Tales of the Front of the House

[SobaAddict70]

If you've ever worked "front of the house" (FOH), this is your thread to tell it like it is to those of us who've never done it. Share your ups and your downs. Waitstaff, hosts and hostesses, sommeliers -- have at it!

Famous last words: how hard can it be?

I was never good at Concentration-type games.

Now's your chance to remind me why.

[Gastro888]

Hard like dried out brown sugar.

One thing about working the BOH is that you don't have to directly interact with customers who were nasty to you. But on the flip side, it was always nice when you had pleasant customers who were friendly to you.

[lia]

Dealing with customers trying to get over is always a difficult and sticky situation. It's one thing if they have a genuine beef or complaint, but sometimes the line between a real problem and a quest for free food is a very shaky one. But sometimes it's really obvious.

I posted awhile ago in a Gift Certificate (I think) thread about how we started logging the cards sent out for complaints, and after a few weeks discovered that a large percentage were going to the same building. I used to wonder if there was a flyer or something going about reading, "hey! complain to ***** Restaurant and they'll automatically send you a $25 gift card!"

A month or so ago, I got a call on a Tuesday afternoon from a person who claimed to be unhappy with Sat night service. I forget most of the call, but then he said that when the waiter "brung" his steak it wasn't cooked right but he was so aggravated that he ate it anyway. ok. "So can I come in tonight and get my steak back?" Sir, why didn't you speak to a manager at the time? "Like I said, when the waiter brung my steak I was already angry."

The caller had no receipt (so we could look up the check), no idea where he was sitting, who his server was, nor how much his check was (Porterhouse steaks run about $60.)

SO....let me get this straight. You had a problem with your food on Saturday night, brought it to NO staff member's attention, and think you can call on tuesday and get a free steak? I'm sorry no. He got huffy and said he'd make a reso. elsewhere, I said fine, thank you very much and hung up. What I WANTED to say was 'good luck trying to scam someone else.'

Now, in hindsight, I can't help but wonder if perhaps I showed a little bit of prejudice because of his very intelligent use of the word "brung."

nah.

[SobaAddict70]

I imagine anyone who's been waitstaff have all these nifty memory tricks they use to determine who ordered what.

It's probably easier the less seatings you have. I can't imagine how it must be in a place that seats 300, for instance.

[raxelita]

I imagine anyone who's been waitstaff have all these nifty memory tricks they use to determine who ordered what.

It helps to look at the person in the eye (engage, that is) while they're speaking to you so you can tag them in your mind: "She is the Mixed Greens SOS/ Pork Chop med-well compote-on-side no-starch woman (NUT ALLERGY)." And most people like eye contact anyway.

If you are focused and not daydreaming (or drunk), it's not really so hard to remember a series of say, four or five things. Servers will usually go "in back" immediately to write down a table's order, so they can keep track of it all night. Most restaurants I've worked don't have a problem with you covertly sketching symbols at a table of 3+.

One of my main problems in the business, is, of course attitude from customers. Behavior that would not be acted out or tolerated in any other situation is totally acceptable in a restaurant. I think it's the one place for a person to feel in control of their lives and they take it out of hand...Just a little pop-psychology I'm working on. It also doesn't help that the FOH/customer relationship these days is automatically tense, often to the fault of the industry. Many customers lately are on-guard about being fleeced on cocktails, supplements, and specials or worried that they're being hurried along to make way for the next table, that the FOH becomes their adversary, their barrier to having an enjoyable evening.

[touaregsand]

One of my main problems in the business, is, of course attitude from customers. Behavior that would not be acted out or tolerated in any other situation is totally acceptable in a restaurant.

Couldn't agree more.

I recall in another thread someone asking if a restaurant has the right to refuse service. Um...even whores pick their Johns. I thought it was one of the wackiest questions ever.

WTF is it with some male customers trying to cop a feel or feeling that a woman who works FOH must positively respond to flirting?

[raxelita]

Ah yes, I was ass-fondled by a passing man but last week while talking to another table. I couldn't slip away quickly enough to i.d. him. And bartending not long ago I was asked how much I cost, point blank...

[Pan]

My God! What do you do in situations like that? I think someone who asks that question should be thrown out of a bar or restaurant on his ass.

[raxelita]

The maitre' d offered to throw him out for me, but I declined, not wanting to cause a scene. Looking back, it would have been better to have him booted to set an example.

[lia]

WTF is it with some male customers trying to cop a feel or feeling that a woman who works FOH must positively respond to flirting?

We have a regular customer, police detective or sergeant or something important. Usually a really nice guy....until he asked a young blonde pretty server if she ever did porn films. She was fairly incensed at the question, the GM called the cop dude out on it...cop dude insisted he didn't mean anything OFFENSIVE about it (can you say "my ass?") and the GM said he'd be pretty pissed too if someone said that to him.

So, a male waiter was dispatched to wait on that table for the rest of the meal. That was that.

Until TWO different customers subsequently asked the same waitress if she did porn. So now we figure that she just resembles a porn star somewhere.....we've asked all the guys (ha) to research it so we can find out who she is, but no one's been successful.

[Rebel Rose]

we've asked all the guys (ha) to research it so we can find out who she is,  but no one's been successful.

Well of course not; then they'd have to give up the search.

[TheFoodTutor]

I imagine anyone who's been waitstaff have all these nifty memory tricks they use to determine who ordered what.

This seems an odd question to me. Am I the only person who works in a place that has a rigid system for order taking, where all orders are written down with the exact same abbreviations, and using a pivot point system?

Pivot point works by starting with the first person to your left from the greeting point of the table, and that is position #1. Then you go clockwise around the table to number positions. Depending on the place where you work, you either do or don't count empty chairs as a seat.

Then, we all use the same abbreviations, exactly the same way, so that if I need to do something else, I can actually hand my order card to a person at the POS and let him ring it for me. Here's a typical order:

H-Rib W, Pot-E no A, >

That's a Hawaiian Ribeye, Well done, baked potato, loaded no bacon. The little crook at the end tells me it's a Lady, so you hit the Lady key, so ladies can be served first.

Simple, huh?

[KatieLoeb]

It's Mother's Day. Oh Joy. The Absolute Worst Day of the Restaurant Year. And I'm off to go deal with the families that hate each other, rarely eat out so they have no manners to begin with, and air their dysfunctional laundry in public for all the world to see (I picked up the check at Mom's Birthday! It's your turn!). I like it better at Thanksgiving when they're being just as obnoxious, but at least they keep it in the privacy of their own homes.

[lia]

And how did your Mother's Day go KatieLoeb? Mine was hell, just got home and made a very tall Pina Colada. I never drink at home after work.

I understand that people who aren't in the restaurant biz might not realize that if they want to order in dinner for 12 on MD, that maybe they should do it ahead of time, but do they have to be so nasty when we tell them that it'll be two hours for delivery?

And it's not due to any incompetence on the part of the kitchen or the staff, there's just really only so much product the kitchen can put out within a certain amount of time.

ugh, i know i'm gonna have "Diner Dreams" tonight.

[KatieLoeb]

And how did your Mother's Day go KatieLoeb?    Mine was hell,  just got home and made a very tall Pina Colada.  I never drink at home after work.

I understand that people who aren't in the restaurant biz might not realize that if they want to order in dinner for 12 on MD,  that maybe they should do it ahead of time,  but do they have to be so nasty when we tell them that it'll be two hours for delivery?

And it's not due to any incompetence on the part of the kitchen or the staff,  there's just really only so much product the kitchen can put out within a certain amount of time.

ugh,  i know i'm gonna have "Diner Dreams" tonight.

←

Not as bad as anticipated, but nonetheless a drag. It was pretty slow at some points but there were predictably lots of large groups and of course one group of 10 people that came late and held the last waitress, busboy and myself hostage for far longer than was necessary. I did manage to get a bit of other work done though during the slow spots, so that was an upside. I had a glass of wine at work while awaiting the last of the cleanup. I'm too tired/lazy to go all the way down to the kitchen to fetch another so I'm off to bed.

Sorry to hear about your nasty take out customers. Sheesh! Who the heck calls for take out for/on Mother's Day??

[Pan]

I called for delivery tonight, but it was from my local branch of Grand Sichuan, and the wait was if anything a little less than average.

[TheFoodTutor]

I mentioned in another thread the fact that I work for a small-ish chain that is so efficient that elite universities in this country actually use it as a business model, for teaching the best way to run this sort of restaurant, when those higher schools of learning actually have a course dealing with restaurant and hospitality management. Because there are so many people interested in the way restaurants work here, as guests and as potential entrepreneurs, I wanted to share a good deal of this information with you, for free, so I decided to start this thread. Hopefully, I won't be wasting too much of your time.

This chain has about 50 restaurants, only one of which has had to close, and that was because of a strangely unexpected loss of lease on the property there, and not due to any sort of lack of business. Every aspect of the business is scripted, to the letter, while at the same time, changes are made very, very often, in order to make things work even better.

I mentioned already that all of our servers are never allowed to walk past an ungreeted table, without greeting it. There is no asking another server, behind the scenes, to help you catch that greet, so that someone ends up deep in the weeds, looking for a server who can help out. And unlike at other restaurants, all of this behavior is mandatory, drilled into the skull so that a person would simply not behave otherwise. Even when the formula changes, the whole service staff takes it in stride, adapts, adopts and improves.

So here we go at the inside look: When I circulate about the dining room, I instantly recognize an ungreeted table by seeing a manila card, lines up, on the table. I instantly stop, smile broadly, and ask what the people would like to drink. As I'm doing this, I either sweep up the card and stick it into my server book, if the table is in my section, or I make a bend in the card and stand it up on end, so that all the other servers can see that this particular task has been done. Patrons almost never, ever notice this detail, though I've seen one ungreeted lady actually pick up the card and tear it to shreds, absent-mindedly. I kind of wanted to smack her across the face and ask her if she didn't want to be greeted and have her order taken, when I saw it, but then I simply remembered myself and grabbed another card from the hostess stand.

And that's the first part of how it works. More details later.

[TheFoodTutor]

though I've seen one ungreeted lady actually pick up the card and tear it to shreds, absent-mindedly. I kind of wanted to smack her across the face and ask her if she didn't want to be greeted and have her order taken, when I saw it, but then I simply remembered myself and grabbed another card from the hostess stand. 

Sorry, that was rude of me. Nobody would ever do this to a guest, where I work, as far as I know. I just get strange thoughts in my head, sometimes.

The system just works, incredibly well, pretty much all of the time, but I have a really strange sense of humor.

[vladimir]

I am very interested in this topic. I dreaming about opening a restaurant at some point. For now though whenever I walk into any restaurant I start thinking about how they could improve ordering, flow, customer service etc.

Anyway, hope this thread will become pupular.

[jsolomon]

Please continue. You have certainly piqued my interest!

[srhcb]

RE: This chain has about 50 restaurants, only one of which has had to close, and that was because of a strangely unexpected loss of lease on the property

Lesson #1: A restaurant (or any business) is only as sound as it's lease. Hire the best realty/lease lawyer available.

SB (dealing with an unusual restaurant lease situation right now)

[Chris Amirault]

I've just merged the newer FOH thread that FoodTutor started into this older one -- which gives me an opportunity to ask:

Are time limits still being used out in the corporate food world? I remember during my time at Friendly's that there were a bunch of numbers written on all of our pencils and pads that corresoponded to how many minutes or seconds should elapse from seating to greeting, drinks, order, etc.

[TheFoodTutor]

Are time limits still being used out in the corporate food world? I remember during my time at Friendly's that there were a bunch of numbers written on all of our pencils and pads that corresoponded to how many minutes or seconds should elapse from seating to greeting, drinks, order, etc.

←

Holy cow! Are you kidding?

Of course they are. In the course of my lifetime, the frequency with which people eat in restaurants has way more than doubled, and it seems to have increased even more than that, given that I live in a much larger and busier city than where I grew up. The result of this is that people are much, much less patient with service than they have been in the past. To be seated at a table, and then wait an entire 60 seconds or more to be greeted seems like an eternity. Or to me it does, anyway.

I think in terms of restaurant time, almost all of the time. I know from experience as a manager and server that time becomes inflated really quickly, the longer a guest is waiting for something to happen. It's not uncommon to hear a guest say, "I've been waiting 30 minutes for my entree," and then to look at the time-stamped ticket, which shows that it's only been 12 minutes.

But 10 minutes is actually the longest time we consider acceptable, for anything, in the place I'm talking about. If I know someone wants to eat at a more liesurely pace, I have to make a mental note to slow the process down, because we're just geared to be that fast, all the time.

The restaurant is in a busy district, with many offices, so even if you've only got an hour for lunch, and you arrive at noon, and the restaurant is already on a wait (which it will be), you can wait to be seated, sit, order, eat and pay your bill, and still be back to your office in time. And that's part of why we're always busy, which is why we're always on a wait at noon. It's circular, that way.

Oh, for the rest of the question: Greet where I work is timed at immediately - less than 30 seconds. First round (drinks to the table) is less than 2 minutes. Appetizer is lightning-quick, and usually way less than 5 minutes. All of the actions are timed out when I do the recertification, all in print, with boxes checked off.

And we get tested by surprise "secret shoppers," on top of that. Whew!

[TheFoodTutor]

RE: This chain has about 50 restaurants, only one of which has had to close, and that was because of a strangely unexpected loss of lease on the property

Lesson #1: A restaurant (or any business) is only as sound as it's lease.  Hire the best realty/lease lawyer available.

SB (dealing with an unusual restaurant lease situation right now) 

←

I hadn't really even thought about it that much, before you mentioned it, but that's an incredibly important point.

Our restaurant market in this city is incredibly volatile. If I were to open a restaurant here, I could only wish and hope that it would still be open 5 years later, since I think that would be an incredible accomplishment. Many of my restauranteur friends have seen their restaurants close in the last year, which has been incredibly sad and frightening to some of us in the business. But to close a restaurant due to loss of lease, rather than slow business, would probably have me smacking my head for years to come, saying, "Details, details! Why didn't I think of that?"

The restaurant that closed was location number 1, and the one where I work is location number 2, which has been open since 1979. A guest asked me how long the place had been open the other day, and I told him this, plus I gave the added information that there's one employee who has been there for the entire time. The guest asked me which one he was, and I told him that it was the person who was washing dishes at that very moment. He cocked his head and said, "You mean it's that hard to move up in this company?"

Pretty funny, to me anyway, since I know the fellow in question, and he's just a really terrific guy who does his job well. The company has rewarded him, handsomely, for his loyalty and hard work, on every anniversary. Every day, when he leaves the restaurant to catch the bus home, all the servers stand up and wave at him. He's our rockstar. He even causes us to to our jobs better, or do things more according to "spec," because he's part of the glue that makes it all work.

[TheFoodTutor]

So this leads me to another, very efficient procedure, when it comes to managing the front of the house, and actually the whole house. The procedure surrounding the dishwasher. It sounds really pedestrian, if you think of dishwashing as a mundane activity that doesn't pay very well, but it is very, very important, if you plan on having a very busy restaurant.

Most restaurants tend to have front of the house employees who bus dishes off of tables, and they are all, individually, responsible for scraping those dishes when they get to the dishwasher, and this leads to long line-ups of servers (or bussers, back-servers, whatever) waiting to be able to scrape their dishes, while standing there with heavy piles of plates in their arms. We don't do this.

I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't think of this idea first, because it seems so simple, but I'm pretty sure someone thought of this while I was still too young to even hold a restaurant job.

When a server comes up to the dish area, loaded with dishes, he or she just shouts, "Drop and go!" This means that the person ahead can leave dishes behind, to be scraped, and the person in back agrees to scrape them, so that the other employee can go run food, greet tables, take out drinks or do whatever needs to be done. The person in front asks, "What do you need?" which gives the second person an opportunity to ask for 2 iced teas to be dropped at table 5, or to pass off a credit card that needs to be swiped, or anything.

This saves an incredibly unbelievable amount of time, trust me. It's so counter-intuitive to think of helping out other employees who only make their living off of tips by sharing jobs this way, because most restaurants have an "every man for himself" mentality, but it really helps us all to make more money, and so it always works.

And the next part of "Hobart" procedure - our dishwashing machine is named "Hobart," after the company that makes it - is to bring clean china to the line cooks. Some companies hire an extra person to work in the dish pit and constantly back up china to the line, but we make our servers do it, as a standard. And the line cooks are accustomed to our regular presence on the cooking line, because we are always bringing them more plates to serve food. The practice saves labor dollars, and makes things more efficient.

Many of the cooks like to shout out my name in Spanish when they see me. That's probably not part of corporate procedure. More likely, they just think I'm pretty cute, or something.