Providing Great Restaurant Customer Service With Darren Denington (Ep 218)
In this episode, Jaime Oikle sits down with Darren Denington, the Founder of Service with Style, to delve into essential restaurant customer service tips that can elevate your dining establishment. With over 27 years of experience, Darren shares his insights on improving customer service through effective training, leadership, and secret shopping strategies. Whether you're a seasoned restaurateur or just starting, this episode offers actionable advice to ensure every guest leaves with a smile and returns for more. Tune in to learn how to create a service experience that truly stands out.
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Providing Great Restaurant Customer Service With Darren Denington
I'm excited that my friend and industry expert and long-time colleague, Darren Dennington, Founder of Service with Style is with us. Darren, always good to see you. Welcome back.
Jaime, how are you? Thanks for having me.
For those that don't know Darren, he could talk about every aspect of the restaurant business for hours and hours and does it. He trains extensively throughout the country and does workshops and consulting for restaurants. We're going to focus on 20 to 30 minutes of service content, and how to give great customer service. I'm really looking forward to that. I feel like an uptick in service is desperately needed based on what I get out there. Maybe let's start at the beginning though, and then we'll dig deeper of course, but Service with Style, how did you get started? What's going on?
It’s been many years now. It was always a passion of mine. Service, that's how I entered the industry and that's still what I love to focus on and just working in the industry, wanted that extra set of eyes. Remember going away for a weekend, calling a friend of mine, “Can you come in and tell me how your experience was?” Just found that the feedback was incredibly valuable and just love to hear the guest's perspective. We built a company out of it. Service with style, secret shopping.
You've been doing it for years and years. Probably everybody is familiar with the idea of secret shopping, but let's kind of just assume no knowledge. What does it look like to be a secret shopper or what is the restaurant experiencing? What do you get?
The whole cornerstone of the program is the report. We send in people to your establishment and we're a normal guest. Nobody knows who we are. That report that we complete 6, 7, 8, and 9 pages just gives you so many details. There are a couple hundred questions on it. Everything's individually scored and it just gives you a flash card really quick of how we did. The very first thing that you see when you open a shopping report is your score.
I was literally just reviewing scores over the weekend and we had 11 reports turned in from shoppers out in the field that were in the 60% scoring range. Quite frankly that's just not enough to bring guests back. On the flip side, we had 14 or 15 of them done on the weekend which was in the 90%. That 90% score tells me and the guest, that I had value, that I appreciated the experience, that I got out of it everything that I wanted to. When I left my $80, was it worth it? That 90% and above is what we guide every day.
You've got to be at that level because what we found over the years is from a guest perspective if I get a 90% type of experience. That's got to be fantastic. We're not messing around here. 90% and above, three times in a row, I now trust you. When I trust you, I visit you more often, I am willing to refer you to somebody that I know, and you're in my trusted inner circle of restaurants that I frequent regularly, but you've got to prove that. It's not just one visit, it's got to be over and over.
Let me ask you a question because I'm curious about that secret shopper. You say they're unknown, but obviously, they're taking a lot of mental notes in their head. You said, you pointed to a couple hundred potential questions and the feedback. I'm seeing a very valuable report here, getting that data back. I'm sure a lot of surprising results will come to restaurant operators when they see that. Two things, one, talk about the shoppers themselves, how they kind of process all that data. Then maybe we'll get into some learnings when the restaurants hit I'm like, “I didn't know that.” Tell me about the shoppers first.
As a restaurant owner in the industry and growing up, I always wanted that great feedback. What I found was that when I get the feedback, I love to act on it very quickly. It's got to be a good detailed report. That's what we found this on was quality reports. To do that, you need really good shoppers. We recruit the right people. We train them. We communicate with them. We precisely recruit them for the right observations. Then it's the template that we work really closely with the restaurants because there are very specific details about service and the guest experience that every individual restaurant has that are very important to them.
We customize every single report. The detailed shops that we get back just give a large picture, but then very detailed. By sending the right person in, you get a really good report. Then you take that feedback. What I always used to love to do was the weekly manager meeting. Every time we got shopped, I would print that report and I would set it in the middle of a manager meeting and say, “We just got shopped, let's talk about it.” What I found is that it forced us to talk about service that we always assumed because we were doing our best to hire the right people and we cared that we always felt we were providing this great service. In essence, we weren't to every single guest because we just assumed that it was easy. We don't have to focus on service.
We've got good people. We would focus on all the other projects in the restaurant, the inventory setup, kitchen layouts, and bar cleanups but we never spent enough time day to day on service, and dropping that secret shopping report in the middle of the manager's meeting forced us every single time to, “What did we do right? What did we do wrong? What are our learning experiences? Who's going to go back and talk to Jennifer and tell her that she did this great, but we have a few things to work on?” It becomes this personalized training tool first with the managers, but then you sit down in a one-on-one meeting with the individual employees and start to go over detail by detail. There's a lot of training involved in that.
I want to go back to a couple of those things. As I talked with Darren right before we started, I was just coming off a cruise. Cruise service is usually impeccable. When you come back to land, you're like, “Why can’t I get that same level of experience on land?” What do the cruise ships do differently? Is it training? Is it just a commitment to service? I believe those are part of it. Let's talk about that. What is broken in service right now? Why is it not great? What do restaurants need to do to change the mindset of service in their locations? A couple of thoughts there, what do you think?
What I typically see that is broken is the training program. That seems to be the one piece that restaurants do struggle with, putting in a training program that can be there for years and years to come. What we're doing right is focusing on it. I find that service has a great deal of attention and there's the leadership teams seem to take it a lot more critically, mostly based on social media. Nobody wants these poor reviews out to their potential customers. They're really trying to protect that image.
I still think that the absolute key to great service is your leadership team, your management team. If they're focusing on the basics, “Everyone, let's smile today. Let's make sure that our Greek times are really quick. Let's get up to everybody and open the door before they even walk in.” Those little things that we can overlook have to come from the leadership team. That's got to start with the managers and then it trickles down. I think that that's the biggest key.
Your leadership team sets the tone for everything. Focus on the basics, like a quick smile and greeting, to create a welcoming environment that keeps guests coming back.
You just hit a couple of small things that I swear to God are bigger than you may think as an operator. Saying hi quickly in a nice manner, opening that door, I always appreciate that, but there are times when I leave a restaurant and I get this really ambivalent, “Thanks for coming.” That last opportunity is really crucial on the way out. Let's talk about some of those moments of capture that you can get. How do you talk about it? Again, Darren trains. He goes in, he does one or two-day workshops all the time. He's distilling a lot of information in a short period of time here. What are some of those early touch points that can kind of make or break?
Think about it this way. If you go out for lunch today when it was my daughter yesterday for lunch at a place we hadn't tried before, and it was $76. We just had a couple of sandwiches, a coffee, and an iced tea. That's $76. When I closed that guest check, the image of whether was it worth it was going through my mind. I just spent $76. Did I get anything in return? I break that value into a few different components. The first component, let's get this one out of the way quickly is food quality.
I don't care if I'm paying $6 or I'm paying $65 for a meal, I'm expecting good quality every single time, no matter what. That's a big portion of how I perceive the value. The next piece is what I consider the establishment. The cleanliness and how are the bathrooms. Is the furniture in good condition and are the plants at the front door flowering and red and yellow, are they dying? At the establishment, I put less priority on the value, but as a guest coming in, I see that there's landscaping debris all over the front porch and I see that there's no toilet paper left.
We chip away at the perceived value of the establishment. Now that third component is service. That's where we get to the people portion of this. The industry obviously is it's a difficult industry. We all know that we talk about the challenges all the time. With pricing continuing to be a struggle, we've got to keep our prices as reasonable as possible so that the guests can still afford to come but we also need to price them on the high side so that our prime cost is in line.
When you're dealing with prices, I find that the absolute best way to overcome higher prices is with personalized great service and friendliness. That's the X factor. In this simple new restaurant that we went to, the establishment wasn't there, it was dirty, it was a little disheveled. The quality was decent, but what took it over the top and made it a nice experience was the server.
A mediocre meal can be forgiven if the service is exceptional. Personalized, friendly service is the X-factor that makes guests feel valued.
There was nothing exceptional about anything from this experience, except this young lady being super friendly, taking a little bit of time to talk to us as people, and just showing that she genuinely cared. It's hard to get to, but again, that's why I feel like a strong leadership team has to create a culture so that the staff wants to be there. They want the smile, they enjoy it, and they're trying to do this together as a group. The guests coming in, we see that, we feel that. The employee morale and friendliness is a really big component of how I perceive value.
Thanks, Darren. Good walkthrough there. The question that I wrote, I've already written it down twice, because you've said it, was it worth it? I echo the same thing because prices have increased dramatically and this is what everybody knows. No rocket science there, but we have a family of five. We sit down and you talk about a $76 lunch, a basic dinner is now $120 sometimes I'm talking basic dinner, not the fancy dinner, just dinner.
I asked that same question, was it worth it? I'm signing the thing. I'm adding the tip. I'm like, this was very mediocre. I appreciate the components that you had. It's the food, the service, and the establishment. I typically just have not been able to raise my hand and said service has been exceptional lately. What can restaurants do in the short term, medium term, kind of long term to get better is it pre-shift? Is it regular training? What are some thoughts?
It’s first a matter of taking this on as a project. We take on new menus as a project and renovations, and let's implement an inventory program. Let's implement a good service plan. Whether you're a quick service restaurant or a nice fine dining restaurant, you need to understand the level of service. For me, a service plan is getting 3, 4, or 5 people together and let's meet on service. You're coming up with a few actionable steps.
Part of that has to be how you message to the employees where, again, I feel that a lot of people take this for granted, “I'm a friendly person. Of course, I'm providing great service.” We don't get down to the basics. How quickly should you greet the table and what do you clear off the table when you're pre-busing? We always say pre-bus, pre-bus, but there's a good way to do that. There are ways to prove to me, the guest, that you're professional in your job. A simple little service plan, I've got a little book on my website, 10 Steps to Great Service.
It's starting off with understanding what you're trying to do. It's figuring out a good communication plan. You had mentioned shift meetings. I think that those are perfect. Part of this has to be, let's understand what our message is and what we're trying to do. Let's now communicate this to the staff. How do we do that? First, it's usually the bigger picture. I love getting 120 employees together in the room for 3, or 4 hours and going through a service training and really acknowledging what that truly means. Then it becomes the day-to-day. How do you get this message through all the time?
I love that secret shopping report in the middle of the manager meeting because it focuses on us coming out of a manager meeting. We always had shift meetings. Weekly we would come up with 3, 4, and 5 things that the management team wanted to communicate to the staff during our daily shift meeting. Our weekly message. We always threw in service tips so that we were regularly talking about those. It's smile, smile, smile. We're just going to hammer that for the next couple of days.
Now it's greet times. You've got to take those little tiny things seriously, but then on the bigger picture, you've got to implement this into a training program. There's some materials and booklets and maybe a shadow program behind it so that you're able to consistently and professionally pass on all the details to all of your staff in a way that they actually comprehend them and they take them in and understand what type of service you're trying to provide here.
You referenced the report on your site, 10 steps to great service. We were remiss in not mentioning the site early on, but correct me if I'm wrong, ServiceWithStyle.com correct? Folks definitely go there as a resource. Do you want to share a couple more of those steps of service? Like what else should people know? If I were a server, if I was a manager, and you already mentioned a handful of things to bring into a meeting the next day, like actionable stuff they could use today or tomorrow. What else is a quick tip?
Let's think about distractions. A server comes in at 11:00. The place opens at 11:30 and they've got a bunch of things to do. Let's say that there are 15 things on their checklist to get done. Quarter to 12 comes and there are only 6 or 7 of those things on the checklist done. I did them by memory. I didn't look at a checklist. I know how to open this place. Then you get into a rush and quarter after 12, you realize that nobody cut lemons, nobody made iced tea and the ice bins weren't filled up. All of those little tiny things take away from the type of service that I'm getting. Now my iced tea is a little bit longer.
The server is a little bit more flustered, and a little more distracted. If the setup was ready if the management took the setup of the restaurant a really serious checklist, actionless, responsibilities list, so that the knucklehead stuff gets done by your team regularly all the time and you're set to succeed. That at 11:30, you're holding that door open saying, “Welcome, super happy to see you today.” Instead of, “We got guests at the door. I know I'm just finishing the coffee. I'll just be a few minutes.” It's being set up in advance. If you've got the restaurant ready to go and you've got really good morale, now you're off to having a fantastic shift.
Good tip. Something that I was thinking about in my head, you do a lot of training. A lot of restaurant staff is on the younger side traditionally, or they can be transient college kids, high school kids, etc. Anything and everybody's mentality has changed and we all get distracted by our phones. It's a different generation of way of training people, a way of talking and leading people. What are some tips for that new generation in terms of training and so forth? What do you think?
It's the same information that we're trying to pass on to them. It's just making sure that you're adapting your message in a way that they understand it and that they're engaged in it. I find that building your team and getting them really trained is the huge key to everything that we're talking about. People bring a lot of different qualities to the table. During the interview process, you're looking for character, you're looking for smiles, you're looking for genuinely friendly people that you feel can create that hospitality feeling.
When you're bringing in star people, a lot of times they don't have the experience. That's where it has to be taken more seriously that the small aspects of service are trained. How we clear a table, how we carry a tray, how we pour coffee, all the little tiny things so that your staff looks professional, that they look like they know what they're doing. For me, honestly, when a server comes up to a table and really properly pre-buses it, I think to myself, they know what they're doing.
They're doing a great job, thank you. I now enjoy my environment a little bit more because I've got some clear space. It's the tiny things that they can pass on, but the younger generation, I find individual conversations. Let's talk to them and get them involved. Services, a lot of the small things built up and it's day after day after day of having that right culture so that you can talk to the staff and they have an open mind to listen to you to where if they're shut down and they're not hearing your message, you're not getting through to them.
The little things matter. Whether it’s clearing a table properly or greeting guests with a smile, these details show professionalism and care.
The cruise again, I'm going to go back there for a second. They really did the sequence of service so well. The timing of it coming around the sides, ordering from the right people at the right time, taking stuff away. Of course, you never get this anymore. The actual clearing of the crumbs off. Whens the last time I had that at a restaurant, I mean just those small touches really do make the experience a lot better. They were obviously very polite. Just wonderful service.
I'm not saying as a restaurant, you can go send all your staff off on a cruise so they can experience that. If you haven't experienced cruise service, man, it really does take things to a different level. Question for you. Some restaurants do this. Some don't even do it. The manager walks around, How's everything or the owner walks around the table touches? I think they can be a really nice thing but sometimes they get kind of that same, that same assumptive like, “Everything's fine.” They just move on. What do you think about it?
I break those into two. It's table touches and table visits. A table touch is typically what you see in a chain restaurant. “Folks, how was everything?” They're halfway to the next table by the time you even get a chance to respond. I really like those at certain times. I go into table touch mode when I'm a cook short and we're running 15-minute ticket times and things just aren't really running well. I'm looking for problems. I may be saying, “Folks, how is everything?” What I'm thinking is, is there a problem here that I can handle really quickly before it becomes an issue?
Then when things are going great, you've got a nice, comfortable shift. Everything's really working well. I go into table visit mode. I'm now trying to connect with the guest. I'm not staying 3 to 5 minutes at the table, but I'm getting into short, friendly conversations to try to build a little bit of a relationship. “How are the grandkids? Did you get out golfing this week?” I use those at particular times, but when I'm in table visits, I'm hunting for problems. The goal is to stop any problem while they're still in the restaurant. That's where you go searching for.
That was a good overview. I feel like sometimes those visits are perfunctory and they're not looking to do anything but finding problems is key. When you do have the chance to do this, if you're not doing this as a restaurant, when you have those times where Darren just referenced and you can spend that extra time, as a customer, I'm telling you, I feel that and like, “I thought I talked to the owner. The owner spent time with me or the manager spent a minute with me.”
It really feels more important than you imagine as yourself because you're doing it all the time. The customers really do appreciate that. I think you could echo that experience. Darren, as we start to wrap up here, I'm going to kind of open the floor for you stuff we didn't touch on. If you want to go back to what that report looks like, what the feeling of that hits that restaurant where they get a 60% and they go, “Holy cow, I need to improve. Let me open it up for you.”
Go back to the scoring of the reports, as you just alluded to. We've taken years and years and years and really tried to dissect what a secret shopping score transitions to a feeling from the guest. When I walk out of the restaurant at a 93% type of secret shopping score, what is that feeling? As I mentioned earlier, that 90% and above is fantastic. Let's say I was dining with you once a month. If it's 90% and above, I'm going to slightly increase that frequency.
Hopefully, I'm also going to tell a few friends. The 75% to 89% is basically where you met my expectations. Everything was fine. We got the burger on time. It was okay. You're going to see me next month, the next month, the next month. Nothing crazy, but I've got a place that I kind of like. It's okay. The 60 to 74%, this is where obviously didn't meet my expectations. Now I'm not ready to kick you to the curb yet, but I'm not dining as often.
If I was once a month, I'm probably not coming back for three or five months. Usually, the reason that I come back is either price, location, or food quality. What doesn't bring me back in that scoring range is usually the people. Now the 50% to 59%, this category is pretty simple. I've never been a confrontational person. I'm not going to call somebody over to the table to complain. I'm just going to write my signature, fill in my tip, and close the book. I'll probably just never think about you again.
There are enough options out there that there are four of them that I can see from the parking lot before I leave your establishment. I simply write you off. The below 50%, that's where it turns into issues. That's where it wasn't worth $70. I feel like I want my voice heard and a manager wasn't at the table. Typically that's who goes to social media. That's who goes to the water cooler at work and tells three or four friends about their bad experiences. It's a sliding scale. Let's get those service scores to 90% and above to build that type of repeat business over and over.
A 100% and you hit the nail on the head. There are so many options. Maybe you live in a small town and there's only one good lunch place and one good dinner place. I don't know, but where I am, my market is growing like crazy. It's very competitive. I have lots of choices for lunch, and lots of choices for dinner. What are you doing to pull me in? Forget about the marketing piece. What are you doing when I do dine with you to give me an experience that makes me want to come back to you more frequently than I might otherwise do? Darren, you hit on a ton of tips for folks to do that.
One last, Jaime would be started off right early that when I've got a smile on my face within the first 2.5 or 3 minutes of being at your establishment, I already sense that things are going to go well. My absolute favorite tip and it's not appropriate all the time, but what we always tried to do in our restaurants was 15 seconds goes a long way. We tried to train our staff that when appropriate, you're greeting a table, you're greeting a bar guest.
You spend 15 seconds with them which has nothing to do about the restaurant. You're asking them about the hat that they're wearing, or you're commenting on a nice pair of shoes or a nice purse. You're just trying to pick up a couple of things to spark just a really small, short conversation with one goal. If you can make them smile in those first 15 seconds, then now I trust that it's going to be a great experience. Start them off right.
First impressions matter. Make your guests smile within the first 15 seconds, and they'll trust that they're in for a great experience.
I couldn't agree more. The corollary to that is that feeling of invisibility. Like I sat down and it's been two minutes and it feels like ten and I start going like this, “I know she sat me here, but does anyone else know I'm here? Do they know I'm in this zone?” That is the worst feeling.
You now get fearful that you chose the wrong restaurant, that you're not going to have a good experience and you start to feel a little uncertain. That's why I want to start you off perfectly with a great smile, and lots of acknowledgment. Even if you make a few mistakes later, it's okay because upfront you made me smile and I trust you.
As stated folks, Darren does this all the time. One, two-day training, 3, 4-hour sessions with teams going through this stuff. He's an expert here. We could talk for hours and hours about this. Hopefully, we gave you a lot of good nuggets there. Darren, go ahead and send them to websites, social, or anything else you want to point them towards, please.
ServiceWithStyle.com/RunningRestaurants. There's a link to that 10 steps to great service. There's a discount on secret shopping and a way to get some more details.
Thanks, Darren. Folks, you're going to want to stay tuned in after the interview wraps as I run Darren through our bonus 10 questions. Lots of additional great insights and nuggets on tap there. That was Darren Dennington of Service With Style. You can find them on the web at ServiceWithStyle.com/RunningRestaurants. Go there for that discount. For more great restaurant marketing, operations, service, people, and tech tips, stay tuned to us here at RunningRestaurants.com. In the meantime, please do us a favor and like, subscribe, share, and review us wherever you're listening or watching. That's a big help for us and we appreciate it. We'll see you next time. Thanks, Darren.
Thanks, Jaime.
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Bonus question time. Here we go. Darren, how did you get your start in the industry?
It was quite a while ago. My very first job in the industry was as a busboy at a really nice restaurant in Niagara Falls. Being a tourist city, it was high volume right by the Horseshoe Falls. It was an exciting place to work. What's nice is we still work with that restaurant and that company. That was early and I just thoroughly enjoyed the activity and serving people. That just led to food and beverage management in college and then off to the races from there.
Darren, I'm sure you've received lots of advice over time, but what's one of the best pieces of advice you've ever received?
With dealing with restaurants, it was probably to get to the guests really quickly and get them to smile. It was just somebody I'd worked with for a long time and we were realizing that the guests weren't as happy as we wanted them to be and where they were coming from at this particular restaurant was usually long days, tourism all the way through the day. They were tired and just wanted to get in and get something quick. It was to get to your guests really quick and get them to smile.
Get that smile. I love it. What is a bad piece of advice or what's the worst advice you've ever gotten?
Worst advice? I hate to say it, but maybe go get a partner. Sometimes it's not the easiest thing to work with other people. It's just one that can be tricky at times. Didn't quite need a partner and that wasn't the best advice.
What is a favorite quote or a saying that you love? What do you think?
Leadership is not a position, it's an action. Just something I've always believed that if you're going to be able to lead a group of people who respect you and are willing to follow you, they need to see that you're involved and that you're acting like a leader. Just because you're the general manager doesn't mean that I respect and want to follow you but it's your actions that pull me into that. Leadership is not a position. It's an action.
What's a book you're reading now or one of your top recommendations?
I was just saying that over the last weekend, I needed to track down another book. I just recently went back and reread Atomic Habits. For me, 4 or 5 years ago, I felt like it was literally life-changing when I first read that book. It's very detailed. There's a lot to it. Going back the second time, a few months ago, I found that I took much more away from it the second time I read and just implemented some great routines and some great new habits that are genuinely helping me personally. Atomic Habits.
Let's go to this one. Darren, what keeps you up at night?
Typically when people are waiting on me, whether it's from a meeting and I've got something to follow up on, I've got some work that is due to somebody. I don’t like other people waiting on me. I like to hit my deadlines and that's typically usually what bothers me is that's what stays on my mind all the time until I've got out what I promised.
What's one of the biggest mistakes or lessons you've learned in life so far?
I think the lessons would just be to get up early, have a plan, and work through your day to stick to specific priorities that it's hard to get to the big projects in life. Whether that's writing a book or opening a new restaurant, getting there takes a lot of planning and a lot of discipline. One thing I've been doing is blocking time on my schedule every week for three different projects that I'm working on.
I try to put them on my schedule and give myself some blank time just to work on those bigger picture things because it's easy to push off the ones that don't have any deadlines and get to the simple easy things to get check marks to feel that completion. I got something done. I want you to get the things that are important done. Leave those bottom items on your checklist. They usually just go away without having to do anything. It's at the top of the list. Typically I write my to-do list the day before and I start with three items that I genuinely want to get done and I try to start my day by working on my top priorities.
Blocking time, picking out those most important ones, not always the urgent stuff, but what's actually most important. Those are two different questions. Darren, where do you see the restaurant industry in say the next two or three years?
I think we've continued to take baby steps towards less service, more counter service, and a much more self-sufficient. I'm not talking about the nicer dining experiences, but where we go out day to day to get breakfast and lunch, they're becoming much more self-sufficient, and customers and guests seem to be okay with that. Again, depending on your type of establishment, you've got a understand what type of service you're providing.
The basics were okay to take care of. I know it's been a big push because of your prime cost and your labor cost. It's continuing to get harder and harder to keep the amount of people in the building that we need. Looking at your establishment to say, “How can we do a little less? What are things that we just don't need to be doing every day and how can we trim back?” The industry continues to go to a more efficient model.
This one I may have asked you before, is elevator advice. 60 seconds, you step on an elevator, you find out a prospective new restaurant owner has just stepped in with you, and you only got a quick chance to talk to them. What would you tell them on that short trip? What do you think?
The leadership team is the absolute key to all of your success. When a restaurant is in full swing, typically there are 5, 6, 7 people who are on the same page that are taking care of what they're supposed to do. They communicate really well with each other, having regular meetings. That sets everything. The foundation to me is leadership systems and staff. When you've got that leadership team that then takes some good time and says, “What systems do we need in place so that we can run efficiently every single day?”
Then you get the buy-in of your staff. You build that morale, you build the trust, you earn the respect. When your staff looks at the leadership team as someone that they like and respect and want to work for, and they're introduced to the systems that can make their job easier also, that's the everyday simple things that have to be in place. When you've got leadership systems and staff as the foundation, then you can take on a project like a training program, implementing inventory, or implementing a service plan. If you don't have that foundation, it's really hard to get anything not implemented, but implemented that will stick for a long time. Go back to the leadership.
What's one thing that not many folks know about you?
About me, I love to golf as often as I can. I try to get out on the course, not nearly as much as I do, but that's me. I love to travel. Having Service with Style for 27 years, we've been able to travel a lot, especially with restaurant shows. Traveling and golf, I guess, are behind the scenes that I enjoy.
Important Links:
- Service with Style
- Atomic Habits
- https://ServiceWithStyle.com/runningrestaurants/
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/darrendenington/