Happy New Year

Forever 21 Bailout

At least they were clean.

Server Confessional: Interruption

Server Confessional: Seasonal Item

What servers would say... if they could.

Musical Chairs

Annoying Commericals: edummercials, Budweiser (Update)

I thought this Budweiser commercial was annoying. Again, watching Sunday Night Football, I saw a similarly annoying commercial...




Releases the flavor? WTF is this company thinking.

Five Ways to Avoid a Wait.

It occurred to me that this type of list might be useful to those who hate waiting for a table..

5) Know your calendar.
Restaurants in a mall will be VERY busy around the holidays and back to school. Stand alone restaurants will be very busy on the weekends, especially in the afternoon and evenings (duh). All restaurants are busy around Valentine's Day. If you hate waiting, do not patronize restaurants at these times.

4) Read between the lines.
If a host tells you that the wait will be fifteen minutes, that probably means ten. An hour wait quote probably means 40 to 50 minutes. Restaurants deliberately over quote wait times by 10 to 15%. This ensures that they are exceeding your expectations and seating you faster than you hoped. However, there is such a thing as too much business. I've noticed that once a restaurant get over an hour wait, things start to get dicey. It's hard to accurately predict a wait over an hour and I have personally (as a host) over quoted the wait because I knew the restaurant couldn't handle any more business. Keep this in mind if a host gives you an incredibly long wait quote. He/She is probably doing you a favor. A two hour wait at a corporate chain restaurant probably means somebody has really screwed up.

3) Listen to the host's instructions.
A host can't seat you if you aren't listening to what they tell you to do. Some restaurants have pagers that go off when your table is ready. Other restaurants call names over a public address system. Make sure you are doing whatever the host is telling you to do. Hosts are on your side. Trust me. They don't want to look at you any longer then they need to. It is in their self interest to do so. Hosts that have long waits get heat from the management team. The restaurant I worked at had a pager system with a limited range. Inevitable, on a busy night, people would go out of our pager range (despite instructions to the contrary) and miss their table notification. The guests would, of course, blame the hosts for not paging them or skipping them on the list. Complaining would not help the situation because the table had been filled by the next person on the wait.

2) Call Ahead Seating: Use it.
Most restaurants have a "call ahead" policy that will dramatically reduce your wait time. The restaurant I worked at encouraged people to call 30 minutes ahead of their arrival. Doing so reduced their wait time by at least half. People who call ahead also have a psychological advantage over traditional walk in guests because the hosts always looked to seat call aheads first. Call aheads are, typically, the first to complain to a manager if they are not seated quickly. Hosts know this and will do whatever they can to seat them.

1) Be reasonable.
Just because you are hungry does not mean the world stops for you. Also, just because you see open tables in a restaurant that does not mean you should be able to sit there. Open tables in a busy restaurant typically means the restaurant is understaffed. (Too many guests, not enough servers). Complaining will not magically create more servers, cooks, etc. If you see open tables in a restaurant while a host is running a wait, I would go elsewhere for your meal. Your service will probably suffer due to an over worked server. Hosts do not skip people on a wait intentionally. Hosting a restaurant on a very busy night is one of the hardest things I've ever done. You literally have dozens of people every minute asking you questions. Give them a break, don't make a scene, and things will go a long smoother for you. That's a promise.

Guest Confessional - "Burnt Beans"

This is a receipt I kept from a friend I worked with a few years back. This is from a table she waited on during Black Friday. Black Friday was very busy at the restaurant I used to work at. The Baked Beans (substitute for fries of course) were not the table's liking. They made my friend get three different serving of beans before angrily blaming the restaurant for poor food/service. The abuse the table gave my friend wasn't enough. They had to get one last parting shot in, hence the writing on the receipt and a 2% tip. The table was not charged for the beans.

While my friend was blamed for the bean fiasco by the table, clearly this is not her fault. She did not bake the beans nor burn the beans. Yet she took all the abuse and the financial hit. Writing a message like this on a receipt says a lot about this table's personality. It screams passive aggressiveness and weakness. This table was not "man" enough to say what they though to the management and/or cooks (who deserved the criticism). They would rather writing a nasty note and leave a terrible tip that only gets discovered after they have left the restaurant.

If you are going to complain about something as mundane as baked beans, at least have the guts to say it to the people who should hear it and not a faultless server.

Applebee's is the Muhammad Ali of Bad Advertising.

Lyrics to Applebee's Shrimp Sensation (sung to the tune of Gilligan's Island):

Just sit right back and grab some tail, tails of some tasty shrimp.
Sensations now at Applebee's, they are really worth the trip.
Sautéed, crest(?) fried, or fire grilled served on a handy skewers.
So many shrimp you'll want to plan.... (wait for it).... a three hour tour.
So join us here this week my friend it's time for eating good.
Shrimp Sensations at Applebee's in your neighborhood.

I am dumber for transcribing that and now you are dumber for reading it.

Guest Confessional: Appetizer Surprise

A few years ago I waited on a table that I will not soon forget. The table was a family of four made up of a boy about 12, a girl about 14, and the mother and father both in their early 40's. The family was seated in a booth not far from the kitchen and was dressed modestly. They were not the most sparkling of conversationalists but they were polite and didn't immediately give me a weird vibe. The family ordered an appetizer, two kids meals, and two modestly priced steaks. All in all, your typically family and order. Things got weird as I delivered the appetizer. The boy started to, forcefully, complain about stomach pains. The mother and father seemed to ignore the complaints. I didn't think much of it as I left the table. A few minutes later I came back to the table to check on the appetizer. The mother told me that the appetizer was fine and gave me a bowl filled with napkins to bring to the dish room. I took the bowl from her and walked away from the table. As I was walking into the kitchen I noticed the bowl had a strange odor to it. By the time I reached the dish room I realized that the bowl contained the contents of the young boy's stomach. The boy threw up at the table in the closest thing he could find which happened to be the appetizer bowl (with appetizer still in it). The mother covered it up with napkins and asked me to take it to the back of the house.

Moral of the story: If your kid is sick, don't go out to eat. If you find yourself in a situation where your kid gets sick, take them to the bathroom. If your kid throws up at the table, don't make your sever clean it up.

Imitation and Flattery

I suppose imitation is the highest form of flattery.
My post (in February). Her post, in May.

TGI Friday's = Inauguration Stupidity

I just noticed on TGI Friday's website they are having the "The World's Largest Inauguration Party" on January 20th. If you do visit the site, make sure you turn off the annoying ambient noise the site forces on you in the lower left corner. (When are web designers going to learn that no one wants music, noise, etc. on websites?) Anyway, at the World's Largest Inauguration Party, there will be "America's Favorite Drink" that, we are apparently suppose to vote for, half priced appetizers, (and don't forget those buttons!). There doesn't appear to be anything related to Obama's actual inauguration... which is strange since it's the actual reason for the gathering. Claiming that Friday's can hold the "The World's Largest Inauguration Party" is also a weird move given the fact that Washington, D.C. is bracing for upwards of a million people for Obama's swearing in.

I can't quite understand the logic here.

Let's throw a party for the inauguration of the president but not mention him in our advertising. Let's also make this "party" on a Tuesday. Finally, don't mention Obama either... because we don't want to piss off anyone who isn't an Obama supporter.

Any of this add up at all?

This is TGI Sportscenter.

In the sprit of the holiday, here is, I think, my all time favorite restaurant commercial.




Dan Patrick is a sports caster/commentator who has always had a great sense of humor. Case in point, here are two excellent commercials from when he worked for ESPN:






So what is it about these three commercials that SO many restaurant commercials don't get? It's hard to say. I'm no Don Draper, but a logical attachment to the product they are selling (food and sports) with a semi-recognizable figure as your pitch person certainly helps. Plus the ideas for the commercials are fresh and somewhat innovative. They aren't recycling songs from the 1960's with "reinvented" lyrics pushing some imaginary vision of how much their cooks/waiters deeply care for our dining experience.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

God I Hate Howie Mandel.

In between the relentless crush of advertising during the Giants/Panthers game (what a game by the way) on Sunday Night Football, a new television show caught my eye. NBC is making Howie Mandel's "dream" come true and giving him a candid camera knock off type show called "Howie Do It" puting "real people in unreal situations".



Who knew Howie had any talent besides saying "Deal............................. or NO Deal???" I have an issue with this show beyond the unforgivable name and the stifling advertising. Most of the current promos running on NBC involve Howie dressed as a waiter mishandling food and beverages. Like waiters/waitresses don't have it hard enough without Mr."Adult ADHD is Real" piling on. Well, fellow servers, don't let it get you down. As a matter of fact, thank God you aren't Howie Mandel. He is a complete nut job (i.e. won't shake people's hands), inflates rubber gloves over his head for a living, and, soon, will be the proud star of the canceled "Howie Do It". When did we start taking this guy seriously? God I hate Howie Mandel.

Annoying Commericals: edummercials, Budweiser

The last thing I want when I watch television is a lecture. This NFL season I have noticed a increase in edummercials, education and commercials. This is especially annoying with Budweiser. Has anyone else noticed how obnoxious these commercials are?



Lately Bud commercials always start with some witty comment, like "fellas, lets talk about commitment" and moves on to a incredibly stupid dialogue about how great Bud is. It makes me cringle every time I watch it because someone, somewhere, thought this was a good idea. Does Bud honestly excpect us to take them seriously? Are they not previously responsible for singing frog commercials ? The makers of Budweiser, Anheuser-Busch, think we, the American viewing public, need an education on beer (follow the link to "Lager Lessons"). Has it changed over the past decade? To compound matters, the only time I actually see these commercials is during football games. I ask you, how many people, watching a football game, don't know what Bud tastes like. How many of us REALLY care about the brewing process or, for that matter, what people will think of us when they see us with the "King of Beers" in our glasses? What happened to awesome Bud commercials like this:






Which would you rather watch?

There is nothing left to tax in New York except soda and air.... well air.

In light of the economic meltdown in progress in New York State (and across the country) Governor Patterson of New York has proposed a slew of new taxes on downloading music, registering your car, and buying beer / wine / soda.

Annoying Commericals: Guy Fieri (TGI Fridays)

SERVICE! NOW!

Interesting article here about customer service on a blog I often peruse. Typical anti-restaurant rhetoric. The blogger visits a restaurant (Olive Garden) after they are closed, expects to be immediately accommodated, and complains when the bartender doesn't immediately fulfill her every need. Of course, she complains to corporate and gets a gift card for her "trouble". Far be it from me to defend O.G. but I'm somewhat disappointed with this blogger since I actually respect her and think she does good work.