What Makes Great Hospitality?

Episode 186 October 03, 2022 00:35:23
What Makes Great Hospitality?
RESTAURANT STRATEGY
What Makes Great Hospitality?

Oct 03 2022 | 00:35:23

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Show Notes

#186 - What Makes Great Hospitality?

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Back in August, my wife and I took a trip to the Dominican Republic... just a quick, 3-day getaway to recharge after a very stressful spring and summer. When I was down there, I couldn't help but pay attention to how we were treated. And it got me thinking: What makes great hospitality? 

 

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] A few weeks back, my wife and I took a quick trip to the Dominican Republic. It was a little three day getaway without our son. It was a chance to reconnect and recharge and it was absolutely lovely. We had the best time. But while I was down there I started wondering, why was I having such a great time? Why specifically was the hospitality so great? [00:00:23] Was it me who had created this? Was it the energy that I as a guest was bringing to the table? Or or was it really that great? Was it really above and beyond? And how can we learn from that experience? How can I learn from that experience and share some of that experience with you so that we can improve the hospitality in our restaurants no matter where we are? I share my thoughts on the subject, give you a few takeaways to apply to your restaurant on this week's episode of Restaurant Strategy. [00:00:49] There's an old saying goes something like this. You'll only find three kinds of people in the world. Those who see, those who will never see, and those who can see when shown those this is Restaurant Strategy, a marketing podcast for anyone who's looking. [00:01:19] Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in. My name is Chip Close and this is Restaurant Strategy, a weekly podcast dedicated entirely to the hospitality industry. Each week I leverage my 20 plus years in the industry to help you build a more profitable and sustainable business. I also work with operators all over the world through my group coaching programs to help them address and overcome the specific challenges we all face in our industry. Curious to learn more about those programs, set up a free 45 minute strategy session at restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule let me show you how simple it can be to to run a profitable restaurant again. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule as always, you'll find that link in the show notes. Already I've spoken to dozens of you over the last several weeks and I want to speak to dozens more. Please set up that [email protected] schedule now, despite easing restrictions, we are all still strapped into this roller coaster ride of fluctuating food prices. [00:02:24] That, combined with continuing staffing challenges, makes it more important than ever to control your costs to remain profitable. Margin Edge is a restaurant management software that uses POS integration and invoice data to show you your food and labor costs in real time so you can make informed decisions in the moment rather than weeks after the period ends. By automating your invoice processing and totally digitizing your back office margin Edge saves your team hours on paperwork and gives you Instant insights to manage your prime costs. Take control of those costs with real time data. Best of all, listeners of this show get to try Margin edge free for 30 days, no contract, no setup fee, free and unlimited training and support. Learn more by visiting margin edge.com chip as always, that link is also in the show notes. [00:03:18] So like I said at the top of the show, I went away on a little vacation here a little bit three day trip down to the Caribbean with my wife. And until a few weeks ago, I never stayed at an all inclusive resort before. I know it's weird, it seems like everybody has done it and I had never been to the Dominican Republic before, which again seems so weird because it seems like everyone goes there. There are, you know, dozens and dozens of hotels on the island and especially all of these all inclusive resorts, but I never did it. We spend a lot of our vacations with our son. We spend a lot of our vacations, quite honestly visiting family because they don't live here in the New York City. [00:03:55] But we wanted to set the time aside after such a crazy spring and summer. Many of you know that I moved after 20 years of being inside in New York City. We moved out to the New Jersey suburbs. And it was very stressful buying a house in this market. It's our first home. [00:04:13] So that had its own layer of challenges and anxieties and just simply the move out here after that. Then my wife was away on business, I was away on a speaking gig, she was away again on business. [00:04:26] Just been a whirlwind. So we really wanted to carve out just a couple of days so we could sort of breathe, decompress. And I said I really wanted to go to an all inclusive resort because I don't want to leave the resort. I want to fly in, take a cab there and just park myself, just post up at the bar, sit by the pool, read a couple of good books and recharge, which is exactly what we did. And you know what, it was awesome. But one of the things that got me thinking as I went through those three days there, which again, it was short, we flew in one afternoon and then had three full days actually on property. So it was just a, it really was just a quick little trip, but it was just enough for us. But everything about the experience was meant to put the guest at ease. And I know that sounds obvious, maybe overly simplified, but you know what, as I was thinking about it, I realized that's what all of our properties are meant to do, right? We tell people, hey, don't Cook at home tonight, come here, come to our restaurant, Let me take care of you. In essence, and I think this is lost on us too often, in essence, this is what we are saying to our guests. This is part of the promise we make to our guests, right? We say, you don't have to worry about anything. I got you covered. I'm gonna give you a nice table, I'm gonna get you everything you want, I'm gonna bring it to you, I'm gonna clear it away when you're done, I. At the end, you just pay and go. I'll do the dishes, I'll wipe down the table, I will clean the floor. I do everything here in the restaurant so that you, the guest, don't have to worry about all that, right? So, yes, we are feeding them, but more than that, we are trying to take care of all the setup and cleanup that goes along with having a meal, right? Any meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner. [00:06:16] And I want to. That really struck me, and I think it's. And I think it's a really important observation to make, right? Because when I was down there on vacation, everything about this resort was meant to put me at ease. Everything was meant to say to me, relax, we got you covered. There's nothing you have to worry about. [00:06:36] And that is what we should be doing in our restaurants. Let me give you a couple of examples in an over the top fashion, which is what this fancy resort did. But all the way down to when we checked in, right? We got out of the cab and two guys swooped in, took our bags, put them on a little trolley and whisked us into the resort, right? Got us off the street and into the resort. They already knew our name at the check in counter. They said, you know, sir, what's the last name on the reservation? I gave them my last name. They said, oh, yeah, of course they knew my name. They knew my wife's name. Now, it doesn't take much to do that, but they went above and beyond to just make sure they had our names right. When we arrived and they whisked us in, they walked us personally back to the back to the front desk because interestingly enough, the front desk isn't in the front. The front desk at this particular resort was all the way in the back. So number one, they wanted to make sure we got to the right place, right? They wanted to make sure we didn't get lost in the hotel. [00:07:32] But also, it was just a level of hospitality, of hand holding that was actually kind of nice after getting on a plane Coming in, going through customs and immigration and getting in a cab and driving the, you know, 25, 30 minutes to the resort and then getting there. Just a little bit of hand holding went a long way. It's not that different from when we send a host to show our table to the. Show the guests to their table. [00:07:57] But how do we do that in this case? They knew our names, they made small talk, they talked to us about our trip, walked us all the way back, and introduced us to the person at the front desk who was going to get us all checked in. As we were standing there, within a minute, somebody came out of nowhere with a couple glasses of champagne on a tray. Would you like some champagne? Or they offered lemonade in case we didn't want alcohol, which I thought was a really nice touch because not everybody drinks. My wife, for example, doesn't drink that much. [00:08:27] She did enjoy a glass of champagne when we arrived, but she wouldn't always. There's plenty of times where she would just prefer a glass of sparkling water or a glass of lemonade. [00:08:38] So I thought it was, again, a nice touch. It showed empathy for the guests that are showing up or for the kind of guests who might show up and check in. [00:08:47] It wasn't making brash assumptions that everybody here was to get wasted. [00:08:52] So as we're standing there, we're checking in, we're greeted with champagne, we're enjoying our champagne. By now, our bags have all been taken from us. They're on a trolley parked in a closet somewhere until we get all checked in. From there, they introduce us to the concierge who gives us a tour of the property, right? Who shows us, hey, this is where you're. These are the restaurants, these are the buffets for the morning and for the afternoon. This is the cigar lounge, the wine shop, the gift shop. These are the three pools. Here's the theater, here's the spa and the gym. [00:09:22] Here's where you can book excursions, or if you'd prefer, I can certainly just be the liaison there. Everything right? Within 15 minutes, we have been greeted with champagne, checked in, given a tour of the property, and then dropped off at our room where our bags were already on their way up. They were wa for us in the room. It was awesome, right? So that check in process was meant to go above and beyond, right? In the hotel industry, they talk about surprise and delight, right? How can we surprise and delight the guest? At every, at every corner, people are expecting a certain thing. So how can we go above and beyond? And again, it struck me that everything in the, about the experience was meant to put us at ease. Us, the guests. Right. Surprise and delight is part of that. Is meant to, to just tell us, to tell the guest, we got you, you don't have to worry about anything. So the check in process was flawless. We get up to the room. The room is beautiful. To be honest. It's nothing special. It's got a view looking out over the other property. The next hotel over. We didn't have a pool view, we didn't have a beach view, we didn't have a mountain view. I didn't care. We weren't spending much room in the, much time in the room anyway. But the room itself was beautiful. The way it was well appointed, the way we were shown around the room, the way we were introduced to our room. Right, These are the lights, this is the tv. This is how you find the, the English speaking programs on your tv. Because they had Spanish speaking, Russian, French, they had all these different. Because they cater to, to a global, to a global audience. So yeah, it was nice knowing. Okay, where are the, where are the English speaking channels? How can we watch Law and Order reruns late at night when we're tired and just, and just hanging around in our room? [00:11:05] We were introduced to our butler. Now, hey, this is a five star hotel, five star all inclusive. We were given a butler. A butler in this, in this case was really just sort of like a manager in charge of, in charge of like a wing of rooms, right? So that might have been 20 rooms or 30 rooms that he was in charge of. Anything you needed, you just called down, they would buzz him, he would show up at your door. He was always just sort of patrolling the hallways outside those rooms. Just like a, just like a waiter would sort of be in their station. If there's anything you need, you just sort of raise your hand and he would go get it for you. In this case, the butler would go get it for you. It was a nice touch that I wasn't expecting. I'd never had that before. Again, this is a whole new experience for us. [00:11:48] But it was nice, it was nice for the little touches. [00:11:52] Having somebody that was just there to sort of take care of any requests that you had. It was really cool. Right? Again, the idea behind this is that everything here was meant to put you at ease, to make sure that you didn't need anything. You didn't have to struggle or fight or wonder if you could do X, Y and Z. They were there to do it for you. Again, the analogy here is in our restaurants, this is what we do. [00:12:16] This is what we do or what we should be doing with our guests every single time they come in and dine, right? So the check in process, the room, the butler, the bar in the hotel Lobby was open 24 hours a day. There was a snack bar there that was open 24 hours a day. It was in room dining available 24 hours a day. Now, there was a whole buffet that was available every breakfast. There was a separate buffet that was open every day for lunch. And then there was a buffet that was open three nights for dinner, in addition to the five restaurants that were open for dinner to take care of you. And again, it was all included, which was awesome. Everything, everything was meant to put you at ease. That's the first point I want to make. And I want to again draw the parallels to what we do, right? What we are supposed to be doing is putting our guests at ease. When we say, hey, it's, you know, we don't want to say no to a guest, it's true. We want to find ways, even when we have to say no, to rephrase it and put it in a yes, no, I can't do that. But I could do this instead, right? [00:13:17] Everything, everything, everything about this experience was meant to put us at ease. [00:13:22] That's what we should be doing. Because that's what we are asking. We are not feeding people. We are asking people to let us take care of them for an hour, for two hours for dinner, saying, hey, don't worry about the setup and the cleanup. Don't worry about what you're going to eat. I got you, I got all of this covered. Now the next point I want to make about this is that everything was above and beyond. They went the extra mile time and time and again. And it was just obvious. Every, every single day, every, every. It seemed like every, every minute, like every every day, we were noticing something else, right? And this goes to the, the heart of hospitality. My definition for hospitality came from my very first boss when I first moved to New York City. He said hospitality is about exceeding the guest expectations. And I love that because hospitality, again in this guy's definition, and I've adopted this, it wasn't about, about taking care of people, right? We do take care of people. That is what we have to do. This is how I started this, this episode, right? Talking about how everything was meant to put us at ease. [00:14:23] But the real point of hospitality is to exceed your expectations, exceed the guest expectations. Now, this requires two things, and we've talked about this on previous episodes. Number one, you've got to be really clear about the brand promise, right? What sort of experience are you promising the guest? Right. Meaning what are their expectations coming into this? [00:14:43] And then once you understand what you've promised them, you understand what they're expecting, then you still have a responsibility to go above and beyond that. Now you don't have to. I just think that's the way that great restaurants succeed. We have to go above and beyond. Again, the things that went above and beyond already, right? The things that were meant to put me at ease were above and beyond. But here, here. So in addition to our butler just being there to take care of us and being really gracious and hospitable, and he was the one who was setting us up with our dinner reservations every night. There was one afternoon where our butler prepared a bubble bath for my wife as we were coming off of the beach. He came to us and said, you know, I took the liberty of preparing a bubble bath. I thought maybe the lady would like to relax for a little bit. We just thought that that's awesome. Like, that's really cool. I didn't know that we needed a bubble bath. I didn't know that my. It was even on my wife's radar. But this guy went out of his way. And you know what? Even if we had just drained the tub, the spirit of it was not lost on us, right? The fact that this guy, you know, was aware of where we were, right. Was obviously keeping tabs on us and prepared it for when. When we would be coming off of the beach. Because, psycho, the water was still hot when we got back to the room, so. And my wife went and she enjoyed it. It was awesome. Again, a little touch that we weren't expecting. So they went above and beyond, right? They exceeded our expectations. You know, I talked about this breakfast and lunch buffet, which I know all of these all inclusive resorts have, and I'm sure they're amazing at every single one, but we had never been to one, so it really, it really blew us away. And I got to tell you, even if we went back, it's still. It's still impressive. We kept taking all these pictures when we got there because, like, the bread setup, they had all different kinds of breads and rolls and, you know, I don't know, 18 or 20 different choices that were made every day. And they were obviously fresh every single day. They always had tons of fruit and they had all these, like, sliced meats and cheeses and on and on and on. Desserts yogurts, cereals. They had quiches. Then they had all kinds of like, you know, interesting sort of like Dominican, like pastries and all of that. And, you know, then they'd make you, you know, scrambled eggs or, you know, all kinds of stuff. The setup, not only was the, the variety amazing, but the setup itself, the way they arranged it, the way they presented it so that it was appealing not just to your appetite, but to the eye, right? They always say the eye eats first or the camera eats first. In this case, the camera did eat first. It was awesome. That setup never disappointed. And it rotated. It was different every day, which was also pretty cool. First day we arrived and we looked, it was all this like raw bar and shellfish and everything. We were like, this is crazy. They do this every day? No, they actually didn't do it every day. But the next day, all the raw bar was replaced with like a ceviche bar so we could make our own ceviche. There was a guy there that would put in whatever you wanted. We were like, that's super cool. Made sense. Here we are right down in Dominican Republic, you know, down that part of the world, Central and South America. [00:17:48] Ceviche is a big part of the culture. We were like, great. We had ceviche like every, like every other day. It was awesome, right? In addition to the buffets, there were also those five restaurants on property. We could eat at any one of them for dinner. We just had to make reservations. Here's the cool part, is that this hotel was actually part of a larger property. There were three hotels on property. And if you were sick of the restaurants in this hotel, you could easily go to one of the other hotels and, and get a reservation. They drive you over in a little golf cart. It was like a five minute ride. [00:18:19] And so there were other choices beyond the choices that we had, which, you know, we had talked to a couple who was staying there for six weeks. They were on their fourth week, they were retired. And this is what they do every summer. They spend six weeks down at this resort. And we were like, okay, yeah, like, I might get sick of these five restaurants after two, three, four weeks. Yeah, maybe I would want to branch out to one of the other hotels. That was nowhere in the advertisements. That was nowhere. It wasn't part of the pitch. It was just explained to us as we were there. And again, this is part of that thing of exceeding the guests expectations. Like, we could eat at any of these five restaurants or the buffet or any of the restaurants at any of the Other hotels on property. It was awesome, right? Awesome. Absolutely awesome. So when we talk about hospitality, we have to, you know, agree on a definition. You don't have to agree on my definition. I just think it's really good. What we have to do is take care of people. We have to put them at ease. We have to make sure they don't need anything. That I don't think is the definition of hospitality. That is just what we do that has to do with service, right? That people ask for something and we bring it to them, we make sure they know they're taken care of. Hospitality to me is about exceeding the guests expectations, going above and beyond every single time we can. Because that's the thing that makes an impression on a diner. Think back to your own experiences. When you've dined out, when you've gone on vacation, the things that you talk about, the things that make you stop and take a picture. The things that you remember are the things that exceeded your expectations. That surprised you. Right? Again, that idea. In hotels they always talk about surprise and delight. [00:20:01] So I want to use that to jump and talk really more deeply about the hospitality. Other ways that these people exceeded our expectations because the service staff was awesome, we were blown away. And I want to talk about not only what they did, but how those actions made us feel because that gets to the heart of what really, really struck me about this trip. We're going to get to that after a word from another one of our sponsors now. Today's episode of Restaurant Strategy is also brought to you by seven Shifts. Seven Shifts is a modern team management platform designed by restaurateurs for restaurateurs, effective team management is more important than ever to ensure profitability and restaurant success. Especially as restaurants start to open, back up and expand, expand their teams. Trusted by more than half a million restaurant professionals, seven Shifts gives you the tools you need to simplify scheduling, easily manage time and attendance, communicate with your team and actually retain your talent. Best of all, seven Shifts integrates with the POS and payroll systems you already use, turning your team into a competitive advantage for your business. Right now, Restaurant Strategy podcast listeners can get three three months absolutely free. To get started, visit 7shifts.com RestaurantStrategy that's the number 7s h I f t s.com RestaurantStrategy to get three months of industry leading team management software for free. As always, that link is in the show notes now. Yes, at this five star all inclusive resort, things were over the top. The accommodations of course were first class, right? The, the the food options, the. The pools were beautiful. The beach was crystal. The water was crystal clear. The white sand beach, the. Everything, right? But what really mattered was the hospitality. And really, that's what we're talking about this entire trip, hospitality. Not just how my trip was awesome, but how the things that happened on that trip sparked some ideas, sparked some ideas with what we should be doing at home, right? [00:22:13] That really talking about what hospitality is and how we can apply that even to just our restaurants on an everyday fashion, even if you feel like you've got nothing special, right, you run a pizza place, you run a sandwich shop, you just run a sushi joint, whatever it is, what you do is extraordinary. The food you prepare for people saves you people the effort, right? It gives them something more interesting than they could possibly get or make at home. What you do is really special. What all of us do as an industry is really special. [00:22:44] Our job is to take care of people, make sure they don't need anything, right? That we take care of everything for them and that we exceed their expectations, and that we do that with grace and humility. [00:22:56] And we find ways to make sure people know that they're special, that they're taken care of and that their business is appreciated. If there's anything over the last two and a half years since we were whacked with this pandemic, it's that that's really resonated with me, is that it's gotten us as an industry to really appreciate our guests again. And I think we were guilty of slipping the other way. I've said this on the podcast before, and one of the things that really started driving me crazy about a lot of restaurants, especially in New York City, obviously that's the market where I'm in, was this feeling of, you should be lucky to be here, you should be lucky to have gotten this reservation right? And I don't appreciate that as a guest and as a hospitality professional, that was getting really tired. [00:23:41] That was getting really tired to me, right? Yes. Even if we have a sought after reservation, even if we have a sought after restaurant, at the end of the day, we still need the guests in order to pay our bills. And there are enough failing restaurants, I've seen enough failing restaurants, I've been a part of enough failing restaurants to know that I don't take patronage for granted. So when we talk about hospitality, it is about making sure people know they are wanted here, their business is appreciated, that we are here to take care of everything for them, and we are going to go above and beyond we are going to exceed their expectations. [00:24:18] Right? This blew me away. There were things that blew me away. Little touches down there that I just don't. That I don't get here, that I don't get enough of here in the United States, certainly in my market here in the New York City tri state area. All right, so I'll give you an example. Very first day we got there again, we came in, we checked in, we got our whole tour. We got checked into our room, we went down to lunch because the lunch buffet was open. They said, come get lunch before you go to the pool or to the, to the beach. Which was great because we were starving after traveling all day. The lunch server we had on our very first first day proceeded to look for us every other day at lunch, right? He was always there working lunch, and he would look for us, seek us out. He remembered what we liked, that we liked sparkling water, which nobody else ever remembered that the entire trip. And he remembered what we liked to drink every single day. He greeted us with sparkling water and said. And reminded us what we had had yesterday. He said, do you want the same? It was awesome. Right? And so, and so I'm sure part of that is to make a connection. I'm sure part of that is to try to get a tip by the end of our trip because again, it was all inclusive. Nobody really tipped. What happened is that usually at the end of your trip, everybody sort of. You sort of go around and you give tips to the staff who really helped you. And so I'm sure part of that was in an effort to secure a tip at the end of the week or the end of our few days there. But at the end of the day, just simply in the moment while we were there, it made a real impact on us, right? Because this guy remembered us, remembered our names, remembered what we liked, took care of us every single day and sort of said to the other server who was in that station, no, no, I got them, don't worry about it. Right? And it was cool. For whatever other reasons, whatever other motives might have been behind it, it made an impression on us, put us at ease, made us feel appreciated and welcome, which again, is all the things we were just talking about. About, right? So as I said, this was an all inclusive resort. And so for the most part, everything was included, right? So if you wanted a cocktail, you just order that cocktail. If you wanted drinks, if you wanted some wine with dinner, they always had a white, a red, a rose and a sparkling wine available, right? So they were good they were basic, but they were, they were good. But then they had a wine list property wide. So if you wanted something special, something different, something, something Italian, something French, something, something more un. Unique, something higher end, you could certainly do that. They made that available to you. It was also a wine shop. So you could go and shop at the, the wine shop, bring that bottle of wine back to your room, or you could bring it to dinner, or you could simply order off the menu. It was all the, the same price, but we sort of said, no, no, it's all inclusive. And then one of the nights we were at a really special meal, we were like, oh, oh, this is really great. It was like a surf and turf restaurant. So we were getting lobster and steak and all this and we just thought, no, let's get a nice bottle of wine because we like good wine, we appreciate good wine. [00:27:05] We said, let's get something that we like, that we really want. So we ordered something French, we ordered something from. We ordered a Chateauneuf du Pape from the Rhone, which is something that we really, that we really like. It's a treat to us. And we thought this is just going to make us appreciate it, appreciate it more. Now, I liked this because it was a way to upsell the guest, not as a way to make more revenue, although it was, it was a key way that they made more revenue. But more importantly than that, it was a way of serving the guests who wanted to be served in that way. There are plenty of people, I'd say more than half of the people in that resort who don't care, who don't know enough about wine or care enough about wine to order something off of this special wine menu. But for those of us who did appreciate wine, did know about wine, it was there available to us, and yes, it was an additional cost. But you sort of set back and say, well, everything's been paid for. Everything in this trip was paid for months and months ago. We, we paid all up front. So the cool part about it from the merchant perspective is that they were sort of, it was like a new transaction for us. We weren't tallying the other expenses, you know, the cost of the room and the resort and all of that, because those were already paid for. Those were sunk costs. So really then they were able to just deal with like, well, what money are you going to spend now? And it was, it was great, it was appreciated. It was a win, win. And I'm talking about this all, all the time on this show, right, that serving and selling are Very, very closely connected. [00:28:26] And the diner wins and the restaurant wins when it's a win win. So these guys, this property made more money off of us because they sold us a bottle of wine, but they sold us a bottle of wine that we really loved, that we really appreciated. And so that struck me even in the moment as I was ordering it, as I knew I didn't have to spend any more money, but I simply chose to because it was going to make my experience better. And it's the very definition of win win. [00:28:54] That's the very definition for me of hospitality. Right? When they can exceed our expectations in a way that also makes them more money and makes us, gives us a better experience. [00:29:07] Same thing. Likewise, they also had a cigar lounge on the property that was extra. All the cigars were extra. They had a bunch of cigars. Spirits there you could choose from. But then they had some really high end spirits that you would pay extra for again, if you wanted to. If you chose to, you could do that again. The other thing, you know, the hospitality there, there was the swim up pool, which again, I've seen all the commercials, swim up pools look really cool. I was still not ready for it. It was awesome. You literally swim up to the pool, there are little bar stools under the water. You order your drink, you sit there and enjoy your drink while you're still in the pool. It was very refreshing, especially in very, very, very hot tropical afternoons. It was perfect. There were servers all over the pool area, all over the beach area. The bartenders really put on a show at the swim up. At the swim up pool. It wasn't just about serving us drinks, it was about entertaining us. They were being, they were energetic, they would sing, they were having a great time, right? That you could just tell they loved what they did. And that's the other thing that really struck me when I was down there. Time after time, I was met with people who really seemed to love what they did. Now, maybe they were just really, really good at faking it. But after 22 years in the industry, I think I've gotten pretty good at figuring out who's faking it and who's really being authentic. And it struck me, now the service industry is a huge part of the economy down there in the Dominican Republic. [00:30:32] But that seemed to be in their bones, right? Seemed to be a really big part of what they did. And I appreciated that from the guest standpoint, knowing that people were really enjoying to be there that really wanted to take care of us. And I know it's not always easy. And so this is the lesson, right, that what we do, right, we've gotten into this industry for one reason or another, but what we do is take care of people. And if we don't want to take care of people, that shows through, right? [00:31:01] People can tell if we don't want to be there, if it's just a job. So if we're going to be there. [00:31:06] We went to the effort of working in this industry and spending all this time in this industry of opening a place, of running our own place in the industry. Let's make sure we understand that we exist to take care of people, to get people what they want. We are not servants, we are servers, right? But we are here to serve people, to give them what they ask for, right? And if we do that with grace and humility, and we do that consistently, well, we exceed the guest expectations every single time. People are going to come back, they're going to come back time and again. They're going to tell their friends, we're going to grow our business organically, right? It was really, really cool to see. And it just, it was obvious that the people down there were not faking it, which I can't tell you how much I appreciated it. So that's what I wanted to talk about today. The three different areas that really struck me, right, Is that everything about that experience down there was meant to put us at ease. And it did. And time and time again, everybody went out of their way to say, no, no, we got you. We got this covered. That's what we have to do. It was about then exceeding the guests expectations, right? [00:32:09] Going above and beyond, doing things that surprised and delighted the guests. That's what got us talking about it. That's what got us taking pictures of things. That's what we're talking about here. I'm talking, I'm talking to all of you about it. That's what we remember. [00:32:21] And then the last thing was really about digging in and being authentically authentic, Being authentic servers, right? Wanting to take care of people, wanting to do the thing that would put us at ease, that would make sure that we were having a great time. And it blew me away because of, because of how authentic, authentic the people were down there, the service staff, everybody from the bartenders to the servers to the bussers and the, the housekeeping team to the butler to the front desk, everybody was there and had the same thing in mind. They were really there to take, to take care of you. Now, I'm sure some people were having a bad day. I'm sure some people had anxieties, things going on in their lives and all that, but it really never showed because it didn't affect us. Their job was to make sure that they took care of us, right? That was their job. Their job was to make sure we, we didn't need anything. And I can't tell you how much I appreciated that. And really, at the end of the day, that's what we're looking for in our own restaurants. That's what our guests are looking for. We always talk about this with our staff, right? Leave your problems at the door. Once you're on the floor, you're on the floor. And it really is, it really is so true. And I know that's easier said than done, but when it is done, it really, it really makes a difference. Listen, I appreciate you being here. Big thanks as always to the sponsors. I wanted to remind you again, if you are interested in learning more about my coaching programs, please set up a free 45 minute strategy session. Visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule that link is in the show notes. All of our sponsor links are in the show notes. These are incredible organizations building really great solutions specifically tailored towards the restaurant industry. [00:34:02] I hope you get a lot out of this episodes about the out of the sponsors and the offers that they have. And again, if you want to chat with me, go. Visit restaurantstrategypodcast.com schedule set up a call to talk with me. I'll get to know you, you'll get to know me. And we will go from there. Thanks guys and I will see you next time. [00:34:27] Sa. [00:34:53] Sam.

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