Last year I made a reservation for two at your restaurant, requesting a window seat because it was…read morea special occasion. I made the reservation way in advance to accommodate this request. When we arrived, the hostess told us that she could not seat us at a window table on a Saturday night because you were too busy. I asked her how other people then were sitting at window table; she did not have a response. I told her it was a special occasion and asked her to check the reservation. She said yes, the request was there, but they cannot accommodate. I asked if we could wait in the bar for a window table and she said on a Saturday night it's just too busy. Needless to say I was frustrated. I asked her if there was anything she could do and she said no.
I owned a "white linen" restaurant in San Diego for 13 years. If I would've ever dreamt of treating ANY customer the way your employee treated me, not only would they never come back, they probably would've started yelling. Since it was truly a special occasion, and there are not very many high-end restaurants in the area, I took matters into my own hands and spoke with the manager, who was finally able to work something out for us. It was only because of the good service we had and the outstanding meal that we would've ever considered coming back. But I'm sure as you are well aware, when one moves from a mecca of fine dining experiences to a culinary wasteland like Illinois, the options are pretty dismal. So again earlier this month we thought we would try to make a reservation for a window table at your restaurant for the same special occasion. Guess what happened when we arrived? And this was on a slow Wednesday night, which is exactly why we picked it! The hostess saw the reservation, saw the request for a window table for a special occasion, and proceeded to see us at a table that was through the bar, to the right and at the very end next to a concrete wall; my husband and I looked at each other in disbelief. Again, we played the same game of can we sit in the bar and wait where we were again told no. Apparently one of the hostesses is above the others and then asked me what was wrong, for which I explained the whole scenario again. I told this individual that I did NOT want to have to ask for the manager like I did the last time, but would not hesitate to do so if something was not done. There was a group huddle and whispering behind hands right in front of us! We were then led down to a table for six in the room by the windows. We could see that the hostesses or whoever all of these girls were up at the front desk had really no idea what to do in this situation. But they knew enough when they heard the word manager that they didn't want to get in trouble and then made it happen for us. The lightbulb went off. Apparently, when you train your employees, specifically hostesses, you are not teaching them that without customers, you have no business, therefore no money. It's a very simple theory. You could see that they were worried that they were going to get in "trouble". They weren't worried about the customer, who was really supposed to come first. They weren't told that they were in the people business first and that the food was the mechanism. I felt bad for these young girls because, contrary to the way we practiced business, they were not empowered in any way by their training to facilitate customers needs. Leading with fear is not a good business model.
We had an outstanding server and an excellent meal. We did not let what happened to us AGAIN ruin our evening. We tipped her very well because she performed exactly as someone in the hospitality industry should and accommodated us supremely.
I see that you're spending quite a bit of money on upgrades or repairs to your exterior. If I may do so, I might suggest that some of that money be spent on training your employees to remember what I stated quite simply above: if you don't remember to keep the customer number one, and you don't empower your employees to do so, you will have NO CUSTOMERS AND NO MONEY.
