Jim James demonstrated that he had goals and standards for service and they were inviolate. He trained what is largely a temporary staff to that standard, and they delivered.
A few years ago, I wrote in this space about an experience I had at my country club. I had not been a regular user of the dining room over a period of 20 to 25 years, but we went one night and the waitress was so good it changed my attitude totally about our club’s food-and-beverage function, and I started going regularly.
As my grandchildren came of age (for restaurants), we took them there frequently, and it is their preferred dining locale. All of this confirms that parents bring their kids, and when those kids grow up and get married, they bring their kids (our grandchildren), and the club now has groups of 4 to 10 people on a regular basis.
Of course, we had (have) a great chef, good menu selection, well-trained staff, and a pleasant dining environment.
That was then.
Recently, I went to dinner on the opening night for the season and there is no other way to describe it—it was a disaster! While the food was OK (it usually is outstanding), the service was nothing less than awful. When I asked our server what the problem was (she was a veteran, and always delivered good service), she said it was the new software that had just been installed. While this is understandable, it is no excuse. I happen to know what software it was, and it works just fine in thousands of clubs.
The issue was inadequate staff training. There were queues at the point-of-sale terminal, it wasn’t working smoothly, and the whole dining room was not working well. To be told that it was “the software,” I had to ask myself, why weren’t the kitchen and wait-staff trained up to competence with the system?
We recently had a restaurant open up in my neighborhood. It has aspirations to be the new “in” restaurant in town (with prices to match), but they did what all good restaurants do: They had practice nights with staff acting as customers, so all possible kinks could be worked out before the restaurant opened to the public. They wanted to make sure that those coming for the first time had an experience that would have them a) coming back, and b) telling their friends how good the restaurant was.
At our 2015 Chef to Chef Conference in Savannah, Ga., Jim James, Senior Director, Club and Hospitality Operations of Augusta National Golf Club, was our keynote speaker, and he talked about feeding thousands over the Masters weekend. He had an absolute requirement that from “ticket to plate to table” was no more than 4 minutes. Of course he has special circumstances that can’t or maybe shouldn’t be replicated at a typical club—but what he demonstrated was that he had goals and standards for service, and they were inviolate. He trained what is largely a temporary staff to that standard, and they delivered.
My club is too well-managed for this to be a permanent decline in standards. Our chef is too good to let these problems fester, and I am positive that we will return to our normal excellent dining experience. But I keep thinking back to that night when one person changed all my expectations about our club dining experience, and what would have happened if my recent experience were my first one.
P.S. I wrote this column a few weeks before this issue went to the printer. I have since dined again at my club and, as expected, it was back to its usual, excellent standards.
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