparation, to receive assistance with wine selection, even to interact with our server as an element of the dining event. Others prefer that the restaurant staff behave as service staff only, the perfect servants. If the restaurant helps servers develop the habit of observation, they will soon learn how to figure out what most diners are looking for in the interaction.
We must not forget a very important point. When food takes a long time to get to the table, most customers will blame the service staff, though we all know that 95% of the time, it has to do with the kitchen.
Also, your food is either good or bad. You like or not. And everything can always be fixed in the privacy of the kitchen. In service there's a million things that can go horribly wrong, right there, in front of the customer.
I'm pretty sure that at most top end fine dining restaurant, the service was always rated perfect. With such high prices, a waiter can make very good money attending only 4 tables, thus ensuring a perfect service. In a bistro or other fast pace restaurant, where you have a lot more tables, that your turn many times over, you can't be as present. Well, actually you can... until something goes wrong. People adjust their expectations of food according to the price they pay, but they don't do that for service. Except maybe in very cheap joints where "it's part of the charm".
If service is bad in a restaraunt the fault belongs with the owner or management period. I say this as a server who has twenty plus years of plying this thankless trade and who is now gleefully leaving the biz to go back to school to do something completely different. If you get bad service it is up to the manager to train that person or fire them and this rarely happens. Most managers these days are concerned about getting their bonus and are to busy cutting service and staff to be concerned about the customer.
I started working in the restaurant industry in the 1970’s. There was a mix of career staff and college students working their way through school. Sometime in the 1980’s there was an attitude change in the industry and the public. The industry no longer wanted knowledgeable experienced help. Young, cute, entertaining and interchangeable became the industry model, and the staff had to fit ‘the look’ of the restaurant. Dinner and a show under one roof. And with the rise of star chefs, even the dishwasher had an attitude toward wait staff. The general public no longer wanted good service but a fun summer camp councilor to make their evening, you know, the guy who stoops down almost kneeling at your table, and is your ‘friend’ for the evening. Or a servant, to be demeaned, snaps included.
Until there is an attitude change on the industry’s and the public’s attitude about these ‘temp’ jobs we will be left with service on the level of your cable company’s call center.
My most consistent service issue at restaurants is inaccurate estimates of wait times for a table. In most cases, it is so bad that the restaurant has to intentionally be low-balling the estimate to get us to hang around (in fact, I've had a friend who used to work at a restaurant tell me they were instructed to never say the wait would be more than ten minutes, even when it would be an hour or more). I recognize that things happen to make precise timing unpredictable and I'm usually pretty cool when that happens. But most restaurants that have been open for a while and are above a certain size are pretty good at estimating these things.
The issue isn't just with walk-ins, though - the worst restaurant experience I've had was when I had a reservation. We were supposed to get our table at 9pm, but weren't seated until well after 10 (all the while being told it would just be a few moments). We were then ignored by our server for about the next half hour and eventually left. The restaurant then had the gall to report to Opentable that we had skipped our reservation.
This is the problem...this message board. Everyone here thinks they know more than the Zagats. It's amazing. These are industry professionals who are the benchmark in what they do, yet they are being told they are wrong by people who don't have that same experience. Those of you complaining about the entitlement you're right, but you're also using this board to sound off your own opinion, which is virtually the same sense of entitlement. Restaurants know food and service. It's what they do. If you don't like the food and service at a particular restaurant, don't go there. That's it. Trying to impose your beliefs and thoughts on the restaurant during a service is probably the most counterproductive thing you can do, why? Because you are then ruining the experience for more of the diners around you. Now two, three or four people need to stop what they are doing and cater to your specific gripe, whether justified or not. Just don't return. That's it. If you want to sound of in a forum like this or Yelp or Citysearch, eGullet, et al....go ahead. That's your right. I wouldn't, I don't take pleasure in complaining.
The problem is the sense of entitlement, no questions asked, but the restaurants should be training better and the idea of a school for service, not just in the restaurant industry, but in service in general is a fantastic idea. We don't manufacture anything in this country anymore, so we might as well take care of people better, but that's my opinion. I happen to value what industry professionals think. Those with experience I don't have. Those with "hundreds of thousands of diners" telling them there is a problem. They know. You are guessing.
The bottom line is this, If you are just nice to people, they will be nice to you. And if they're still not nice to you, just walk away. Those are the solutions for the disillusioned diners, AND the servers who want to fight and complain about bad customers. Do everything you can and if you can't get them to be happy. Walk away.
While I agree that you should not return to a restaurant that has provided abysmal service, there are often things that can be corrected. If the wrong dish is brought out or it is not prepared as asked (e.g., if pancetta is included when you asked for it to be excluded), then it is appropriate to flag down your server and explain the issue. Likewise, if your server has been ignoring you for some time, it is appropriate to flag down someone else to ask for water, the bill, etc. That said, I agree that it is not usually appropriate to make a scene or involve more than one person in the issue unless it simply cannot be resolved otherwise.
Many people here have good, if seemingly conflicting comments. I've worked in restaurants since 1980, in NYC and elsewhere, and in all positions save ownership.
Currently, the CIA has mandatory front-of-the-house (FOH) classes; I've only known one person (of the hundreds of students I've met through the years) who has decided to transition from the kitchen to the floor, and he was on a management track. Although I'm not certain which, other culinary schools also offer training in FOH, although it is not mandatory. People attend culinary schools to learn how to cook, period.
If culinary schools were to have mandatory FOH training, or "majors" for those who wish to pursue a FOH career, then one would have to expect the post-school training to be the same; namely, a graduate would work in a low paying position (i.e. busboy, barback) for a considerable length of time before being trusted or considered trained enough to move up the ranks to waiter or bartender (or captain in a classic situation; I've known front-waiters who have never been promoted to captain despite appearing to have all the right training and who have demonstrated considerable acumen at their position). Cooks change kitchens with great frequency; this is done so they might increase their knowledge base. It is considered ok (although not perfect) in the industry, as A)cooks are easier, and thus less costly, to train, and B)it actually does help raise the knowledge bar.
But training a FOH position is far more costly and takes more time to get the employee on the floor and fully trained (a cook can sit downstairs and do scutwork without [hopefully!] screwing anything up) to help guests at that particular restaurant. Restaurants have an incentive to keep the people they've trained, as it is far too costly to do otherwise. While it is possible that being "properly trained" at a culinary school might make it easier to hire and keep good staff, I fear the reality would be people who would move on to the next restaurant ASAP. And, why would anyone want to pay obscene amounts of money to go to culinary school for FOH training only to be in a long-term situation of continuous low wages. Unlike in kitchens, where a long-dwelling desire to create and thereby fulfill an artistic mien, the FOH is far more money-driven. In America, despite what Danny Meyer (and I have nothing but respect for him) may say, cash is king. People are not signing on to careers in the FOH because they love to make people happy, or because serving people comes naturally to them. If you went into any random restaurant, and told the servers they would no longer be tipped, but would instead be paid the same as the kitchen staff, you'd quickly have no staff (except maybe at Moosewood Cafe in Ithaca, NY, where the employees rotate throught all positions on a regular basis).
Now, why is "poor" service constantly the problem in restaurants? Every restaurant I've worked FOH in NYC has fairly rigorous training programs in place, and, truth to tell, the service scores have usually reflected that. But there are always going to be problems. A simple perusal of the Zagat website's discussion forums reveals guests who find poor service in server's keeping water glasses filled (for instance)! A good server will know how to read the table, and will quickly determine which guest needs to be approached in which manner.(This, by the way, takes a long to master and simply cannot be taught in a classroom). But, that first time, that first mistake, before the server has been informed by the guest that said guest does not like having his water glass refilled, is the deal breaker! All that type of guest will remember is the server's poor service in that one instance. Now, guess who will be the first to register his dissatisfaction with Zagat, or even on a comment card.
I've had the pleasure on many occasions (or not, as many might say) of both serving the Zagats and managing restaurants in which they've dined. I've yet to observe any kind of professionalism on their part. I respect the organization they've created, and the extent to which it can, and does, drive the industry, and I recognize that they have dining experience that goes well beyond what any but the most seasoned of food critics and travelers can hope to possess, but that knowledge has rarely, if ever, translated into their being considered knowledgeable, polite, friendly and, yes, desirable guests. I've observed them being served with extreme professionalism, courtesy, and especially friendliness, only to see them respond with rudeness, derision, and curt demands accompanied with a "do you know who I am" air. How can service in a restaurant ever hope to measure up?
Good service isn't that hard...
1) pay attention and listen
2) lose the "i'm your new best friend" schtick. i really don't care what your name is
3) when my glass is empty, fill it
4) when its full, go away
5) do not walk through the room looking straight ahead or at the floor - scan your tables!
6) know what you are serving - tasting it helps
7) don't try to speak french unless you can
8) be the best server you can be while your movie role or med school or LBO is pending
The reason for this apparent service gap is very simple. It's that people who dine in restaurants care more about service than about food, and by a wide margin. They will forgive mediocre food much sooner than they will even slightly deficient service.
That pains me, since I've written a restaurant review column focusing almost entirely on food for 37 years. Read any other restaurant critic's work and you see an overwhelming attention to food, and little to service. Actual customers look at it the opposite way. I know that's true, because I also host a three-hour daily all-food radio talk show (for 21 years in New Orleans, the only place where one could get away with such a thing). My listeners make their service imperative very clear with their comments.
Actually, I don't think service is most restaurants is all that bad. But that may be because I'm concentrating on the eats.
Tastefully yours,
Tom Fitzmorris
http://www.nomenu.com