Part 102 What Do I Get?

Scotch eggs, Shably and Donkey Jackets

Did you know, if you put a Like at the end of this, you’ll immediately have the ability to run as fast as a Gazelle.

Welcome back to the weekly story about trying to prevent a restaurant from going bankrupt whilst also struggling to convince the very general public that if they visited us they would not be eating a veggie burger. Or pasta bake.

And if you’ve been reading these Posts, you’ll know that last week we finally found a normal person to join the kitchen team, and that’s good going.

But we’ll talk about that person next week, you’ve had enough kitchen chatter for now. So today, we’ll run you through some front of house incidents.

Hang on a tick, front of house just means anything to do with the waiting staff, the restaurant floor, that type of thing. Basically, anything you as the diner sees. The nice bits.

So, just as Emma, the new trainee chef, started working for us, we started to become a little busier. And the reason we became a little busier, is because someone must have put an advert in the Evening Standard, ‘Vanilla Black may be in the shit a bit because they are training up a new chef, so get in there right now.’

And because of this extra busyness, Donna, Tina and Big Sophia got together and made a plan. You see, previously, in York, and the early days of London, service was organised, but there was no written structure. Nothing wrong with this, but it needed nailing down.

A customer journey was drawn up, this traced the diner’s path, from entering the building, until they left. Now, although there was already a system of sorts, having it down on paper just felt a bit better, and it also highlighted any gaps.

But the first hurdle was coats.

If you wanna spend three quid on a coffee for us, just for the hell of it, that’s the button.

You know that coat cupboard you have at home, the one where seven coats fight for one hook. That cupboard where the jacket that you’re looking for has been buried under a Parka and two Donkey Jackets. And someone thought it would be helpful to tie three rucksacks over your tweed blazer to stop you from wearing it.

“Bloody hell Jean, I’ve accidentally pulled a toggle off your duffel coat.”

Well, imagine that same situation but with thirty coats, and briefcases, and rucksacks, and tote bags and a couple of Tesco carriers. It wasn’t a problem in the summer, but come the winter, when everyone was wearing an overcoat and carrying a brolley with that briefcase. Then it gets a little annoying.

We had an area behind reception which was used as a hangy zone, and because we’d been quiet, it was just a case of sticking the coats on a hook and remembering who they belonged to. However, as we became busier, it became harder to recall which coat belonged to who.

And Tina’s system of holding up three black rain Macs and asking, “Which one is yours?”, just wasn’t good enough.

But luckily, Big Sophia had an idea. She suggested that we use coat hangers to hang the coats onto, then add those to the hooks, and then tie little numbered labels around the neck of the hanger. So the two people on table 7, had a 7 label on their hanger. Brilliant.

This worked well, most of the time. The times it didn’t work well were when diners wore similar coats. For example, the night seven business chaps turned up and they all wore long black woollen overcoats. As they were leaving, the hanger was brought out and a coat was handed to each bloke.

There’s always room for one more.

And as they chatted to each other, and weren’t taking too much notice, they put their coats on. Or they tried to put them on. The coats all looked the same, they only differed in size, so there was a lot of confusion.

One of the bigger chaps ended up wearing the overcoat of a little fella, which fitted him like a t-shirt.

It’s about time we had some recipes for asparagus. I’ve seen none this year.

The diners journey was discussed, and was then tracked. Tina documented exactly what should happen-

Drinks menus given

Food menus offered

Drinks delivered

Food order taken

Wine order taken

Then the food order was taken to the kitchen and little snacks were delivered to the table.

“Ey up, we didn’t order these, we’re not paying for them are we?. They’re ‘avin our eyes out Jean.”

“They’re complimentary Sir,” and Jim’s eyes lit up.

Snacks are finished and the kitchen is informed, then bread and butter is delivered to the table-

“Bread made with soured cream and some sea salted Somerset butter.”

“Is this free as well?”

“Yes Jim.”

Soup spoon given if required.

Starters arrive to a table, and when finished, the kitchen is informed.

Mains are delivered to the table, when finished, dessert menus are offered.

So as you can see, the procedure was being processed and written like a flow chart, this meant that when new team members started, they had something to work from, and everyone would be following the same path.

There was a lot more to go into this than what’s mentioned above, such as dealing with diner queries and allergens, but to be honest, you’ll probably get bored of reading about it.

However, although this procedure was great to have in writing, it didn’t account for human behaviour. Because after all, people are sometimes unpredictable. And sometimes, just a bit daft. A few little examples.

“Er excuse me, that man over there has a bigger portion than me.”

“Sorry, what do you mean?”

“I can see from here. That man over there, on that table of four, his portion is bigger than mine.”

And sometimes it’s difficult to deal with an incident without upsetting people.

“Excuse me, this dish comes with a poached duck egg, yes?”

“Yes that’s right.”

“Well, the description doesn’t make sense, what other type of egg could it be?”

“Err, well, we have served it with a hen egg in the past, and a quail egg before that.”

Can you hear that silence, can you?

And where in the written Diner Journey could we add, ‘how to deal with the question about the Shallot and Sage Pesto Tatin’.

“Excuse me, what type of fish is a shallot?”

I mean, how do you answer that. First of all, do you tell the geezer that it’s a vegetarian restaurant and we don’t serve fish? Or do you insult his intelligence and tell him that a shallot is kinda like an onion.

Or, do you throw some randomness into the mix, “You must be getting confused good Sir, we wouldn’t serve sage with fish, it just doesn’t work.”

Oh yes, and what about when Tina Terminator dropped olive on the floor near the dumb waiter! Right in the middle of service. You just can’t account for these things.

Olive oil on floors is nasty, it needs a good ten minutes of hot soapy water and plenty of time to dry. That ain’t happening at 8pm on a Friday evening.

But fortunately, Tina could handle that, a couple ‘wet floor’ signs went up and an explanation from Tina herself.

“I don’t know how it happened, Sophia must have bumped into me.”

Or that special phone call, “I’d like to book a table for two for next Thursday at 7:30pm. It’s my wife’s birthday, can you do something special for us?”

“Of course, and what special thing is Sir referring to?”

“Something for the birthday, you know. What do I get? An extra dessert with a candle. That would do.”

And as Donna, Tina and Sophia came to the end of writing the Diner Journey, they remembered about taxis. Bloody taxis!

So many times the same thing would happen. Customers would call a taxi, then pass the phone to someone front of house to explain the location, because the taxi driver didn’t know where we were.

So we did two things. Firstly, we wrote down the directions and street names of the exact roads to take to get to us. Don’t forget, this was London, you could have a no entry sign at both ends of a street. It wasn’t easy.

This was much more professional than Sophia describing the route on the phone in her own words, “Erm, I forget the name of the street near the Pig and Whistle, but turn left there, then a right, no, a left.”

And then we contacted a local taxi company, made sure they knew where we lived, and we called them when a customer needed a lift.

But hey, what about the guy who asked for a quiet table because he wanted to propose to his girlfriend. Yes, a simple request, but how did we know if the diners around him were going to be quiet. You just can’t predict the future.

We could have stuck him on table 9, right in the corner of the raised area, but Jim and Jean could have been on table 8, spoiling the moment.

“Jim, I’ve been thinking, we should get a hot tub for the garden. I can just see myself flopped in that on a Friday night, bottle of Shably and a Scotch egg. Bloody lovely.”

We gave them table 9 anyway. And because they were on table 9, tucked away from view, Tina and Sophia couldn’t make out if she said yes, or no.

But don’t fret people, when they left, he wrote a message on the back of his receipt and slotted it into the bill holder.

‘She said yes.’

Thanks for reading this, catch us next week as we train the new chef.

Donna and Andrew