Milk the Customer
I was recently out and about in the lovely city of Gothenburg, Sweden. My wife and I were showing an Aussie friend around our new town.
Inevitably it came to the point in the day when our thoughts turned to where we can have a feed and a few drinks. We found a place called the Avalon Hotel, which is a boutique style hotel in the heart of the city centre. It has quite a large outside seating area, which is perfect on a warm (Swedish style) Summer’s day. So we stroll in, looking for a table, with the full intention of parking ourselves there for the afternoon. There were no staff to be seen, or at least no staff that wanted to see us, so I found a waiter and asked if we could just sit down and have a few drinks. After giving me a quizzical look, one which I assumed was because I spoke English, she said, ‘yeah no problem’. So we found a nice table and ordered some drinks from the bar (despite everyone around us getting table service - I assumed that they don’t do table service for just ‘drinkers’, but it would have been nice to have been told).
So we sat back, willing to overlook the fact that not one employee had even tried to make us feel welcome and concentrate on the fact that it was a beautiful day, with no other commitments and we could relax and catch up like old times. I ordered a second drink at the bar, at which time I decided to find out what food options there were available. The response was another quizzical look, with a semi ‘rolled eye’ as the new waiter strolled off to find me a menu. By this time I was getting pretty frustrated and I didn’t want to put any more money into the place, so we decided to move on after finishing our drinks.
We came across a cool South American inspired restaurant/bar called Tranquilo, not more than 50 metres from the Avalon. From the moment we walked in we were made to feel welcome. A waiter was at our table within two minutes of us sitting down, and our first drinks had arrived within five. I could finally relax. This place and our waiter obviously knew what they were doing. Our obvious next question was, ‘can we have look at a menu please?’ At which point it was delivered quickly - and before 15 minutes had passed we were happily feeding our faces with some delicious tasting plates of South American cuisine, while drinking cold beer, followed by some nice French (for the special occasion) and some cracking cocktails to finish off. Our waiter was sharp, and always there before we started looking. We asked for the bill after about four hours of indulgence and had eventually spent about $300 AUD on the afternoon. This is $300 dollars that the Avalon Hotel could have had in their bank account, but didn’t.
I find it hard to fathom a restaurant/bar that appears to not give a shit about their customers - and I understand that the staff were most probably students and actually did not give a shit, but I wonder if the owner is doing anything to inspire his/her staff to actually care for the customer - or whether the owner actually tries to find staff that will pursue his vision for the place, or just takes whoever comes along. The issue here is not how much money we spent - but the fact that we were made to feel like we were better off leaving the Avalon and taking our custom somewhere else.
To me it is pretty simple - a customer who walks into your establishment and asks for a table, is ultimately there to spend money (some of which can find it’s way into your pocket in the form of tips). How much they spend depends on you as a waiter or manager or owner. It would not have been hard for the waiter at the Avalon to get us to sit there all day and spend the money we did spend elsewhere. In fact, after walking around town all day, we were practically throwing ourselves at them (evidenced by ordering a second drink) - a good waiter will pick up on this and see the desperation in the customers eye!
Customers want to spend money! So why not let them?
