“They left me 15% and I didn’t even charge them for their drinks†–Rookie Server One of the fundamental truths you learn as a server is that hooking someone up with free drinks, food, etc. does not increase your tip. No matter how fundamental of a truth this is, it seems that every server has […]
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Independent vs Corporate Restaurant Priorities
This morning I read an article regarding the rising costs of food and how restaurants will respond. In the article former server Charles Ferruzza finds a pair of local restaurant owners who say they will refuse to raise prices to compensate for the increase in costs. The owners discuss absorbing the costs themselves or reducing […]
Aspirational Dining in a Recession
(Note: In the previous post I defined the growing market segment of “aspirational dining†restaurants. This is valuable background to this post and merits a read.) What sets the “aspirational dining†market segment apart was their creation of the perception that their food cost more because it was worth more. This perception is what made […]
Aspirational Dining Defined
I am a Mac guy. This means only the occasional interruption for updates from Microsoft. These are most often for Word for Macs. Yet in none of these updates have they added to my spell check dictionary words like “Barack Obama, Al Qaeda, or Facebook.â€Â If they do implement this change they can use this […]
Cost vs Profit
In a previous post about why restaurants charge for different extras, I discussed the difference between the guest’s perception of profits and reality. It is not uncommon to hear a guest say, “I can buy this for half as much at the grocery store.â€Â The problem is that food in a restaurant carries far more […]
About The Author
David Hayden was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He took his first serving job in 1996. Since that time, he has worked for over a dozen different restaurant companies. He has held both hourly and salaried positions at independent and corporate restaurants. He has waited on over 100,000 guests and trained hundreds of servers. He has been named "Best Server in Kansas City" the last three years by the local weekly paper.