Friday, October 26, 2007

Customers (food stupid) no offense

The hidden secrets of most chain restaurants is pre made food. Why you may ask? Its easy, uniform and quicker to prepare. Its the belief that most employees don't have enough experience to make the product in house and it would take to much training to teach them. It is also the belief that the customer can't tell the difference and its true. Most people wouldn't know the difference between products made in house and pre fabricated unless your a foodservice professional.
Take for instance simple fried food items like poppers, mozzerella sticks, mac and cheese balls. These items have been served in tons of restaurants but could you tell the difference if they told you it was homemade?
An even bigger question is does it matter? Well it does to me because if your going to serve me pre fabricated food I should just stay home take it out of the box and make it myself. To most people it probably dosn't because they can't tell the difference anyway or they don't have the time to cook for themselves so they don't care.
I'll leave you with this thought. If your going to pay the prices in a high end restaurant to have a nice meal shouldn't it be homemade?

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Management and staff turnover

If your a regular customer of a particular restaurant then you've probably seen a lot of new faces on a regular basis because the staff changes all the time. You may ask why does this happen? The only answer I have is that restaurant work his hard. This is probably the main reason most people encounter bad dining experiences. People simply don't want to work these days.
Most restaurants are always hiring because people quit just as fast as they are hired. This creates a constant on going training of employees. Employees are rushed through training when restaurants are short staffed and this causes a negative effect on the customers. Then when you finally get them trained they quit and the whole process starts all over agian. In my experiences you have to go through ten or so new hires to get one that will work hard and stay for at least a year or more.
Another issue is management turnover. There is always another restaurant out there looking to hire managers and make them a better offer. This causes management teams to constantly change in restaurants. This creates a negative/positive effect on the staff and customers because with new management comes change which can be good or bad. The problem with this is that management teams can change as fast as the rest of the staff.
In my own experience the company I work for I have been with a little over a year and I have worked in four different locations because of turnover. The restaurant industry has the highest turnover rate out of all other industrys. This is just anothe reason why a resturant that gives great service one week may give really bad service the next.