It is your place after all. So, sure, go ahead and do whatever the hell you want. BUT. Think about what you are doing, and the choices you are making. Too many places make decisions based on this mindset, and the result is often not in the best interests of the customer, and therefore, not for yourself, or your business.

At what cost

In one of the classes I teach, we talk about the cost/benefit ratio. The cost of implementing a change, or a control system, or a new policy, and the benefit (or drawback ) obtained in making that change. When you make a decision about something, think through what it is going to really mean.

Is this new plan going to upset your employees, leading them to mischief? Theft? Bad service? Becoming malcontents who are going to try to sabotage your best efforts from then on?

Is this change going to alienate your customers? Customers who at one point thought highly of you, but now consider you dead to them?

Turns out there are other restaurants

Are the decisions you are making just a convenience for you? There is a restaurant in my neighborhood that used to close at 10:00. The realized after a while that this particular neighborhood just doesn’t go out to dinner after 9:00, so they changed their hours to close at 9:00.

Fine. But when I walk in at 8:25 to eat, and the host/manager looks back to the kitchen to get the thumbs up, or the no way Jose, it is kind of annoying. Or when I get seated at 8:30, and am told that I need to order right away because the kitchen is closing, what am I the customer to think?

I’ll tell you what the customer is going to think…

“I’m not going to go there again.” Yeah, that’s right, it doesn’t take much to lose a repeat customer. And let’s remember, the repeat customer is by far the most valuable. So again I say, be careful what choices you make.

The closure of an unnamed Southeast Portland vegan restaurant this week prompted a lot of responses on social media. MOSTLY NEGATIVE. I never ate there (nothing to do with the fact that it was vegan), but I also never had any intention of going there based on the reputation. The attitude within.

The strict policies of some of these Nazi restaurants, turn these restaurants in to non-sustainable businesses. Customers ultimately will not stand for it, and eventually it will catch up to you.

I am sure none of these things has ever happened to any of you. (Sarcasm.) Be mindful of the decisions you make, clear of the messages you are sending out to you employees, and to your customers, and you will reap the benefits of a busy restaurant.