Small Business Marketing – The Experiance

A recent experience!

My wife’s employer just had an employee appreciation
dinner for 80 people here is how it went.

The dinner was at 7:30 PM, we arrived at 7:15 PM,
and the front and back parking lots were full. Cars
where parked down the street for two blocks, keep in
mind I live in MN, it gets cold this time of year
and there was snow on the ground.

Because of the parking problem I wasted five minutes
looking for a spot, then I decided to drop my wife
off at the door and go park in a funeral home parking
lot that was almost three blocks away. Of course now
I had to walk back to the restaurant, and when the
dinner was over I had to walk back and get my car,
burr!

I decided as I was walking to the restaurant that I
wasn’t going to let this ruin my evening. Now I walk
into the restaurant and the front entrance is jammed
with people. I found my wife and squeezed through the
masses to get to the hostess, we asked her where our
party was meeting? She gave us a blank stare like she
had no idea what we talking about. She then said just
a minute and left, she came back did something else
then looked at us and said follow me.

We were escorted through two or three dinning rooms
and lots of people until we got to the end of the
restaurant, she walked us into a room filled with
empty tables and two people setting the tables. At
the other side of the room there was a group of
about ten people sitting around a table that were
not in our party. The hostess told us she thought
this was where we were suppose to be and left.

So I asked one of the wait staff if this was the
party for the XXX? He didn’t know!

So I decided to sit down, then a guy with a
microphone on his head and an earplug in his ear
came over and told us that we were in the right
room, but they didn’t want to seat us until the
other group had left and he suggested we go to
the bar.

He told me that they had paid their bill
20 minutes ago and were just visiting. I told him
that he had us booked for 7:30 PM it’s now 7:40 PM
and your front entrance is jammed with people. I
also told him that if he seated our group the other
party would leave on their own.

He must of thought that was a good idea because
all of sudden our room filled up and they did leave.

I could go on with this saga, but it would be pages
of reading so here are the highlights.

8:10 PM before we saw a server to take a beverage
order.

Only three servers for 80 people.

Servers did not use trays to serve so they carried
out two beverages at a time.

Food was served family style and we left hungry.

Room was packed so tight you couldn’t move around
and the servers couldn’t get through.

When desert trays were passed every table had something
different so you wanted what someone else had.

Separating our room from another dinning room was a
curtain, employees were sitting in the other room
talking to each other and on their cell phones, and
their language was not appropriate.

Coffee was served after the desert and our server
carried it out two cups at a time.

I am not even going to begin with how I would change
this experience, but the marketing opportunities here
are huge! If you are a competitor!

Here is the bad news, I was really looking forward to
eating here, and based on this experience I will never
go back nor would I recommend it.

Now I realize that this was a party of eighty people
so I shouldn’t be so quick to judge, however if you
own or manage a restaurant and you can’t handle eighty
people DON’T BOOK THE PARTY! What you made here will
be lost many times over when eighty people tell eight
hundred people about their bad experience.

Marketing is not just about getting prospects in the
door it’s the whole experience all the way through
the follow up long after the sale.

What’s your customers experience?

For more blow your socks off sales and marketing
help go to www.GSSAM.com.

Take care,
Blase