Untitled episode

hello everybody hello Jamie and Marcus here welcome to test of time love hustle and passion in the restaurant business our story our stories will love passion and hustle in our restaurant 20 years in the making 2003 absolutely so yeah I've been an exciting roller coaster in 2013. 20 years of ups and downs and we are bringing our experience to you yep I like that we're bringing

our experience to you we've written a couple of books you've written a couple books I have my first book out yep right everyone still has to eat yeah how one restaurant had its best year ever during the pandemic um that is a great book you have a book out yep another book in there too and some recipe contributions all that kind of stuff so you can

before we jump into this reasons your business still has no customers you can go get this book for free right now at 50mistakes.com 1506.com you'll get this book for free um the other book uh everyone's last scene is available on Amazon or wherever or through our website you'll get there as well excellent so today um we're gonna talk about some some experiences and some conversations that

we've had and some phone calls that we've gotten um over the past uh uh a couple years okay dealing with stupid customers dealing with people or I don't know I shouldn't say it I shouldn't say sorry I shouldn't say stupid people that just need to be hurt yeah I I would just say they need to be heard in some way or another yeah yeah would you

agree yeah okay you always say we could write a book on all these interactions yet with people because then people call they don't ask the right questions they don't know how to some people don't even know how to like make a reservation they don't they haven't and someone have no idea how to go out and eat right um and we're dealing with these people on a

regular basis and sometimes we're at the mercy of them going online and leaving bad reviews yes and it's just it's listen people if you're watching this as a consumer um please call a restaurant leave an email for a restaurant don't go online and leave a bad review unless you've made an effort to fix the problem while you're at the restaurant once you've left or before you

write a review yeah um because if the management then does not respond to you doesn't care something different Fusion attitude then then you can go then you should be able to go share yours but a lot of people walk into places as critics and they want to be critics and they come in and they're like they just like want to just go on back they they

come into you know those yelpers that want to just let people know that they're better than you and go online and write these these just reviews I think Sarah critic everybody thinks they know more about food than than and now you see me and you do they used to be when I was a young Apprentice you know um I thought that you know I would go

to places that this is terrible you don't even know how to scramble an egg here this is in the Hat and that's not what this industry is about that's not what going out to eat is about going out to eat is to go you're gonna relax and enjoy um and have a have an experience um good or bad because you learn from both of those right

if you think you're gonna go out and be a Critic then start a business do what Zagat did start a form don't go out as just an independent consumer and you think you're going to start bashing people um you're gonna have bad experiences you're definitely have bad experiences we've given bad experiences your restaurant sets out in the morning to say the next table that comes in

I am just gonna piss them off and give them a bad experience no restaurant does that it just happens because you are relying upon a lot of different moving pieces to make everybody's experience 100 now some restaurants are unfortunately don't prep themselves don't train their team don't care as much where they're going to provide more bad experiences than the restaurants that are providing great experiences so

now dealing with these people a couple of rules we've come up with or my my main role that I've come up with first of all you have to answer all bad reviews yes online but my first rule of answering a bad review is waiting 24 hours it's in 24 hours it doesn't mean as much as it does was when I first read it I've been able

to sleep the night on it I've been able to process it and I've been able to even say to myself well maybe they really did have a bad bad experience maybe I could learn something bad experience maybe your bad reviews are taken very personally and maybe there is something that I can learn that you can learn right and then I can say you know what the

more I read this these people are just idiots and I'm going to respond back to them let them know that they are idiots which so so one of our rules is the customer is not always right we're talking to this with the wine broker yesterday about this the customer is not always right but whose job is to tell it's the owner's job to tell the guests

that they're not correct not yourself or not not your staff exactly and I think that's a distinction that you have to teach your team um and we teach our team that we go to bat for him we 100 percent will get your back if you've done the right thing because guests are not always right but I think a guest just expects the restaurant to bow down

to get the team member in trouble or put the team member you know under this a lot under the you know put the thing under the bus and just say I didn't get this I didn't get that this is terrible this this and this and and all of a sudden the restaurant owner is bowing down to them the staff's Bowing down to them and that's not

that's not how it works with us right we legitimately do things wrong and we're sorry we apologize but if you're going to be we're human you know you're human unreasonable saying quite a bit I say that we're we're human like you know tell us about the phone call you just got oh gosh so I got a phone call first off before I've read that we have

a we have a very descriptive menu because descriptions sell you should always have listed where stuff comes from and it's from a farm the Farm's name how it's cooked is it grilled sauteed um you know roasted wood oven there's all things that you can do to describe your through to upsell it and make it nice and make your menu look really nice as opposed to salmon

they know what sauce comes with it exactly um but talk about this phone call you guys you first of all at the bar you said I heard you say to the person let me put you on speakerphone so my husband can hear you hear this it was so ridiculous um from the moment he called um that I just had to put it on speakerphone because I

I needed to to almost to validate that I wasn't crazy that this person was um just reaching for something to complain about so um so also what I wanted to tell you was you know not only is our menu very descriptive but we have 400 um Spirits behind the bar and our wine list it's a binder and you know we're giving out um you know we're

giving out the binder which has our specials in it and our wines and everything we give out our menu and we give out a beer uh beers by by the um can and and on draft so those are the three menus that people get when they sit down at the restaurant so anyway so this gentleman calls and he says let me just start off he goes

can I speak to a manager or an owner and I said I'm the owner you know my name is Jamie what can I help you with and he started off um saying how wonderful of an experience he had the food was fabulous the staff was was great everything was great and I just kept sitting there like okay what wasn't great right because you don't call a

restaurant most times people don't call a restaurant to tell you how great everything is and it would be nice to have some of those calls all the time so I was like okay um oh that's wonderful you know I said to him that's great um thank you so much and he goes but and I said okay what could be the butt so your this the service

was good the food was good so what is the butt so the butt was that there are our menu there's three menus and they are way too lengthy um and we're basically it was kind of like we're pushing um and we shouldn't be doing that it's way too confusing there's way too much and then he went into end when we got our check the check presenter

had all of these pamphlets in it and it was just too much and I just felt like it was just too much so how do you respond to that so my response was very simple people come into our restaurant for all different reasons they come in because they have allergies to food they come in because they care where their food is coming from they come in

because they want um an independently owned Spirit um they come in because they want to learn something I said I don't know if you know our goal here at the restaurant but our goal is to educate and to educate our guests to educate our staff and to put more people and be transparent and I said we want to be transparent as well because we want people

to know where things are coming from and he goes oh right what did he say he goes oh well if that's what you're doing yeah that's what you're doing he goes but you should put water on the table but you should put water on the table so he just wanted to complain about something else but then he said well you should put water on the table

you know you have water and you have a non-alcoholic list or cocktails um you should just put water bottles on the table and I said well you know I I quickly was thinking like why we don't um we do in the summertime when it's a little warmer um and hot outside we were doing water bottles on the table but certification is and it's listed on the

bottom of our menu and it talks about not over giving water right to conserve water and um so basically it tells us in you know the green certification that people should ask for water and we shouldn't even serve water um unless somebody has a lot of water should be served only on requests you shouldn't leave extra bottles you shouldn't write so that's actually on our menu

like there's 85 million gallons of water I think it's wasted in restaurants a year United States and do do our part to conserve water water is available on requests and we'll combine and you know and whatever that's what's on our menu so he was like well well what he says if any City he doesn't drink alcohol he doesn't drink alcohol yeah it was kind of like

okay now I said do you really understand what we're doing at the restaurant I mean I was very I was trying not to laugh because I thought it was really funny I thought it was a joke um at first I really thought it was a joke like you had a great meal everything was great and this is resonating with you so much that you had to

call and take time out of your day just don't read don't read the whole menu right and that's what I said to him I said it's not like we're being pleased we don't drink don't read the warmest pushing anything on him we didn't push the check presenter stuff and pull every pamphlet out he chose to look at every pamphlet or he chose to look at all

the stuff I mean we do lots of things like plant trees for um any bottle any drinks that we sell that are organic we you know because we're giving back we have a um you know we travel a lot lot and people love to travel with us so we have a travel brochure you know in our check presenter we have a business card which you know

and we have one and we'll win a free birthday and win a free birthday get a free birthday inside and um get a free birthday entree and you can fill out and leave your email but these are all choices you have you don't have to look at them you don't have to do any of that stuff right like you didn't have to look at everything just

read what you want and Order what you want you know I mean that was so I was really um I was really taken aback by the phone call and it really affected me in terms of well number one I I question well do we have too much stuff on right that we're giving to the table do people's request things so here's the thing that that that

I learned from this phone call because the previous episode we talked about what we can learn from things like this here's what I learned our staff has to be descriptive with the handout menus to hand somebody three menus and one of them is a binder doesn't make sense and I'm very careful with this and I but maybe this person maybe the staff member who handed them

this menu did not explain anything to them here's our food menu here's our food menu I open it up for me here's our food menu there you go here's today's specials are in front of the wine list first page and I always say we also have our Spirits in here we have a huge bar we do all independent spirits and then I say here is our

beer beer menu so I'm very explicit about what what I give out so now I can see if somebody sat down for the first time and they were handed all these three things and they're like I don't drink like what am I looking for in here and this is another menu That's alcohol and put it so I can see maybe how that could have gotten him

a little upset saying well I'm reading all this stuff and I really can't use all this stuff right so maybe maybe a little bit maybe we need to appreciate it more um so guess what we're going to be doing on staff training this week we're going to probably talk about it but we always can learn and I said to him I said thank you so much

for bringing this to our attention you know we appreciate it and he like he hung up before I could even like finish my he did not want me to come back with what I came back with and he goes well I guess I don't really understand what you're doing there or something um so you know we're not for everybody I mean and that's that's the other

thing that so now something for everybody this happened one other time like 10 years ago the person from down the street in Wurtsboro had made a complaint to us and said your word menus was way too wordy you're just way too weird and I don't want to read all this so you're being lazy do not want to read it or what but it's so crucial for

our marketing if people understand what we're doing for our mission that's that's our mission right that's our mission that's what it is we're making claims we're making some very bold claims on our website and on our menu and I was awarded in 2014 or something top five food activists making a difference by one Green Planet which was right next to Michael pollen in the food babe

I was sitting there Gabriel cousins was on the list Dr Gabriel cousins I was on this list of five people some of the most influential food people in the country so I feel like I'm under more scrutiny than any other restaurant tour out there because all those other people on that list didn't own restaurants and that's kind of why I put you on speakerphone so that

you could um you know jump in a little bit as well but you know when you're kind of put on the spot you know you can only say so much and and you know I didn't want him to think I was too wordy you know on the phone as well so I just tried to keep it you know nice and short and sweet for him but

you know there's a lot of experiences out there like that um and that is that is one that you know was just very interesting and it just happened so I guess the point of this whole thing is don't be discouraged by people saying stuff to you like this because I know what our passion is I know what we love to do and that's all I can

try to do in what what I do every day in the restaurant business so so yeah so I'm not worried No but we did learn something from it there's a takeaway from it absolutely so yeah and um really folks don't get upset about stupid things just smile and move on right because that person just didn't understand what we were doing yeah and we're not for everybody

no you know now now if I walk into a restaurant that says we're GMO free which has happened to us in Miami a few years ago and I'm looking at all the ingredients they're using that I know GMOs are in then I'm going to say something we're like you have a sign here that says you're GMO for we got kicked out of this restaurant they wouldn't

service anymore because they couldn't back up what they claimed they could not back up what they claimed and I said you're lying like you're making this big GMO free statement and I'm looking at the desserts I'm looking at this I'm looking you have GMOs everywhere here I said let me see your cooking oil no you can't you no I said come on let me show them

take if you're going to make that claim and put GMO free show me what oil you're cooking with right now and you're fryer in this net and they wouldn't and they got upset and they kicked us out they wouldn't service anymore you know what and that right there I think is a crime I don't think it is crime it is a crime not having your menu

labeled properly and you're advertising touting something that you're not even doing not you're telling something you're not even doing it that is not okay because I know enough to question you right but 99 don't they just see natural GMO free whatever wild grass-fed we're doing the right thing and we're using the products that are more expensive and they're getting away with just having that up so

if you are making that claim on anywhere on your if you're making that claim you better be able to back it up and be transparent about it because and that was the other thing I said to him We're transparent about it right be transparent if you are claiming you're doing something then show what you're doing yep exactly do the right thing exactly are you ready all

right thanks for tuning in thank you for watching tests of time five zero 50mistakes.com go get your free book that rolls you into um restaurantgrowthsecretsuniversity.com which has a lot of free great content on there uh we love to help people so if you want us to pop up we can coach you consult you we can help a number of different ways uh one way that we

shine is we help you train your staff better so you have a dream team dream team is where it's at and that's what helps you become a restaurant tour that has more time more money better quality family time just it helps you live your best life your best life that's when you're saying all week this is your best life I've been living my best life since

my birthday since my 50th so um but as a restaurant tour your dream business this is your dream business it is so go make it make it what it's supposed to be exactly thank you for um tuning in it is Jamie and Marcus and uh we will catch everybody soon