If you own a restaurant, this piece is especially for you. How do you keep your customer’s pallet wet while your staff runs off to the Nile to capture fish and chop off their fingers to prepare the fish fingers the customer pointed out on the menu? The customer is king…and the king is hungry. Also, the king wants chicken embrronganaise with obsidian topping. We all know making that dish involves karate-chopping a chicken on the head and plucking all its feathers off even before it hits the ground. How do you keep your customer from storming out protesting how long you’ve taken to bring what they’ve ordered? Yes, we do understand that the Chef has to wait for the chicken to collect itself before attempting the karate chop but still….the customer is hungry. Here are ways that research has proved will keep your customer happy as he/she waits:
A GUY
If your customer is a guy, his hunger will be momentarily forgotten if while he waits, a team of four to six belly-dancers show up and start to wiggle their money-making bits in and around his general perimeter. Anywhere within a five meter radius of him qualifies as ‘in and around his general perimeter’.
A GIRL
For your female customer impatiently waiting for her meal, a waiter and waitress should walk past her several times, casting each other furtive, lustful looks and referring to each other only as ‘Ricardo’ and ‘Santa Maria’. Ricardo should keep mouthing “But I can’t be with you Santa Maria, you are my cousin” to which the waitress should respond “But I love you Ricardo. I.love.you”. At this point it would be nice if the waitress dropped and broke a plate or two.
ON A DATE
If the customers waiting to be served are on a date, send a waiter over to suggest topics of conversation. He should go and stand right next to the table and keep reading out a suggested topic of conversation every ten minutes.
“Gold digging”, “Digging gold”, “Fast food”, “Why fast food? Fast water”, “Alien invasion” and “Terrorism” are usual favourites. Make sure they make your list.
By this time the meal ought to be ready. If it isn’t then the customer has every right to storm out and curse your establishment on every social media account they can create. Even MySpace. Ok not MySpace. No one’s there