7th step for a successful restaurant / pub – Personality
In the previous steps, we have already talked about the importance of the relationship with your customers. Professionals often compare the relationship between companies and their customers to that of a couple. This is no coincidence, it is because people are emotional beings, regardless of what we are talking about.
Think back to when you first met someone, first drawing conclusions based on their appearance, then once you started talking and after deeper conversations you successfully formed an image of them. You did it based on their personality.
In this perspective, a restaurant or pub is very similar to a person, you get to know it step by step. You draw your first conclusions when you look around the restaurant, you already have a first impression based on it’s design. Then the waiter takes your order. You draw further conclusions based on the waiter’s appearance and speech. But it doesn’t end there, you draw further conclusions from the time it takes to wait for your order, then the way it is served, how it looks, then how it tastes, and so on. It even matters how the waiter says goodbye to you. Based on this, you as a customer can draw conclusions about the restaurant or pub and decide never to return, or to bring your friends and family as well. It makes a difference, doesn’t it?
Your restaurant or pub has many characteristics, such as how it looks, how the waiters dresses, how quickly orders are served, how they look on the plate, how the waiter communicates with the guests, etc. All these characteristics together make up the personality of your restaurant or pub. You have to pay attention to every detail, because everything counts. The biggest mistake restaurant owners can make is to focus only on the menu.
The key is to think about your restaurant as a person, what kind of person do you want to represent? For example, how would that person dress, old fashioned or modern, how would that person talk with others (“hi”, “greetings”, “good morning sir”), etc.
The ways your restaurant or pub have an impact on each of your customer’s senses:
- Sight: When they look around at your business.
- Hearing: When your customer talks with your employees.
- Smelling & Tasting: While they are consuming their orders.
- Touching: When they are interacting with the furniture. (are your chairs comfortable?)
Let us suggest two tips that can drastically improve the quality of your restaurant or pub:
- Hire a good designer (or design company) to design the look and feel of your restaurant or pub. Tell them what kind of personality you want to project, they know better than you how to achieve it. For example, they know what colors to use to achieve the right effect on your customers.
- Sign your waiters up for training to learn how to deal with different types of customers. This is more then essential, everybody would like to interact with happy and well trained waiters. A good waiter can attract more and more customers, while a bad one can drive away existing customers as well.
We hope you enjoyed this step, see you next time.
