
In which our famished protagonists search in vain for a table in Greenville, SC.
Don’t worry, this post isn’t just going to be a restaurant review. Far from it. But before we get into the practical advice, I have to give you a little background.
First, let me set things up for you. Last Saturday – the day before Mothers’ Day – the Blanchard clan and I decided to head down to downtown Greenville (SC) for a little lunch. For those of you who aren’t familiar with my adoptive home, Greenville has a gorgeous little downtown area lined with trees, beautiful parks, and a ton of pretty delicious restaurants. Gorgeous weather in Greenville on a perfect Saturday afternoon means that everyone in the county converges on downtown and pours cash into all of its restaurants’ tills. Needless to say, when we finally found a parking spot at 2pm (hoping to arrive well past the lunch peak), restaurants were still full. This is pretty important and you will see why in a minute.
The first restaurant we went to was the Overlook Grill. Outdoor seating right by the Reedy River and Greenville’s famous suspension bridge, great sandwiches for just $7 or $8, and very clutch little atmosphere, especially with the chihuahuas in tow. Verdict: At 2pm, the wait was still 45 minutes and the kitchen closed at 3pm. No-go.
Next stop: The Lazy Goat (another favorite) for lunch. Outdoor seating, killer food, right on the river. We get there and their entrance is swamped with what looks like two bus-loads of sorority girls. No-go again.
Third up: Smoke On The River. Again, overflowing with patrons and a 45 minute wait. Not good. I start considering the Subway down the street, but we try a few more places first. Unfortunately, they are all completely booked. Every restaurant in Downtown Greenville is filled with patrons. Overflowing, even, just like the sidewalks.
But then I see this new place called Ford’s Oyster House, occupying the space where an old cigar and wine bar used to be. (One of the GSATC and @swagclub’s former haunts, in fact.) It’s so new the sign isn’t even up yet, but the menu is in the window and it looks promising: fried oyster po’boys, etc. Good enough. We step in to inquire about a table.
In which a restaurant actually manages to get almost everything wrong.
I will spare you the long version of the narrative and simply list all of the things Ford’s Oyster House did wrong. Here are our observations:
By the front door stood a small lectern, like the ones usually manned by a host or hostess. This lectern, we noted, was stacked with menus and a floor plan of the restaurant. Strangely, there was no host or hostess manning this post, but cued by its… being there, we stood by it and waited for someone to perhaps return from a lavatory adventure and lead us, with adequate velocity, to a table.
Much to our dismay, no host or hostess ever materialized. For several minutes, we stood there, politely waiting for someone to notice us. Several waiters walked by. Not one of them made eye contact with us. In fact, I felt as if they purposely avoided indicating that they had noticed us at all. Too much work, perhaps, to take care of new customers in the middle of their having to serve lunch.
What was most strange about this, we noticed, was that on its opening day, with sidewalks teeming with hungry Greenvillians and every restaurant within a mile radius turning people away, this restaurant was almost entirely empty. I counted 9 tables in the front dining room and 21 tables in the back dining room. I found out later that 5 tables rounded out the seating map outside, on the patio, formerly the outdoor cigar smoking area. Of the 30 tables inside the restaurant, only 4 were occupied. The other 26 were glaringly vacant.
Even more puzzling were the 3 or 4 waiters walking about as if too busy to notice us, the additional 2 bar tenders mechanically wiping down glasses at the empty bar, and the restaurant manager (I assume), engaged in the back with what may have been a fifth waiter, visibly puzzled by a malfunctioning computer. Some quick arithmetic put the balance of restaurant staff to customer thus: 8 employees “serving” a total of 14 patrons, most of whom were rather elderly, and evidently casual chewers requiring very little attention.
We waited a little while longer, and upon being ignored some more, walked out.
Here comes the single positive thing done by Ford’s Oyster House that day: One of the waiters (I think his name was Chris) rushed after us and invited us back in. He apologized for the lack of attention we had suffered and gave us our choice of tables (oh, what to do with 26 options?). We investigated the patio, but… instead of tables and chairs, the restaurant’s management has seen fit to place there… picnic tables. The kinds with bolted-on benches, like the ones you see at rest stops on the side of the highway. Not exactly what one would expect from a $12-$15 sandwich gig on Main Street in Greenville. Maybe adequate for a greasy BBQ place off Wade Hampton Boulevard, but not here. At any rate, we turned around and found a table inside, which was somewhat of a disappointment as we had journeyed to Main Street to enjoy an outdoor lunch. By this time, the consumption of food had gained priority over our environment, and indoor seating was an improvement from no seating at all. We sat down and began considering the menu.
I will spare you the ensuing clusterfuck of drink orders, but I do have to mention the menu incident.
Where the oyster bar seems incapable of serving anything of value on its menu.
Now, I have watched enough episodes of Gordon Ramsay‘s Kitchen Disasters (the UK ones, not the US ones), to know a few do’s and don’ts of restaurant management. One of them is this: On your opening day, make sure your menu reflects what you can actually serve. In other words, go to market the day before and stock your kitchen with the necessary ingredients. If your shipment of frozen food hasn’t been delivered, find an alternate source locally.
This isn’t rocket science.
Yet, Chris, our courageous waiter, sheepishly informed us that many of the entrees of the menu were not available. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he could have saved us several minutes (and some degree of confusion) had he simply told us what was actually available instead of listing out what wasn’t. More perplexing than this is that for some bizarre reason, oysters were available as a dish, but not in po’boy sandwich form, although fried catfish and fried shrimp were available in po-boy form. The logic of this escaped me: Evidently, Ford’s had oysters and the capacity to fry them. Ford’s also had the bread and other makings of a po’boy sandwich. However, the kitchen seemed at a loss when it came to bringing the two together. In other words, I could have either the light bulb or the lamp, but not both. Evidently, no one there was qualified to connect the two in proper fashion.
Hungry, aggravated and finding myself lacking the patience required to pursue such a line of inquiry to its end, I settled for a fried catfish po’boy. The progeny went with its fried shrimp cousin.
While Gordon Ramsay would have probably sent the kitchen staff home and shut down the restaurant in a fit of rage, we simply endured.
Where forty minutes go by in an empty restaurant before what passes for food finally reaches our table.
Our food arrived forty minutes hence, and not a minute too soon, given our state of extreme hunger. We had to ask for drink refills, as the staff, all seven or eight of them, seemed to be too busy with the remaining 3 tables in the front to pay us the slightest bit of attention. During this time, I observed how the GM continued to stress out and obsess over the malfunctioning computer, drawing his staff around him as if fueled by their sympathetic confusion.
This individual spent the entire forty minutes during which our food was being prepared entertaining us with sometimes wild gesticulations, endless complaints to unseen hosts, and a curious compulsive habit of rushing to the back of the restaurant as if to put out a fire, then rushing back to his machine only to yell at his employees for having broken it again while he was away. This was the extent of this personage’s role and function in the restaurant, as far as we could tell. Unfortunate, as his energies might have been spent otherwise – starting with managing the front and bringing customers inside to purchase food. We will revisit this peculiar gentleman again in a few moments, as he holds the key to this entire puzzle.
About our food, I will say only this: I suspect that the fries came from an Ore-Ida package. I recognized the taste and texture, which after hundreds of purchases is rather familiar to me. -1. The bread was… I have no idea what that bread was, but the individual who purchased it and made the po’boys with it has obviously no notion at all of what kind of bread to use to manufacture that particular type of sandwich. It was of brick-like density, somewhat baguette-like in appearance, and at least a day old, which does not fare well for these types of breads. Hurled at a small animal, a fist-sized roll made of this oven-baked dough could have easily crushed the unfortunate creature, or at least severely maimed it. This is what we were made to chew and ingest, and what evidently passed as… “bread.” -2. As for the fried shrimp and catfish, I tend to know the difference between pre-packaged, pre-battered frozen fodder, and the real thing. What we bit into was neither fresh nor prepared on the premises. It appeared to us merely thawed and deep fried there, if not simply thrown into a microwave oven. -10.
We had been duped. -30.
For the record:
1. An oyster bar should have, at the very least, fresh oysters in its kitchen, especially if the oyster bar across the street does. If in fact Fords’ had fresh oysters in its kitchen, let me suggest a series of basic equations: Fresh oysters + a fryer = fried oysters. Fried oysters + bread and some sauce = a po’boy. Voila. It isn’t exactly complicated. Greenville is known for its food, and if a restaurant is to have a chance at making it more than a few months, cutting corners like this is not a good place to start.
2. Any head chef who takes a position with an oyster bar should have at least eaten a po’boy sandwich in New Orleans once in his life. Generally speaking, having merely read up about po’boys on Wikipedia does not qualify one to be head chef at an establishment that aggressively pushes fried oyster fares. As an aside, a restaurant GM, in hiring a head chef, should probably ask him to make a po’boy sandwich for him as a test of his skill, if only once. I would consider this part of an adequate interview.
3. A restaurant GM whose restaurant happens to be an oyster bar should probably care about the quality of the food that comes out of his kitchen at least as much as his chef. This requires caring about the quality and reputation of his establishment, however, which is a quality sometimes lacking in this type of individual. We will address this again promptly.
But the real question we found ourselves confronted by was this: Aside from the clear lack of expertise, care or professionalism in the kitchen, how had it taken 40 minutes for pre-battered frozen shrimp and catfish to hit the fryer basket (or microwave oven) and make it to our table, when the restaurant was completely empty? This, we agreed, was a mystery never to be solved.
Where we finally exit the premises and are blown off by the gentleman we assume to be the general manager.
To add to the injury of having been duped into a meal composed of cheap frozen ingredients and the indignation of having to endure almost an hour of abysmal service (in spite of our poor waiter’s gallant efforts), we were met on our way out by the further insult of the aloof manager making eye contact with us as we departed, but saying nothing. (This was the same man, mind you, who had spent the entire time we were at our table acting as if a pre-seasoned cajun crawfish had thawed from its bucket, escaped the kitchens undetected, and eventually ended his journey of escape, adventure and revenge by crawling way up this man’s musical undercarriage.) This was the individual whom, upon seeing us leave, walked by without a smile, as much as a nod or an attempt at a perfunctory “thank you.”
Thus ends our unfortunate experience at the Haus of Oysterz. Now, for some practical advice.
Where I give restaurant managers practical advice in order not to emulate Ford’s Oyster House.
Scenario: You decide to open a restaurant on a Saturday in order to take advantage of a busy downtown crowd. You are in a prime location. If you have done your homework, you know that over 10,000 people will be within a half mile of your new restaurant around lunch time. Assuming you have advertised the launch, had articles written in the local publications weeks in advance, launched a website and a Facebook page, researched the local market and engaged with food bloggers, local tweeps and other influentials in the area, here is what you do:
– Assign someone to the front door. Their job will be to aptly corral passersby (it is lunch time and they are hungry) and invite them into the restaurant. Even if they don’t stay for lunch, they might stay for a drink. At the very least, they will know you exist and come back to check you out later. Run to the Staples (3 blocks away) and print flyers with your menu, phone number and hours of operation to hand out to people as they walk by if they decide not to go inside. Hell, print coupons for 1/2 off appetizers or drinks. Something. Anything. Figure it out. Get people’s attention. Get them in the door. It’s your grand opening and the streets are filled with people. You couldn’t dream of a better opportunity, so seize it.
– Assign someone to the front of the restaurant to make sure everything there is running smoothly. When people peer into your new place, they want to see a well run operation. When they walk in, they want to be greeted by someone who will show them to their table. Someone must always manage the front. Always. At all times. No exceptions.
– You have a sidewalk in front of your restaurant. Use it. Two blocks down the street, O’Cha Tea Bar used chalk to create a narrative/path to their front door on the sidewalk. People noticed it, read it, and ended up walking in. It might seem low-brow, but stuff like this works on a weekend family lunch crowd. Most people find it clever, even cute. More importantly, it works. Note: If you think picnic tables are acceptable substitutes for tables and chairs, you aren’t exactly La Tour D’Argent. Go buy a box of sidewalk chalk and stop acting like this is beneath you.
– If every restaurant around you is serving 100% of its capacity and is still turning people away at 2pm, you should be enjoying the same kind of swell, especially if today is your big launch. However, if you are only serving 4 tables out of 30, something should tell you that something is wrong. An empty restaurant with swollen crowds outside should be a hint that someone needs to get their asses out where the customers are and bring customers in. If you are the GM, hiding in the back and monopolizing your staff to stare at a computer screen is not exactly the correct course of action. The computer can wait. Credit cards can be run through manually. Fill those chairs first. Keep the kitchen busy. Worry about the computer system later.
Here’s a tip: If your ratio of employees to customers is 1:2 and your restaurant is more than 80% empty, you are the restaurant world’s equivalent of a bug splattered on someone’s windshield on your very first flight across the road. Your focus should be to get customers inside your restaurant. “The urgency of now” is a phrase you need to learn to appreciate. Grab your least busy employee (in this case, one of the two bar tenders with zero customers to take care of), and send them outside. It might seem a little weird, but it works. The alternative (an empty restaurant and a net loss for the day, not to mention the embarrassment and morale bomb of a failed launch) is no kind of alternative at all.
Yes, launches (even “soft” launches) are difficult to execute. But some things are pretty simple to manage and fix. Just make it work. Make your business work. There is nothing else.
General Recommendations:
– Picnic tables? Only if you are a burger joint or a BBQ house. An oyster bar surrounded by hip little boutique restaurants, not so much. Take those hideous things back to K-Mart and have some proper outside seating delivered. Today. Be the type of restaurant you wish to be. If you are a picnic table kind of place, then be that inside as well. Cutting corners doesn’t just spell “cheap.” It also spells “I have no clue what I am doing.”
– Make sure the most important items on your menu are available on your opening day. This is restaurant management 101. If your supplier didn’t deliver some of the ingredients in time, find local alternatives. By this, I mean send your staff to the store, or better yet, go yourself. In short: Get off your ass and fix the problem. Staring at the phone, then your watch, then your phone again won’t cut it. All you need to know is this: No food = no menu. No menu = no orders. No orders = no revenue. No revenue = the restaurant fails and everyone is out of a job. Make it work.
– If you somehow still cannot manage to have your main menu items available on opening day, run to Staples (3 blocks down the street, in the case of Ford’s Oyster House) and have revamped “opening day” menus printed. It isn’t like your menus are printed on rare vellum or anything. It’s all just crap paper. Spend the $5 and improvise, even if only for one day. This can be done in 20 minutes. All you need is a computer, 5 bucks, and a pair of legs. Get off your ass and do it. You’re the GM. This is your job.
– Things are going to go wrong every day. It’s the restaurant world. Every service is going to run into snags. If you lose your cool at the first snag, you won’t make it in this business. As a GM, your job is to solve problems, not make little ones bigger. If your computer system keeps crashing, shut the thing down and go to plan B: Hand-written tickets. Believe it or not, restaurants survived just fine before computers and touch screens. Credit cards can also be run manually. Stop obsessing over an impassible obstacle. Walk away from it, come up with a solution, and make that solution work. If you get stuck, everyone else gets stuck. You don’t want that. Your job is to keep things flowing. So… Do. Your. Job. Once the lunch or dinner crowd is gone, then get your computer problem fixed.
Here’s a tip: You know what the difference is between a manager and a leader? The leader doesn’t let himself get stuck. If something isn’t working, he takes initiative and keeps the ball rolling. Why? Because someone has to, and that someone is him. Leadership isn’t a paycheck or a title. It’s a responsibility. Get unstuck. Improvise. Solve problems.
– Empty restaurant? Train your wait staff to treat your few patrons extra nice. Have every one of them walk by to say “hi, welcome to our restaurant. Everything good so far? Can I get you anything?” It’s easy and it makes a world of difference. Make customers feel like they’ve discovered a great little place before everyone else has, instead of some doomed crap restaurant they will never want to set foot in again.
– If you are the GM of a restaurant, walk your floor. Welcome every customer to your establishment. Chat with them for a minute. Not just the perfunctory driveby, mind you. Stop. Smile. Be warm. Listen to what they have to say. Give a shit. Find out something about them, like perhaps how they found out about your restaurant. Remember their faces. Do this, just in case they come back. You’ll be glad you did.
– When customers leave your restaurant, thank them for coming. See previous bullet. Don’t act like a stuck-up asshole.
Here’s a tip: Even if the service sucked, even if the food was at best average, a chunk of your customers will come back if you treat them super well as they walk out. First impressions may decide whether or not customers will actually eat at your restaurant today, but last impressions will decide whether or not they will come back. Screw up the last impression and your repeat customers will be few, even if the food and service were great. What you need to know is that there are 10 other restaurants in your area with equally good service and food already competing for your customers’ business. That makes you #11. How do you move up to #3 or #1? Not by blowing them off as they leave. This much, I know.
– Hire a competent chef.
– Hire a COMPETENT chef.
I can repeat it a third time, just in case you need me to.
– If you are a Taco Bell or a franchise, okay, your food is what it is. It comes in cans and frozen packets and bags and whatnot. Everything must be cooked and prepared according to strict, uniform instructions. But if you are a restaurant competing in a market dominated by chefs and GMs who really take pride in what they do, in a market populated by people accustomed to great food that is mostly local and fresh, think twice before serving cheap frozen crap. If your kitchen basically consists of a deep fryer and a few microwave ovens, and most of your food comes out of a frozen box, you aren’t a restaurant, you are a cafeteria. You can sell po’boys for $5 and make a killing. Just don’t go selling them for $10-$12. The restaurant business is already competitive enough without slitting your own throat by cutting corners from Day One and taking your customers for chumps. You will only fool them once.
– Give a shit. Although this will likely be the subject of an upcoming post (Part 2 of last week’s post) it is important to bring it up here. Let me illustrate this concept with a few simple equations:
Fresh ingredients + clever preparation + tactful application of textures and flavors = someone in the kitchen gives a shit.
Frozen shrimp tossed into a stale bun slathered in generic tartar sauce = someone in the kitchen doesn’t give a shit.
Customers being warmly welcomed as soon as they walk in = someone gives a shit.
Customers standing by the door for 5 minutes + waiters and managers walking by without noticing them = nobody gives a shit.
Restaurants whose every employee gives a shit, where the chef, the GM, the waiters, the sauciers and the sommelier take great pride in what they do, where all derive professional, even personal satisfaction from the delight of their customers, these restaurants become successes. People respond to passion: They reward it with patronage.
Meanwhile, restaurants whose employees, kitchen staff and managers obviously aren’t exactly passionate about any of what they do save collecting a paycheck and splitting tips invariably begin to circle the drain and die. (Fast food and greasy spoons being the notable exception.)
Customers can smell the difference in about ten seconds. You can’t fool them, so don’t even try. As a GM, owner or chef, if you aren’t in the restaurant business because you love it, because you are passionate about it, stop wasting your time. More importantly, stop creating crap dining experiences for those of us who are lured into your cheap little stratagems. Impress us. Blow us away. Kick ass. That is the secret to everyone’s success in the restaurant world. Being average (or downright mediocre), then coming up with excuses as to why you couldn’t be better, none of it belongs here. Either commit or go home.
In which a restaurant is quickly reviewed and this post finally comes to an end.
If I were to review Ford’s Oyster House, I would say only this: Had it not been for our intrepid waiter (Chris) and his initiative and good humor, FOH would have been short another 4 plates on its opening day. Did he save the day? Hardly. In spite of his every effort, Chris is only human, after all. Ronald Reagan himself, cowboy hat and all, could not have righted this unfortunate lost calf’s crooked course, so far from the path had it wandered.
It would be easy to rationalize excuses for FOH, given that it was their very first day, but I can’t. None of what I saw and experienced there could be excused. Not on any day, but especially not on an opening day. I believe that some of the advice and observations I have shared above illustrate why this is. I have worked with retail clients for years, some of them restaurants, and none of this is rocket science. Not one thing. All of these issues could have been corrected in moments by a competent manager.
I must however acknowledge that I am not a restaurant expert and that this post at best reflects the opinions of an amateur diner, but in my 39 years and 364 days on Earth, having eaten at restaurants spanning the globe and ranging from the finest establishments ever rated by the Guide Michelin to the most suspect (and sometimes abject) eateries ever to have been endured by humankind, I can tell you with absolute conviction that I have never before seen a restaurant so poorly managed. Not ever, and not anywhere. (Disclaimer: I have not eaten at every restaurant in the world.)
It wasn’t so much that anything was particularly awful, mind you. The food was mediocre but no worse. The service was deplorable but not entirely without merit. The restaurant was clean and would have been convivial had it not been almost entirely deserted. The GM was not actually rude to us, but merely aloof and disinterested. In short, Ford’s Oyster House was little more than a case study in mediocrity and missed opportunities than one of absolute failure. It was also an example of poor leadership in action and a canvas upon which to paint an almost perfect “how not to manage a restaurant” post. No one became ill. No one was openly insulted or beaten. No teeth were chipped or cracked or stolen. It was not that kind of experience. All in all, Ford’s Oyster House was neither here nor there. It was… passable. On a scale of -5 to +5, I would give it a zero. Nothing more, nothing less.
In truth, it may surprise you that what amazed me the most was thus not so much how bad Ford’s Oyster House was (as it was merely mediocre), but rather how great it could have (and should have) been. More importantly, what fascinated especially was that I came to realize, as soon as I stepped through its front door, that the reason it failed at being great, even as early as its very first day, was perhaps not to be found in anything about the restaurant itself, but rather in the actions (or perhaps lack thereof) of just one man: its general manager. Time may prove my theory wrong. We shall see.
Let me just say that leadership is neither a gift to be taken for granted nor a responsibility arbitrarily bestowed upon those having demonstrated the least thread of talent for it. Let this, if nothing else, be today’s lesson. As the Navy SEALs say “there are no bad boat crews, only bad leaders,” so is it with restaurants: There are no bad establishments, only bad managers.
When it is all said and done, if a restaurant fails, it is never because of the waiters or the sous chef. It isn’t because of the economy or the competition or the weather. When a restaurant fails, the responsibility falls on the manager. The restaurant business is hard. It will break you if you don’t fight tooth and nail for your restaurant every day. The question you have to ask yourself is this: How will you find the strength to fight every day for something that you don’t love? And if not you, how will your employees, including the managers you must hire find that strength to fight for something they do not love?
This is the essence of leadership, and more importantly where most human beings fail to grasp it. Love, believe it or not, is what separates leaders from mere managers. Yet it is the soul of every kitchen, the heart of every dish, and the lifeblood of every restaurant in the world. If you cannot bake love into your restaurant’s DNA, into every experience you share with your patrons, into every brick and jar and sliver of wood from the curb outside the front door to the dumpsters lining the back alley, you will fail. If apathy is the greatest killers of restaurants, passion is always an establishment’s greatest asset.
And on that note, I wish you all a wonderful day. Hopefully, I have given you something to think about.
Cheers.
Nb: You should all know that I reached out to the restaurant’s owner through back channels and made helpful suggestions. No sarcasm. Just simple honest advice. I hope he fixes his issues (like turning off comments on his Facebook page since I was evidently not the only person to review his establishment negatively). I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes after this past weekend, and my intent here is not to make things worse for him. I don’t want to see anyone fail. Quite the contrary. With any luck, he will put his feelings aside and learn to face negative reviews head on, emerge a better, stronger business manager, and turn his new restaurant around. We’ll see.
Hi Olivier,
Great post on customer service or lack of.
I live in France, these rules don’t apply if you are a restaurateur here. 🙂
Seriously, I wanted to comment on your post about not hiring assholes. Yes there are no bad employees, just incompetent managers who hire the wrong people, train them wrong or don’t train them at all, and then put them in the wrong jobs.
I used to work in an Italian restaurant in the Old Montreal. From my experience you need a manager or owner that gives a damn. The day you stop caring is the day it ends, and they should just shut down rather than inflict their complete lack of enthusiasm on patrons.
It doesn’t just apply to restaurants, how many companies out there are run by ‘professional CEOs’ who are already looking for their next move and have unspirited employees just showing up for the paycheck?
I hope other verticals will draw the same conclusion. 🙂
Cheers, John.
This post made me so angry that I had to write an entire post to respond to it at: http://peterthomson.posterous.com
I have always advocated for “soft launch”, lean start-ups and getting to product to market fast so you can learn fast. But this philosophy is no excuse for bad service and a sloppy product.
Ford’s Oyster House are now complaining on Facebook about their bad reviews on Yelp.
Are they really?
Restaurants aren’t retail businesses, soft launch theory and other concepts are totally not applicable.
I agree.
Even so, soft launch or hard launch, bad service is bad service. Bad food is bad food. Getting blown off is getting blown off. You know? Customers don’t sit there and pay a $60 tab after a crap meal and go “well, they were only in Day 3 of their soft launch.” If your restaurant isn’t ready to open, then don’t open.
Of course. You’re preaching to the choir my friend. The point added was that soft-openings exacerbate the problem. Rule #7 – Never practice on the guest.
And what you experienced wasn’t bad service – it was much worse than that. The operator will get what he deserves in the end – a failed business and poor reputation. No one can compensate a guest for losing a day (or part of a day) in their life – which is what this was.
Successful operators understand they have a higher calling.
Agreed.
Besides, what is the point of a soft-launch?
a) You aren’t ready to launch properly?
b) You give yourself permission to fail?
c) You don’t want to commit to the success of your restaurant… yet?
It’s a weird concept.
Yup. Welcome to my world! It hurt so bad to read that I couldn’t fininsh it. Sad.
Ouch!
Sorry, I couldn’t finish this. It needs an editor.
Oddly I had just read a separate blog post on brevity. This post is not an example brevity. At over 5,000 words I’d like compensation from you for my time spent trying to read it.
And it seems to fall into one of your turnoffs: “self-righteous armchair quarterbacks”.
Please do better next time for people who stumble upon your blog for the first time.
Mike, thanks for your expert opinion. I will do my absolute best to do better next time.
Wait… no, I will do even better than better: I will do betterer.
While I actively attempt to clean up my act, just for you, I will also take the time to think long and deep about both my own hypocrisy and self-righteous behavior. God forbid I should talk about anything on this blog that doesn’t agree with your rock solid sensibilities. Apologies, Mike Gorski. You have set me straight. Bravo, sir.
And at well over 5,000 words, all of them free, you are welcome. Thanks for reading, and feel free to come back anytime. If in the meantime you prefer blog posts that lend themselves to brevity, may I suggest the rest of the interwebs? It’s too bad you didn’t read until the end though. The good stuff is usually hidden there. But hey, I know it’s hard to browse, scan, and look for the bold print.
Thanks all the same.
Olivier – I’m sorry. I too will do better. I put too much judgement in my comment and I apologize for that.
I had no intention of offending. I simply felt the piece was too long for the few good nuggets it contained. I should have focused on that fact.
I wish you all the best in what you write and do.
Thanks, Mike. No worries. It’s all good.
Wow Oliver, you had a much worse experience this weekend than I did.
Its sad hearing stories like this, especially when you know that all it takes is someone at the top that simply gives a shit, and instills that feeling into everyone of their employees.
Yep.
I know you were desperate for food but this is why I won’t eat at a restaurant until it has been open for a month. With all your troubles though, it seems a month or three months it won’t matter.
Well, yeah, we were starving. 😀
I hope Ford’s fixes its problems and bounces back. They could turn that place around in 24 hours if they wanted to.
Cheers, man.
Olivier,
I Find it disturbing that they are telling people to hold off on reviews on there facebook like page.
Is Ford’s Oyster House & Cajun Kitchen giving their food away for free. Not a good idea when people are telling you exactly what you need to do.
They should have hit the floor running. Are you getting a refund on what you ate that you can hold off on the review. Very interesting story it made me stay in to read it till the end.
Very similar to my Anti-vegetarian restaurants experiences every day. It only gets worst when you try to visit one on Mother’s Day!
Wow, Kitchen Nightmares was swirling through my mind. Ramsey would have blown a gasket.
It seems really hard to believe that a business would operate like that, especially on it’s first day open. Considering the investment of dollars and time, it is very sad that it wouldn’t be taken more seriously. I can’t imagine. I wonder, was the owner receptive to your advice?
Good tips and advice though. I love posts like this, real world stuff.
I ate at Ford’s last night and was hoping your review was way off. Unfortunately for me, it was pretty spot on. I got the shrimp po-boy and the bread was a dense, cold, way too thick, piece of stale cardboard.
We also had the fried oysters and they left a lot to be desired. They were very fishy, and a just mediocre at best.
I did like the way the bar area was setup, and if nothing else it can become a late night spot to get drunk.
Most restaurants fail when it comes to customer service because they don’t know what their customers really want
Writing an attack piece on a brand new restaurant is rather weak. Criticise the food, describe your frustration with wait times, etc. Hell, complain about the benches (really though?). That’s all understandable and fair game in a review. But this hatchet job frankly smells like somebody with an axe to grind; it is not a restaurant review but instead reads like a political attack ad.
Mike, thanks for the comment. This is my reply:
1. For this post to be comparable to a political attack ad, I submit to you that I would have to either manage or own an interest in a competing restaurant. In other words, the motivation behind this post would have to be personal gain. That is not the case. I have nothing to gain by “attacking” this restaurant or any other.
2. This post is an account of what I experienced during my visit to this restaurant. It isn’t a “hatchet job.” I have no “axe to grind.” I simply gave an account of what happened. With respect, Mike, the restaurant gave itself the hatchet job by performing so poorly on so many levels.
3. I spent the second half of the post providing my readers with ways of not making the kinds of mistakes I mentioned in the first half. If my intent were to deliver a “hatchet job,” I wouldn’t have bothered to share ways of attracting customers on virtually no budget, plan for a guerrilla-style opening, improve customer service, and pull off this kind of launch without screwing up as miserably as this unfortunate restaurant did.
4. Welcome to the world of the digitally-connected customer. You want to open a restaurant and get great reviews? Get your ducks in a row and kick ass. Earn that praise. Tens of thousands of restaurants do every single day. But if you are going to ignore the basics, cut corners, and essentially not give a shit, then get ready for an avalanche of bad reviews – some more visible than others. That’s just the way it is. Restaurant owners can whine and bitch about it all they want, but the game has changed, and the margin of error is slimmer today than it has ever been. If that’s too much pressure, maybe the restaurant business isn’t for them. It isn’t a business for the thin-skinned.
Thanks for the comment nonetheless.
I just wanted everyone to know that I, Jason Fletcher, the owner have read this and have also called and spoke with Mr. Blanchard in the days after he posted it. As I mentioned to Mr. Blanchard everyone has their own opinions and he defiantly is not short on them.
Note to readers, if a place tells you that they are in the first week of opening the door and are in a soft opening from the start a little understanding would be appreciated. If you are not prepared to have some delays after knowing this then come back another day. Also a food critic would never visit a place a week in on a Main Street packed festival weekend and print his account of it in the paper. This is in my eyes very mean spirited.
There is no excuse for bad service and I have apologized to Mr. Blanchard about that, full stop and I have invited him back when we are not overrun with over 1000 covers in a day. It was more than we had expected and we did not fire on all cylinders with every table and plate.
I hope that you come in again to visit us now that we have been up and running with our Grand Opening behind us and take us for what we are, a casual place to get great and unique to the area Cajun Food and Oysters. I would also hope that after that if you are happy with your experience that you would take this down or at least amend it.
Kind Regards,
jason
Owner
The Green Room
Ford’s Oyster House and Cajun Kitchen
Thanks, Jason. I appreciate that you called me when you did. You were gracious on the phone. I’ll give your restaurant another shot. There will be an update to this post, at the very least. Cheers.
I’ve opened 47 restaurants in 34 states over 30 years in the industry and I’m still amazed at the extremely poor level of preparation by operators that goes into new openings.
If there’s “…no excuse for bad service…” why do you couch your entire attempt to recover the situation, in them?
“Soft opens” are just another way of saying, ‘We didn’t budget enough to train our staff to execute.’
Successful operators understand that everyone’s ‘opinion’ is called the ‘guest perception’ – the influence of such is critical to building loyal, long-term relationships.
And of course food critics would review a new restaurant, no matter what else was going on in the community – they’re called guests and telling them they have to be ‘understanding’ is ridiculous.
You’re job was to create and deliver hospitality. I think you failed miserably here and given your comments, will continue to do so.
Mr Blanchard
Thanks and I look forward to it!
jason
@ Jeff
Did we make some mistakes yes, and we have taken corrective action on them. You know it is funny as you have no idea of the situation, yet you can pass comment/judgements on me and my business. Amazing!
All the best to you Jeff in your life and I wish you sucess in everything you do.
jason
BTW – I did not say that the critic would care if a festival was going on but more they would not come to a new establishment in the fourth day of opening and expect all things to be smooth.
It’s “Smoke on the Water” not “Smoke on the River”.
Indeed it is.
Olivier,
Happened to stumble upon this post today. Just out of curiosity, I checked out their yelp page. They’ve somehow managed to have all but one of their negative reviews filtered. And even a couple good ones. Not sure I trust yelp anymore after seeing that.
Even the worst restaurant can sucker someone into giving them their money once. 😉
Tell you all what i’m from New Orleans worked at Commanders Palace with Emeril , Also worked at Arnolds ,and Brennans . Wife was Food and Beverage Director for one of the largest hotels in New Orleans. In the next three weeks we will dine there. I will leave an accurate review here. We love our seafood and know it very well.As for service 75% of restaurants here can not even spell that word. I do not know Jason or Olivier.
As creator of th Greenville Ghost Tour I watched FOH from the beginning… I walk by every weekend doing the Ghost Tour and today decided to try them for the first time. I wish I had seen your review FIRST Olivier!
It looks like nothing has changed. I had just been commenting to my dinner companion about the ore ida frozen french fries they had the nerve to serve in a restaurant. As I tried to enjoy the slimy roast beef “po boy”… I found a long curly black hair in the pile of fries….
I made it known that I do not eat hair and that my appetite was now shot… they made excuses and said no one in the kitchen could have done that. Insinuating it was our fault… but I am bald and have a red beard… my companion is blonde. Well they took the one meal off the ticket… still handing us a $21 bill!
Never once did any management come to offer an apology or try and see if we would return. Well I will personally nevef bother eating there again. I can frozen fries at the store and they don’t have long curly black hairs!!! Just wow….
Great post btw!
That’s sad. I’m not surprised though. If a restaurant is going to be run that way on opening week (when it’s trying to kick ass), why would it not be run that way a year later, when it’s settled into habits? I’ve never gone back. After this comment, I know I never will.