Top Of The Table

Caroline Barden

Nov. 1, 2001

Hey kids! I've made my way out of moving hell to get my computer up and running. To say things have been stressful would be the understatement of the millennium. I just had lasagna and Halloween candy for breakfast. Someone stop me, please!

Okay, back to work. Can we talk..take out. Saturday night, 6pm, Game 1 of the World Series. We anticipated a lot of to-go orders, people wanted to be in front of the TV with their plates of penne ala vodka and chicken parm. Fine, we can accept that. What never ceases to amaze me is when they place orders for fifty, sixty, ninety dollars and tip zipideedoodah! Are people really so cheap that they get food to go to beat the tip? I'm beginning to think so.

Speaking of cheap, and don't we love to dish the dirt about that, we have an affluent accountant who gets his lunch to go almost every day from my restaurant. Heart healthy, no butter, no salt, extra lemon, we know it by heart. Here's the rub, when he picks up his lunch, 2-3 dollar tip, which is cool. When his office manager picks it up for him, same deal. The secretary however, leaves us a goose egg. What's up with that? Our theory is that she pockets the couple of extra bucks meant for us, multiply that by a few times a week, 52 weeks a year and oh baby you're in the money now! Really, how petty can people be?

Lunch people are really the worst. Why don't you just brownbag it for petes sake! Last week this moron calls us three times, asks 7 zillion questions, we have to fax over the new lunch menu because she has the old one and wants to pay those prices. Places an order for 7 lunches, demands they be ready at a certain time, asks the total and leaves EXACT change. Now, if everyone kicked in just an extra dollar, well what do you know, there would be a nice tip for the poor slob stuck with doing all this work. We like most of our customers, but she is one who we stick the new kids with.

So what do you do? The owners really need to add an automatic surcharge on take out, not only to cover the cost of wrapping things up, but also so we don't do all this work for nothing. We finally instituted a mandatory 18% gratuity on parties of 6 or more. I had been harping on this for a while, but it wasn't until one of my co-workers got stiffed on a big party that my boss finally saw the light. With to go orders that surcharge is necessary because we don't get a chance to upsell and that's where the profit is anyway. Bless those kind souls who do throw us a couple of bucks, may your orders always be perfect.

Speaking of upselling, in my pile of newspaper articles that I need to write columns about is a piece from an author who recently spent sometime down under in Australia. Her whole spiel was about how refreshing it was to go to a country where the servers didn't try to sell you food, drinks or desserts that you don't really want. Well, how the heck are we supposed to make a living deary? People don't know what to order half the time and it's our job to tell them! Starting next column, I will do a series of articles based on my seminars, which maintain that we are salespeople, not just servers. In other words, where we get these poor schmucks to buy everything we tell them to and they love every minute of it! Great, something to look forward to!

Thanks to everyone who came through for the families of the restaurant workers at Windows on the World. God Bless you all.

Are you a manager who is a little frustrated with your staff? Okay very frustrated! Why not try calling in a consultant? We are those quirky people who can focus on what needs fixing and then proceed to make you look really good to your boss. We have ways of helping your staff work better together so they make more money for themselves and for your establishment. They also tell us things they wouldn’t dare tell you! For a free consultation you can contact me at this web site, I would be happy to troubleshoot with you. Let’s all raise the standards in this industry together!

Caroline Barden Restaurant Consultant.