Contemporary Restaurant Service week one

Our restaurant inside

What is more important - good food or good service?

Somehow I missed posting here for a couple of weeks (again), so need to fix this. We started our restaurant classes, our last big block before graduation. The schedule changed dramatically - we have classes from Tuesday to Saturday, also the hours for the classes seem quite long from 2 p.m. till 11 p.m. The end time is approximate, the first week we finished around 11:30 p.m. every day.

The first week of service each of us had two tables and we were doing the whole cycle for our tables, starting with water, taking orders, bringing food, cleaning and resetting our tables. Honestly, I was scared about this class. The idea to speak with strangers, explaining the menu, trying to sell something was terrifying. Also there was expectation for us to know
all dishes on the menu, with all components, and wines as well. In reality everything was not as bad as expected. People were very friendly, and do not remembering the whole menu was not so bad thing.

I guess the expectation many guests have is quite low. We have some regular guests at the restaurant, but the majority are first time visitors and they do not expect too much from students (both food and service). When people do not have high expectations it's easy to exceed them and this is exactly what happen in this restaurant. The guests got very good food and great service, therefore they are very happy with their dinner.

Also we have a lecture every day. The first week these lectures were about hospitality, point of sales system, reservation system, and wine service.

Back of the house team posing
for photo

During the first week I learned on my own experience that great food is not everything in a restaurant. The great food is important, but if you are not able to provide great service, it does not matter how good your food are - people would not return to this restaurant. On the other hand, if something was wrong with food, for example steak was overcooked, but the service was great, the guests will probably remember great service and not the steak and they would return there.

There were a few people among my guests very reserved at the beginning, and slowly changing their mood during the service. At the end they were absolutely happy, friendly and open, giving very complimentary feedback.

During one of the lecture our instructor said that one restaurant he worked for in the past opened a big bottle of sparkling wine for the servers when alcohol sale exceeded food sale for a day. On Saturday we were short for one guy and we decided to tell him that that was the day and we had 51% of alcohol sales. That is why we took this funny picture:-)

It was a great week for the start.