Nick Needs New Glasses - The Value of Communicating Consistently — or at All!
- A follow-up to “Hospitality’s Digital Disconnect”
If you missed last week’s article, check it out by clicking the link below. This article is a follow-up requested by readers.
Let’s start with a riddle: How many restaurant employees does it take to figure out that it’s your 65th birthday if you put that in the information box on OpenTable.
A: More than three. More than four, if shadows count.
As I wrote last week, I booked a birthday dinner at a steakhouse I’d visited several times over the years. Kirsten and I aren’t regulars exactly, but ten bookings through the same app should have told them something — like the fact that we existed.
When I booked, I ticked the birthday box and added a note: “It’s my 65th birthday.”
When we arrived, the hostess asked us to wait, then looked up from the stand and called across the room,
“Whose birthday is it?”
Charming. Nothing tells an introvert, “We’re glad you’re here,” like a pop quiz shouted at you from a podium.
The person who led us to our table didn’t wish me a happy birthday. She diligently followed the script so many follow in hospitality these days,
“Is this your first time here?”
In case you forgot, we’d booked through the app ten times before. That app knows us better than some of our cousins. (To be fair to my cousins, I haven’t seen some of them since 1973, but still.) It would’ve taken two seconds to check and less for her hostess colleague to mention the minor fact that we were celebrating the day I qualified for cheap bus tickets.
She seated us out on the patio — technically enclosed but with all the ambience of the bus stop on Springfield at Barlee. (I know this because that’s where I avail myself of the inexpensive ride to downtown.)
Our server was new. We forgave his minor mistakes, including asking how we’d like our steaks cooked — OK, that’s maybe more than a minor miss in a steakhouse, but we forgave him.
A second server floated by, announced, “I’m shadowing him,” and then vanished like a ghost intern in a training video. Never to be seen or heard from again.
Dinner was delicious, although no one recognized the fact that I was officially entering the age of senior citizenship. It would have been nice if they offered complimentary cake or even trauma counselling to help me accept my newfound fate.
After dinner, the app invited us to rate our visit. We gave it three stars. Not a complaint — more of a raised eyebrow. I also sent a polite but direct message to the restaurant through the app. Mentioned that we’d booked several times. That it was my 65th. That I’ve spent a career in hospitality and even written a book on customer service.
No reply.
Nothing.
So I tried again — this time to corporate. Still crickets.
No, that’s wrong.
Crickets are noisy.
Why do we say crickets when we mean The Keg customer service?
Not even an automated “Thank you for your feedback” or “Sorry we missed the mark.”
And here’s where I’ll say it clearly: the minimum response could be — a response.
Which brings me to Nick.
About Nick
Nick is the President of Keg Restaurants, Ltd, part of Recipe Unlimited. The company website says Nick is focused on “preserving our culture and ensuring a perfect guest experience every time.”
If that truly is his focus, we’d be penpals by now.
His LinkedIn page says something a little different: “Nick’s focus for The Keg remains on growing value for shareholders.”
The mixed messaging is fuzzy. A little blurry. One might say, “Nick needs glasses.”
Maybe Nick doesn’t wear glasses, but he does seem to wear two hats - one for Board meetings and one for the corporate website.
Nick, if you’re reading this — I just picked up a great pair of progressives at Costco. I’m happy to lend them to you. They might come in handy.
Because if you think your culture is one thing, but your guests experience another — and your team doesn’t reply when the guests speak up — you’ve got a bigger problem than patio seating.
Apps track our every movement. They know where we’ve been, how often we booked, how often we cancelled, how often we no-showed, and how much we spent.
They allow us to add information which should help hospitality businesses provide the personal service they all promise.
They elevate our expectations.
Unfortunately, when those expectations aren’t met, our experience slides faster than Wall Street did when the tariffs were announced.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Hospitality is about treating people like they matter. And when someone goes out of their way to give you feedback, even critical feedback, they’re giving you a chance to show them that they matter to you.
No steakhouse, no restaurant, and no hospitality business can afford to forget that.
The choice is yours. You can choose to care about your customers or you can choose to be The Keg - the restaurant that serves disappointment with a side of silence.
Stay safe, Always Care
It Doesn’t Have To Be Like This!
P.S.: In all fairness, and I say this with a very heavy hospitality heart, The Keg is not alone. Despite having all the tools to do just the opposite, hotels, restaurants, airlines and others have stripped empowerment from their employees.
Service is so standardized that people are turning their backs on the greatest career in the world. In a world of social media influencers who wants a job where you are required to repeatedly recite a script to every single person you meet.
“Is this your first time dining with us?” “How are the first few bites tasting?” “Got any plans for the rest of the evening?”
Those aren’t questions a caring, inquisitive server asks their guests. They’re the lines from hell some nitwit in a corporate office dreamt up and put in a manual in the name of service consistency.
I like consistency when I’m buying two cans of paint hoping they will be the same colour, but when I hear the same lines over and over from every server I meet, it’s boring and depressing and I feel sorry for the poor person reciting them. It’s equally boring and depressing for them.
What if we discovered that hospitality workers are people? What if we discovered that they have personalities and humour and that they care about other people? What if they chose to work in hospitality because they want to show that care, show their personalities and show their humour?
We wrote an entire book on exceptional service experiences we have had around the world. The biggest surprise? Our best service memories weren’t from five-star hotels and Michelin-star restaurants, they were from places where we met people who genuinely cared.
Hi! I’m Paul.
I was born, raised, and currently live in Canada. After high school, I embarked on a gap year in Europe. It lasted four decades. I went to university in Norway and started my hotel career in the basement of a five-star hotel in Oslo. The manager who hired me told me I was too old, too educated, and had too many opinions to be a security guard. He also told me that the only other person who applied for the job didn’t want it.
Thirty years later, I left that same company. It had grown from a small regional hotel chain with twenty-something hotels in Scandinavia to become a large, multi-brand hotel group with over a thousand hotels in almost one hundred countries.
Along the way, I moved from Norway to Denmark to Belgium. Before I left, the company awarded me their highest individual honour for leadership, and security professional peers selected me as the world’s most influential corporate security executive.
I’m a hospitality professional. I’m a security professional. If you ask, I will tell you that security was my job, and hospitality was my business.
Today, I’m an educator and a consultant passionate about hotels, hospitality, and keeping people safe during their travels.
In addition to the Always Care Community, I also write for Risk Resiliency’s Keep Travel Safe. If safe, secure hospitality, hotels, and travel are important to you, please subscribe to KTS!
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory, and countless creative liberties, the Always Care Community is a newsletter of how life has made me an emigrant, an immigrant, and gifted me experiences I never dreamed possible.
Thanks for reading. Your support is my motivation and I’m genuinely grateful that you’re here. Please share, subscribe, and connect with me.
I agree 100%. Also, businesses could have far more customers if they followed up when people unsubscribe to their newsletters etc. How do they know what to improve on when they don't ask or don't care?
Being a performative professional is not a good thing in the long run. People will notice and will call it out if appropriate.