Why is it that when you and your date are show up at the door, you are greeted by someone with a a below-average Restaurant IQ? “Table for 2?” Good start. Then, you and your date get seated at a table amongst a throng of boisterous people celebrating something. Great, your one night out a week, a chance to make a favourable impression on your date and now you have as much intimacy as you would have had at the football game.
You should ask to move; but (of course) you don’t. You don’t want to upset anyone. Why? You’re paying. We think we’re not supposed to do things like that in a restaurant. We also think that the hostess has seated us where she has “on purpose”…… she has a grand plan. Does she? Definitely not. She has a Restaurant IQ below 60 because she wasn’t trained.
Explanation:
If the person at the door has been trained and has an understanding of the business, then he or she will be able to quickly assess who is in front of them and make the decision to seat the customer where the customer would be most comfortable.
The owner has to realize that the host or hostess is the director of the ‘show’ and therefore needs to have a complete understanding of the restaurant, its employees, its concept and its ‘flow’. Instead they see the host position as one perfectly suited to the person who can do nothing else. They can’t serve. They can’t tend bar. They won’t bus because they were hired as a server and that is below them.
Then why isn’t the manager or the owner at the door? It is the command post for crying out loud. Is the pilot at the back of the plane? Get out of your office and get to the front line. Oh yah you might have to talk to customers and you don’t want to do that EVER, do you?
