[0:00]So, my name's Preston Lee, and I started the 30% rule, and our whole focus is to train hospitality guest experience. The main focus, that's what we're all about, that's what we're obsessed with. There's a lot of restaurants out there. You guys can use yourself as case studies. How many restaurants give you an elevated experience consistently? Do you guys go into restaurants often and get good hospitality? Does it feel like people actually care that you're there? Does it feel like the server cares that you're there? I would ask you this, who here values their money? Who here values their time? So you have to understand that when you go into a restaurant, or any business, they're saying, "I'm trusting you with my money and my time. I'm going to give you my money and my time and return I want an experience, right? And that's what we're here to do. We're here to honor that. Because everyone values their money and their time, especially right now. When money's more valuable than any any other time. Inflation's gone up, rent's gone up, but guess what hasn't gone up? Yeah, your pay, right? Average pay has not gone up by a lot. Cost of living's gone up a lot. So now, more than ever, people are valuing their money. And so they're limiting how much they go out, how often they go out. And so we have to protect the experience, and that's why it's so important to have these things, have this element in your restaurant. There's 2,500 restaurants here. You guys have the fifth most saturated market. So I'm guessing if you walked out a mile this way, or this way, or that way, can you find good food? Can you find good cocktails? The one thing you're not going to find consistently is a great experience, guest experience. Because that's where the secret lies. That's the difference, and that's the difference between a highly successful restaurant and a mediocre one. Can anybody tell me the difference between hospitality and service? Do you guys agree service is transactional? Do you guys agree with that? Hospitality is the personal connection. That's a human connection. Service is a business transaction. Someone walks in the door and what they're telling you is, I have money, and I want to trade the money for food and drinks. And you're going to say, "Yeah, absolutely. I'll seat you. I'll give you a menu. I'll answer any questions, I'll take your order, I'll put the order in, make sure the food comes out. If there's a problem, I'll fix it, and I'll take your payment. That's the transaction piece. That's Burger King. Is anybody here working at Burger King? No, we're not working at Burger King, we're working at an elevated environment. So that's where we come in, the hospitality piece to elevate the experience. That's the difference, that's why you guys are here, the human connection. To give them an experience. If you aren't asking the guest any questions, if you're not giving them anything else besides the transaction, if you're just asking them what they'd like to order, if you're just answering questions really nicely, if you're just being really nice, that's not hospitality, that's part of the transaction. You'll get that at Burger King. I'm sure someone at Burger King will smile at you and be really nice as you're taking their as you're taking your order. But there's no elevation there. There's no personality there. There's no connection there. And so that's the difference between hospitality and service. That's what we're here for, hospitality, the experience. That's the point. That's why we're all here. We're all here together to work as a team to give the guests the best experience possible. If we're giving every guest that walks in through this door, the best experience possible, we win. That means people will come back. That means our jobs will be more fulfilling. But the reason why most restaurants don't do that is because it's challenging. It takes effort and it takes energy. It takes consistency. It's not have to think about hospitality as this giant gesture, but simply micro-dosing hospitality, little by little. Simple, tiny, little things throughout the whole experience to give them, to elevate the experience and ultimately give a big piece of hospitality. Has anybody ever been to a restaurant where you make eye contact with another employee there that's not your server and they just look away? Right? They're like, "You know, like they still want to have anything to do with you." And you're just like, "I'm just sitting here, man. Like, you cross my line of vision. Has that ever happened to you? Of course. Because there's no hospitality there, right? If you make eye contact with a person, smile, right? Maybe nod, wave, whatever. How's it going, right? Little things like that. Smiling is a huge part of hospitality, and not a lot of people do, or enough people do. You should be smiling at your tables every time you're there, right? If you're just dropping off a drink at a table, what should you do when you drop off that drink? Smile. I was at a restaurant that was not cheap, it wasn't crazy expensive. And I was sitting there, and we ordered an appetizer, and I'm not joking around, the food runner, it was a very impressive, came up and went, That was it. Didn't ask, like, "Hey, I have the all-poke for you. How are you guys doing? Is there anything else I can get? Not a word. Just dropped it off and walked away, right? How do you think that made me feel? Valued? No, of course not. I feel valued. I feel like this guy does not want to work here. He doesn't want to be a part of this, and all of a sudden my money gets devalued. My time gets devalued, right? Because of that little tiny interaction. And that wasn't a big deal? No, it wasn't a big deal, but damn, it was weird and it was awkward. Why am I experiencing that when I'm out to eat? So, smiling, right? When you're at a table, even if you're just dropping off food, even if it's not your table, even if you're bussing, who's here is a busser? We all could do it in this room. But we have to honestly care and want it. I was working with a restaurant, the food runner told me, she was like, "Every time I drop off a dish, I always recommend one of the sauces that we have. We have like three sauces that aren't even for that dish, but I say, 'Oh, you really want this sauce with this dish, that's one of my favorite ways to eat it. Do you want me to bring you a side of it?'" Little things like that. "Uh, yeah, for sure. That'd be awesome, right?" That seems like they care. What's another way we could microdose hospitality? Learning their name, so simple, right? Lost art form for some reason. Why not learn their name? Do the studies. When you call people by their name when you talk to them, the connection becomes much stronger. Yes. Eye contacts. Everyone agree with that? Has anybody uh uh been at a restaurant with a person doesn't or breaks eye contact constantly? Yeah, it's off-putting, right? Shows that they don't you're just you're just literally showing them that you don't care. If you're a server, and you're taking an order with the toast pad, you have to treat it like you're texting while you're driving. I know no one does that in this room, but just try and pay at just try and picture it if you can. When you're texting and driving, you're not like, "I'm just going to go ahead and just let's see what happens," right? It's like, "Yeah." Right? It's like a dip, you're just dipping in, but you have to make sure you're making eye contact as much as possible, confirming the order, right? Talking with enthusiasm when you're talking to them, but you've got to make sure you're not staring at that iPad and to a great example of that, which I walked into a restaurant. I was in Minneapolis, and it was like a chef-owned, celebrity chef restaurant, and we're excited about it, and we walk in and it's dead. I'm talking like there's one other table in the whole restaurant. I was like, "Oh my God, this is weird. I thought it was going to be packed." So I walked in, and the hostess is like this, right, as soon as I walk in. She's on the iPad. So I walk up to the front and I'm waiting for her to look up at me and she goes, "How many in your party?" And I was like, "Uh, three." Right this way. And she walks away. Never once makes eye contact with me.
[6:58]Manages to put my my uh my table in, walk me to my table, drop it off and never makes eye contact with me. How do you think that makes me feel? Unacknowledged, uncomfortable. How does it make you how would that make you feel? Would you be like, "Man, I'm in for a good meal here. I can't wait. This is going to be an experience." And it all correlated too, because the server walks up, "Hi, how how are you guys? Welcome. Is your first time here?" Uh, yeah, actually it is. "Nice. Can I start you guys off with something to drink?" Why did he ask me that question? But why did he ask me that question if he's not doing anything with the information? Right? That makes no sense. He's asking me if it's my first time, I say yes, and he goes, "Cool, can I start you off with something to drink?" Why? You got to eliminate the question. You're not doing anything with it. It makes absolutely no sense. He's clearly someone trained him to say that, but he's not doing the follow-up because he's not paying attention, he doesn't care, right? And that's how you start feeling throughout the whole experience and it's kind of sucks because the food was good. The food was good, but am I going to go back? No, because it was an awkward, weird experience. And you guys should be the same way when you guys go out to eat. If you go out to eat somewhere, and they're not giving you hospitality, if they're not training their staff to give you hospitality, if the staff doesn't care about your hard-earned money, then you should vote with your money and not go back. You should go honor the places that actually give you the good experiences. That have the staff that cares, that injects that into their culture. That's who you should be giving your money to, not the people that don't care about you. It makes no sense. And we should have the same mentality when we're serving people. Do we really care? This person worked hard for their money. Am I honoring that? It doesn't matter what their attitude is. It doesn't matter what how they act. Another good example too, I'll give you, is I was at a restaurant, and I'm training and there's two managers. And one manager was like the nicest guy. He was like super outgoing and super nice and high-fiving me and just just super positive, really funny. And the other manager was like this the whole time. Like, I'm I'm cracking jokes, being super funny. That was a joke. But I mean, just just couldn't like, he just doesn't move his face the whole time I'm talking and I'm just like, "This guy hates me. He hates me. He hates everything about me, he hates the way I look." And then I talked to them afterwards and he goes, "Hey, that was amazing. Thank you so much, Preston. I just I learned a lot and I really appreciate you being here. I'm just I was so happy that I got to be a part of this." And I realized that I was judging him, right? Because he's not reacting the way I should I want him to react. He's not he's not giving me the cues.
[9:44]And so I was judging him. And the point of that story is, you're going to have guests like that, right? You're going to have guests that come up to the bar and they're super nice and talkative and how awesome you're doing, how great of a drink you made and how great this place is, and how long has it been here? And you're so great. And you're like, "Yeah," right? "I'll give this guy hospitality. That's easy." But it's a guy that comes in, not saying a word, not giving you the cues, and you're still giving him that hospitality. Because we can't judge people. Right? We don't know what they're thinking, we don't know what they're going through, we don't know what's going on their lives, but we do know one thing. What is that? Yes, they came here to spend their money and give us their money and their time. Honor us with their money and their time. We do know that. And we have to honor that by giving them the best experience possible. Do you guys agree with that? What's our job here? To give the guests the best experience possible. To give the guests the best experience possible. So, a couple more examples of micro-dosing. Someone ran the wrong drink to the wrong table. Easy example. Things like that happen all the time. Mistakes are going to happen. We cannot eradicate 100% of mistakes. It'd be great if we can. We could try and uh uh lower them as much as we possible, but we cannot stop them from happening, but what we can do is recover the table properly, right? How do we recover the table properly? What do you think the number one thing we need to do is? Communicate, apologize, show them that we care. That's all they want, just like that's all you want. When someone makes a mistake at a restaurant, all you want is for them to show that you care, that they they care, that's it. Just show me that you care, offering solutions. Apologies are necessary, one apology, right? After that, I'm going to fix it for you right away, as fast as I can. Do you guys agree with that? So we can't eliminate mistakes 100%. We also what we can do is protect the experience. We could build a fortress around it with hospitality. So if you make an honest to God connection with your tables, make an honest connection with them, build a relationship, when that mistake happens, they're a lot more forgiving. Right? I'm so sorry. I know it's been 30 minutes. I forgot to bring in your order. It's super busy. You know what? Don't even worry about it. You're good, you know, we like you, you're awesome. But if you're giving them transaction, making them feel unvalued, now they're looking for a reason, right? They walk in, the host is short with them, sits them down, doesn't show they care, the server comes up, maybe a little bit late, unapologetic, going through the uh the um transaction. Now when a mistake happens, you're going to pay for it. I'm going to make sure you pay for it. Do you guys agree with that? We have to protect it, own it. Even if it's not your fault, try and own it, right? They'll respect you for it. People will respect you and they'll have empathy, because you're could be vulnerable. I'm so sorry. I made a huge mistake here, right? Absolutely don't worry about it. It's all good, right? What if someone's upset that they had to wait 15 minutes past their reservation? On their anniversary, feel like, yeah, make them feel like they're seen that you care. That's it. Make them feel like you care. That's all it takes, right? Do go above and beyond. So that's the things we want to focus on. This is why hospitality is so important, it makes your job 100 times easier in so many different ways. Financially, mentally, everything. It makes the job go smoother, it makes it more more fulfilling, but we have to do it a high level. We're doing the bare minimum, that's what we're going to get back in return. That's why we're all here. We're all here together to work as a team to give the guest the best experience possible. If we're giving every guest that walks in through this door, the best experience possible, we win.
