Are You Experienced?

Foodservice must look beyond what�s on the plate to provide multifaceted experiences for consumers.

By Derek Gale, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 3/15/2007

Sonsie, new to the scene in Atlantic City, uses lighting, wood and warm colors to create an inviting setting for diners.

Communal tables, such as this at Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill, Las Vegas, can help create an experience.

There’s something to be said for good food. Food is the primary raison d’être for any restaurant, and if it is done well, people notice and appreciate it. Some are even willing to overlook lackluster design or a crowded waiting list as long as the food suits their taste.

But with the abundance of foodservice options today, quite often good food just isn’t enough. In fact, nearly 43% of all restaurant customers say they take into account not just food, but all aspects of a dining experience when determining if a restaurant is a good value, according to R&I’s New American Diner survey.

These people are proving B. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore’s argument in their influential book, "The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage" (Harvard Business School Press, 1999), which posits that businesses competing solely based on prices of goods are commoditized, while those that offer customers great experiences can differentiate themselves and charge a premium for what they offer.

For foodservice, this means it simply isn’t enough to offer a great menu because consumers consider the totality of their experience when dining out.

The friendliness of the person taking a reservation, availability of parking, the lighting, noise level, quality of restroom soap: these mini-experiences—and more—influence word-of-mouth recommendations and repeat business.

Create An Emotional Connection

For those who have had Pine and Gilmore’s book on their must-read lists or who have otherwise missed the sell-the-experience memo, the good news is that it’s not too late to get on board, says Jeneanne Rae, adjunct professor of marketing at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

"In my estimation we are still at the dawn of the Experience Age," Rae wrote in a BusinessWeek.com column last year. "Superior customer experiences are still so novel that when we encounter them we tend to talk about it to others."

Rae says customers gladly will pay more for an experience that is not only functionally but also emotionally rewarding. Integral to establishing this emotional connection is winning a customer over during moments of truth and personalizing the customer experience, she notes.

Moments of truth occur at key touch points in a customer’s interface with a restaurant. When someone enters a restaurant, "You’re looking for a friendly greeting, and an immediacy of service," says Nick Peyton, partner and maître d’ at Cyrus restaurant in Healdsburg, Calif.

The restroom is no less important, says Brian Stys, vice president of Boston-based Shawmut Design and Construction’s restaurant group. "If the detail in the ladies’ restroom is not done right and if it’s not clean, [a guest] may see it and say, ‘We won’t want to come back to this place.’"

This Time It’s Personal

Nailing these moments of truth goes a long way toward creating customer loyalty, but personalization can seal the deal in terms of repeat customers.

But "personalization only works if it’s truly personal," Peyton says. In other words, a restaurant staffer recognizing a guest and asking about other family members is personal, while a server calling a guest by name only after reading it on a credit card is not.

In his "Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business" (HarperCollins, 2006), Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) President Danny Meyer shares a story about a couple celebrating their anniversary at one of his restaurants. The couple mentioned to the maître d’ that they’d put a bottle of champagne in their freezer to chill so they’d be able to enjoy it when they returned home. Recognizing a potential disaster, the maître d’ offered to go to the couple’s apartment and save the champagne, which he did, properly chilling it in the couple’s refrigerator and leaving some complimentary chocolates and a small tin of caviar.

This may be an extreme example, but Meyer stresses the importance of providing this level of personalized service whenever possible. "The trick is to hire people for whom providing this type of hospitality is a thrill," he writes.

Peyton agrees. "The best servers are slightly dysfunctional people pleasers," he says.

For employees who may not be naturals at establishing this type of connection with guests, restaurants can use training and coaching tools to help them get there. USHG runs a two-week training program to help new hires understand all aspects of the dining experience.

Douglas Brooks, president and CEO of Dallas-based Brinker International says the company is "working to create a more emotional connection with our employees so they translate that into a more-emotional connection with our guests."

"The competitive advantage in casual dining more than ever is how our employees make our customers feel," Brooks stresses. "The experience in casual dining is as important as the food itself."

What You See…

Service and hospitality are not the totality of great customer experiences. That hard-to-define aspect—atmosphere—also must be considered.

"I think design and décor today is more important" than almost any other aspect of restaurants, says Bob Puccini, president-CEO of restaurant-design firm The Puccini Group in San Francisco. "Americans are so influenced by what they see. We’re a visual culture."

Tom Kaplan, senior managing partner in Las Vegas-based Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, goes one step farther. "What we’re finding today, particularly in Las Vegas, is that design in some cases is more important than food and service. The hierarchy is different for different environments."

How do you create a mood and make an emotional connection through design?

"Your lighting is a monumental part of that as well as colors you choose," Shawmut’s Stys says. He points to newly built Sonsie in Atlantic City as an example. The restaurant uses multiple shades of wood and burnt-orange tile, which individually "disgusted" his team, but that together complement each other to create a warm, inviting, comfortable setting. Warm earth tones such as oranges make people feel more comfortable and hungrier, he says.

While owners and developers of upscale restaurants are more focused on design and are spending more on it today than in the past, "no one has put more effort into design than chain restaurants," Puccini says. "They’re the ones that have really upped the ante."

Last year, Maryville, Tenn.-based Ruby Tuesday revised its menu; now it is addressing other experiential elements. The casual-dining chain will roll out a new décor design systemwide over the next few years, in addition to an ongoing update of employee uniforms and tabletop products. Spokesman Rick Johnson says the chain looks to "meet ever-increasing levels of customer sophistication and appreciation for an atmosphere that is advanced and improved. More and more it is about offering a total guest experience."

Putting It All Together

"There is something very intangible about a successful restaurant," Puccini notes, "and that something is its personality. The weaving together of all elements—design, menu, service style and so on—when done properly, those things come together [to produce something] greater than the sum of its parts."

It’s challenging enough to create this type of rich dining experience, but perhaps even more difficult for operators is sustaining that experience and continuing to meet or exceed expectations of repeat customers they’ve earned.

"A beautiful room and great food can get someone in once, but what keeps people coming back is the execution of doing it perfectly every time," says Jones.

As the successes of such organizations show, operators that can master the art of creating a consistently great customer experience will be the true winners, both today and tomorrow. Peyton puts it simply: "If you design a truly compelling experience, people will come."