Cold technology and the personal touch

You’ve successfully built up to ten restaurants and made great use of technology to monitor your operations. But you were once an active restaurateur, and you sense you’re missing something. What could it be?

If I hear one more lecture about data mining I’m going to burn my old tape of The Seven Dwarfs. Yeah, it’s nice that everybody has a POS that costs as much as a Maserati. Yeah, I’m pleased that I know the zip code of the lady that bought the boysenberry shake at 11:17. And I am frothing — frothing! — with excitement over the prospect of comparing the sales velocity of the canned chipotles on our new cheeseburger to our square-foot costs, so I can see if the inventory space is worth it. Aren’t you?

After years of exhorting people to do this kind of stuff, I’m beginning to feel like a grouchy old restaurant guy when I hear people treating it like the Holy Grail. Information streams are all very nice, but the restaurant business is medieval warfare, and you go into battle armored with knowledge, skill, endurance and cynicism. That’s a lot of weight to carry; judge the depth of those streams before you wade across.

Mind you, I’m not renouncing data. I actually think it’s nice to have clean, clear numbers that give you a semblance of an idea of how your business is doing. In the proper format, they allow you to sit back and watch the flow of meals and traffic and money as if you were out there walking the floor.

And I’m also not going to yell at you if you aren’t walking the floor — that only goes so far. I’ve watched friends and acquaintances open their first place and do a gangbuster business as they spent every waking moment taking care of details. Then they’d do the same with a second, then flame out somewhere during the third because they were hands-on people and you can only cut yourself in so many pieces before you forget where you left a limb or two. Or a head. If you have the temperament for it, you can do a lot more floor-walking virtually than you can in shoes.

So let’s say you’re reconciled to all this and you’ve successfully built up to ten units and you’re navigating the data streams just fine, but you were a floor-walker once and you can’t help but feel that you’re missing something. Well, duh. Remember those people you used to talk to every day, what were they called?

Customers — that was it.

Any decent operator who moves away from direct customer contact — no matter how necessary that move may be — will go through the day feeling like their shirt is one size too small. It’s the equivalent of being the executive chef of a huge hotel: You have the title and the cloth buttons, and you’re paid handsomely to sit in an office and not cook. Thus does fate balance the teeter-totter: success on one side, irony on the other.

But there is a big danger in losing direct contact, and most of us are uncomfortably aware of it. So we compensate with comment cards and tableside rituals: greet with big smile. Server ask twice if everything OK. Manager slide by once, ask same question. Check one time more if too much stuff left on plate. Offer free dessert coupon if fill out comment card. Thank with big smile, bye-bye.

You’ll note that the basics sound somewhat unevolved. That’s because these primitive rituals, while comforting and necessary, frequently stop at the walls of the restaurant. Unless you have somehow plugged them into your data stream, they provide you with no information. You are soaring through the ether of bits and bytes, and your employees are stuck grunting around the campfire.

Let’s say there’s a problem with the chicken gumbo on table 14. It’s not a severe one; it falls in the category of “I thought I’d try it and I don’t really like it but it’s okay, you don’t need to send it back.” Well, step two of the ritual has served its purpose — a problem has been identified. Most restaurants have a series of further steps to follow at this point so the server isn’t left twisting in the wind, or giving away four meals to compensate. The worst response is: Well, tough luck, hope you order something you like next time. Now pay up. Better (and more common) is to write off the charge for the gumbo and offer something in its stead. Sometimes, of course, that won’t work, because everyone else is almost done and the diner doesn’t want to make the others wait. So there are other alternatives, which you all know about, and which ain’t my point.

If I’m the boss hog, I want to know about this as I sit at my computer alternating between political blogs, sales reports and Minesweeper. If the meal was comp’d, that’ll show up, with a coded explanation. The incident might get a report in the logbook, but then what?

Two such complaints on the same night would have sent the manager to the kitchen to see if the new guy knows that you can’t boil file powder: If this was the problem, it’s solved. And if it gets reported, I see my system operating properly. But where does that leave my relationship with the customer?

This is where clever multi-unit operations are extending electronic tentacles through cyberspace. A goodly number now have online comment cards, which are nice and neat to fill out and hard to lose. These are handy for the aforementioned hog as well — the multiple-choice questions plug right in to charts and graphs so you can watch virtual satisfaction levels.

The best part of those forms, though, is the blank space for real, live customer opinions. They don’t fit neatly on a visual data stream, and every one is likely to be slightly different, but they’ve got words and flavor and emotion — almost like being there. They also give you a chance for a personal response, and to offer to buy somebody a drink next time they come in … and isn’t that what you were missing all this time?