Delivery Fail: The Problem with a Gig Economy
What do you think a delivery company like Deliveroo, Just Eat or uberEATS should be good at? That’s right – delivery. In my personal experience (outside of London), this – sadly – does not hold true with high enough certainty. I can’t speak for UberEATS as I have no direct experience of their service outside of London, but both Delieroo and Just Eat suffer from the same issue – ‘not enough drivers’ to quote their system. Tip of the Iceberg The problem actually runs much deeper than simply one of having enough drivers; it’s about how those resources are deployed. In the early days, the fleet of riders were employees…
Another Year, Another Restaurant Scam
In the restaurant business, we learn about hospitality. We learn about finance. We learn about marketing. We learn (a lot) about operations as there are so many variables. But we learn - often the hard way - about fraud.
Why we left Quandoo
Quandoo was born in Germany and set out to ‘disrupt’ the restaurant reservations space since competitors like Open Table were charging a fortune for the service. That’s what they told us when we signed up shortly after they launched in the UK. Having recently read Blue Ocean Shift I now understand what it truly means to be a disruptor versus developing new business ideas to (Blue Ocean) Shift the business into a completely different dimension. ‘Disruptor’ is, sadly, an overused word meaning “doing the same as other people with a small twist”. Quandoo’s Disruption? Quandoo’s angle was to charge differently. You had a smaller monthly license fee plus the standard cover charge…
If you want better service in a restaurant, respect these five unwritten rules
Answer by Maxwell Arnold, former sous chef, restaurant manager, waiter, and busboy, on Quora: The relationship between a server and a customer can feel like an adverse one at times. Quite often, this is because the two parties simply misunderstand each other. I benefit from the experience of both working as a server, and being someone who dines out on the regular – so I understand what the dynamic is like from both sides. For customers who get the most out of the dining experience, they understand the many nuances of the restaurant business to include several unwritten rules that they have to go along with whether they like it…
The Top 35 Restaurant Etiquette Fails
According to the Telegraph, these are the ‘top 35 most irritating restaurant faux-pas’. They go on to say … If you’re reading this while dining at a restaurant, well, you’re beyond help. But the rest of us can take note: pollsters have identified 35 of the most inexcusable eating-out faux-pas, and, bloody hell, Brits, this is shameful stuff. Number one on the list? Clicking fingers for the waiter’s attention (rude). Two: talking with a full mouth (gross). The third on the list is “being too loud and raucous”, which at least suggests that someone – if not the poll’s joyless respondents – is having fun, but we can all agree…
A Brief Lesson in Restaurant Economics
Or why your Espresso costs that much. Back in December 2015, Hannah C from North Yorkshire left an angry TripAdvisor review for Bennett’s Cafe and Bistro in High Petergate complaining that she was on a tight budget and still charged £2 for a cup of hot water and a slice of lemon. You can read her original review on Lost at E Minor which led to the following response from the bistro which I post here verbatim as it’s an elegant outline of simple restaurant economics: I’m sorry that you feel that you were ripped off and Ill try to explain why you weren’t. You entered the cafe and the…
The TripAdvisor Generation
Is our moral compass as a species broken, or being rapidly redesigned? It’s difficult to point a finger and identify any singular incident. Many have suggested that changes in the family group or changes in the way parents assume schools will teach the children values that should be learned at home. Many say that it is the rise of on-screen violence and reality television feeding the viewers a glut of skewed imagery and behaviour patterns which are then seen as normal and copied. Others identify the Internet for what it allows us to do, to say and to contribute to. This post isn’t a debate about the failings of society…
What is the restaurant industry’s big problem?
In short: Customers. I read this piece in February’s Restaurant magazine by Tony Naylor and couldn’t help but want to share it with you. You join me in A Very Good Restaurant. A waiter is asking the woman at the next table how she liked her main. Basically, she didn’t. There was too much thyme, or was it rosemary? And the lamb was overdone. The waiter smiles dutifully, grimaces sympathetically and diplomatically avoids pointing out that neither herb was present in the dish. I’m not even convinced she had lamb. It was probably venison. [Been there] A few days later, a chef is ruefully describing to me how everyone who…
MISADVENTURES IN THE RESTAURANT TRADE
