Do restaurant leaders mislead?

Call me old-fashioned, but when, as a marketing bloke, I’m asked what matters to people, I’ve found the best way to find out is to ask them.

You can blame my education for this heretical view, but my tutors at university shared it and spent a lot of time drumming market research techniques and analyses into my adolescent head.

So, when I worked in product management for Ski yoghurt and McVities , my routine haven for insights took the form of research.

When I went into catering as marketing director (big promotion!) of GrandMet’s 400 – strong steakhouse chain, I was genuinely shocked to discover that research had NEVER been undertaken.

My colleagues, to a man (yes, they were all men) were multi-decade, veterans of the hospitality business, and assured me that their grip on diner motivation was borderline infallible.

As covers had been falling by about 10% for each of the preceding five years, I had my doubts about the quasi – Papal conviction.

The sad truth was that all the strategies employed by the board were the products of their own experiences, instincts and prejudices.

As an exercise, on one occasion, I asked each of the seven directors the solution they would apply to stop the sales rot.

I received seven different answers, some of which were transparently political digs at their colleagues!

So imagine how my curiosity was piqued when I read in February’s Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine about a report called “Hospitality Business Leaders Survey 2023.“

Was it possible after 30 years, that the industry’s top dogs had accumulated customer-based insights into what matters to guests? Afraid not…

I won’t bore you with the whole report – I’ll leave you to do that all of your own.

Beyond the rather meaningless catch-all top scorer “quality of experience“ they listed the following;

% saying “matters”.  ranking.    my ranking

Value for money                            73.                        1.                          5

Food quality.                                   69.                        2.                           4

Value for experience.                    67.                        3.                          N/A

Price.                                                 64.                        4.                          6

Service                                              52.                        5                            2

Choice of food                               43.                        6.                          N/A

Ambience.                                        42.                        7.                          3

Cleanliness.                                    0.                          0.                          1

It won’t surprise you that the “business leaders“ were mostly male, which is why “cleanliness“, the feature consistently number one in diner research does not even get a mention.

You see, women perceive this as paramount and judge the hygiene of the dining area and toilets as a Herald for the condition of kitchen cleanliness. These tend to be blind spots for men.

Whereas women are not always the billpayer, they are pretty unanimously the people who decide where to eat. So low levels of hygiene mean low levels of return visits.

Service, number five in the Leaders’ list is consistently number two in my research. and food quality, is their number two, my number four.

In my experience, a below par meal will be forgiven, but poor service never will .

Just check out your local restaurants on TripAdvisor. You’ll see this time and time again.

This is why so much of my time spent in catering has been focused on service enhancement, and why I wrote a book on the subject called “Magic-how you can deliver unforgettable customer service.“

“Ambience” usually turns up at number three in my research, not number seven as in their list. This was an odd finding given that so much of the article devoted itself to emphasising the importance of creating dynamic and unforgettable atmospheres in restaurants.

The emphasis on “value for money/price“ shown by its presence in three of their list doubtless refers to the current impact of labour and energy price increases and the cost of living crisis’ impact on disposable incomes.

However, I might even go far is saying that they’ve been “spooked“ by media headlines which have clouded their objectivity and escalated the “value“ attribute beyond rational levels.

In the quest to improve value for money, they will probably turn to mechanisms to reduce cost and if this involves cutting labour hours there will be an impact on service quality.

Such an impact will be unavoidable unless they employ scientific measures to balance guest demand with staff availability, as we do in our “Team Planning Algorithms”.

Back of the 1980s, they had 10% inflation, 10% unemployment, the three-day week, war in the Falklands, nursing strikes and much more.

Yet cleanliness and service were the two key issues then and I believe the same to be true today.

So, if you want a clear picture of what matters to guests, don’t ask the “Business Leaders” - just asked the man on the Clapham omnibus, he’ll keep you on the right track.