Restaurant Life

When people go out to dine, they only see one side of restaurant life: the deliberately staged ‘outside’ atmosphere that includes aromatic fragrances, welcoming faces and calming décor. What they don’t see is the other side of restaurant life: the chaotic ‘inside’ environment filled with frantic servers, overworked chefs and a pile of dirty dishes.

This is not to say that all restaurants experience the same level of chaos on the inside; but the basic elements of restaurant life are assumed to be universal. All restaurants – at one point or another – are faced with the hustle and bustle attributed to promotional specials and holiday weekends.

During moments of chaos, restaurant life becomes a place where ‘sink or swim’ is the main mantra. Chefs, line cooks and pantry help scurry to produce delicious meals in a timely manner, bartenders scramble to create thirst-quenching beverages, and servers hustle between the kitchen and dining room to satisfy customer needs.

If customers aren’t aware of how many people work behind the scenes to produce the perfect dining experience, they might take that whole experience for granted. For instance, on a busy weekend, popular restaurants will often over-book their reservations; in turn, customers have to wait extra time before a table becomes available. During these busy evenings, customers seem to only be concerned with what they see on the outside: dirty tables, lines of people, and frantic servers. But in these cases, staff members actually work twice as hard to ensure that everyone has an exceptional evening.

What people need to understand is that restaurant life does not merely consist of food, servers and customers. There’s a lot more that goes on behind the scenes to make their dining experience worthwhile. Each department of the restaurant – including servers, hostesses, bartenders, bus kids, managers, cooks, dishwashers and food runners – works in synchronicity to produce an exceptional product and flawless service.

The sooner people realize just how complex restaurant life can be, the sooner they can appreciate all the hard work that goes into their dining experience.

The Demanding Customer

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. But as the level of romance rises, so does the level of customer demands.

Along with New Years Eve, and Mother’s Day, February 14th is the busiest night for dining out. More often than not, restaurant servers choose to forego their own Valentine’s plans in favour of working. People who haven’t experienced Valentine’s Day as a waiter or waitress might be thinking, Why would anyone choose to subject themselves to demanding diners on the most romantic day of the year? There’s only one simple answer to this question: Money.

However, even though servers have the ability to make a good living on Valentine’s Day, the money doesn’t always come easily. Servers have to work hard to earn tips on February 14th by putting up with a lot of customer demands. Everyone wants the most romantic Valentines experience in hopes of impressing their significant others; and as servers, we have to go above and beyond the call of duty to meet their demands.

To intensify an evening of romance, demanding customers want the best table with maximum ambience, the best bottle of champagne at a reasonable price, and premiere service with a great deal of privacy.

To waiters and waitresses, demanding customers appear annoyingly arrogant and supremely stubborn – especially on Valentine’s Day. But if you are able to look beyond your customers’ egos and make them feel special by giving in to [at least some of] their requests, at the end of the day, you just might find your pockets lined with wads of green, red and brown paper.