To understand how minutiae can destroy your business, you must understand why people have a good time and why they don’t. The answer is not as obvious as it may appear, but simple. You know from personal experience that when you are having a bad day, everything is a disaster. Conversely, when you feel wonderful the whole world just works more easily for you. The events of the day don’t change, but their impact changes the situation significantly!
It works the same way in businesses. If you enter a business that has a depressing environment, it affects your mood and starts to bring you down. Minor events take on more significance. You are less trusting of people. You are more likely to find fault and complain. You are harder to please. Because owners and managers are unaware of the importance of the atmosphere they create, many businesses foster an environment that almost guarantees their customers cannot have a pleasant experience. Just think of the mood you were in the last time you had to go to a typical bank! It is an operation that is focused on their own needs rather than on the needs of their customers. In doing so, they create an expectation of general inefficiency and lack of concern that places their clientele in a frame of mind that they are not being valued.
Fortunately, restaurants have a natural advantage over many other businesses because people go to restaurants expecting to have a good time, and they usually arrive in a pleasant mood. A happy state of mind predisposes them to enjoy themselves, and people around them, to have a good time. When guests are in good moods, they are more forgiving, more generous, spend more, and their food tastes better. Simple but not easy to achieve on a daily basis.
Here’s is where minutiae become momentous.
People entering your restaurant and having to wait more than 30 seconds to be acknowledge.
No smiling face on arrival saying “good evening, welcome to…”.
Being seated at a dirty table.
Servers not knowing the menu.
The size and content of this list can be overwhelming. Remember the price of success in our industry is attention to the small details, and you can not afford to dismiss anything as too trivial.
