Here’s an interesting situation.
We work with a theatre restaurant that recently implemented a £20 per person deposit against bookings, only payable if you fail to show without 24 hours notice. Standard stuff.
It’s been fascinating to read the occasional outraged email from customers who don’t want to commit to a £20 no-show fee, but who have paid up to £190 for their theatre ticket, non-refundable and upfront.
Maybe restaurants are a little different. It’s our job to look after our guests, and perhaps we all just prefer to pretend the financial element of that relationship doesn’t exist; until the very last moment when the bill drops.
But ultimately if a small financial commitment puts you off booking, then that is just the system doing its job. How committed to attending can you really be?
And while some may argue “but what if something happens in the 24 hours before the booking which stops me attending and it’s not my fault”, I guess we’d argue that’s also true of your tickets for the theatre/tennis/football/your flights/etc etc etc.
And why should the restaurant fund your unexpected change of plans? Empty seats are a very real cost to us.
But restaurant operators have to accept our culpability here. One of the many ways in which our industry has changed in recent years is that our relationship with the customer has become more remote.
Through booking platforms and a reliance on automated emails and texts instead of talking on the phone, we have become a little more faceless to each other.
We embrace this technology to minimise our staff costs and admin load, and so we can’t really cry out that the customer doesn’t respect the human story behind the business…when many of us choose not even to have a phone line they can reach us on.
There’s no easy solution to this.
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How you interact with customers – your philosophy of that relationship – is key to your hospitality business. Being crystal clear on this will help to guide you through a multitude of decisions, and deliver a consistent customer experience.
Your armature – how you do everything – should absolutely include your position on the restaurant-customer relationship.
There isn’t one right position on the issue. There just needs to be a position. And the whole team needs to be 100% clear on it.
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