Operators try new tactics as survey shows scarcity of suggestive selling
By Alan J. Liddle
SEATTLE - Many employees of full-service restaurants fail to suggest beverages, appetizers or desserts to patrons, potentially costing their employers an estimated $5 to $15 per table per turn, a recent national survey found.
Some operators, however, including Peter Levy of Seattle's Chow Foods, say they are not losing sleep because of such server oversights, as their sales-building strategies do not hinge solely, if at all, on overt suggestive selling.
"We prefer to do as much of our marketing as possible before they [guests] get to the restaurants," said Chow's Levy, who co-owns with Jeremy Hardy the five-unit company that operates Coastal Kitchen and Atlas Foods, among other concepts. Chow restaurants are known for their rotating menu festivals — like the foods of Puerto Rico event running Aug. 17 through Nov. 17 at Coastal Kitchen — and one-to-one customer marketing through a 12,000-patron e-mail database.
Chow Foods, Levy said, works to build the frequency of guest visits — and therefore sales — by offering patrons a strong value proposition and "festive-feeling" establishments. The server survey was conducted by about 700 mystery shoppers on behalf of a leading customer experience consulting firm, Mercantile Systems of Brentwood, Calif. It discovered that just 35 percent of the servers encountered suggested wine, cocktails or soft drinks to guests and that only 10 percent recommended specialty beverages.
Servers observed by surveyors offered refills of alcoholic beverages only slightly more than half of the time, suggested appetizers a little less than half the time and proffered after-dinner coffees or alcoholic beverages in just 42 percent of their encounters with patrons. According to survey organizers, only about one in three servers, or 35 percent, suggested desserts to their customers.
The survey determined that most of the restaurants observed did a good job of handling reservations and had servers who were perceived as "warm and sincere" and who made good eye contact and were appropriately attentive. It also found that most of the time those restaurant facilities met the surveyor-guest's expectations related to cleanliness.
"Restaurants have done much of the hard work already," Mercantile Systems chief executive Dan Cosgrove observed. "The customers are willing to spend more, and in this case, it would even improve their overall experience. The server just isn't putting the options in front of them."
Will Guidara, general manager of Cafe 2 and Terrace 5 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, said of check building, "We try to determine what people are looking for, and without being salesy about it, we try to find the most user-friendly way for them to get that."
For example, a gelato cart placed in the sculpture garden makes available to patrons desserts or snacks they might have craved during their sit-down meal but eschewed because they were anxious to get back to the museum's exhibits, Guidara noted. Creatively packaging menu items also can build sales, he said, citing one cafe's creation of a sampler of three, 2-ounce pours of wine that is priced higher than a standard six-ounce glass and pairs well with a popular cheese plate.
Larry Kurofsky, who owns Purple Cafe & Wine Bar restaurants in Woodinville and Kirkland, Wash., said his sales-building efforts benefit from an entertaining and informative "industrial chic" Lucite-bound wine book and nonstandard menu offerings, such as flights of cheeses and wines.
Something as simple as changing a menu format can bump up sales, Kurofsky indicated. He noted that in the two months since details about wine flights were transferred from the wine book to a single-sheet menu that also covers wines by the glasses: 'It's crazy, the amount of flights we’re doing."
E-mail the author at: aliddle@nrn.com
Article Title: Nation's
Article URL: www.nrn.com