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Advise · Hospitality operations

I ran the room. Now I’ll tell you what’s wrong with yours.

Fifteen years of executive operations: a restaurant floor in Philadelphia, the service team at L’Espalier, Loews, Garces, Safran Turney, seven years inside private clubs, and General Manager of the Columbia Tower Club until downtown emptied out and it closed. I have opinions. Some of them will cost you money to ignore.

Twenty minutes about your room

Clubs, restaurant groups, hotels. Seattle first, anywhere with a flight.

Photo: the view from the 76th floor of Columbia Center, where the club was. Hophop727, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Proof, not adjectives

Seen and heard on

Ran

  • Columbia Tower Club
  • Invited Clubs
  • Loews Hotels
  • Garces
  • L’Espalier
  • Top of the Tower Studios
  • Safran Turney Hospitality

Built, or built for

  • VantageVantageFounder
  • The Savvy Digital Co.
  • reSpace
  • YSK Events
  • The Pelham Group NW
  • Katrina Eileen Real Estate
  • Jesse Rhodes Jr.

Serve

  • Level Up HomeBoard
  • Seattle Amistad SchoolGrants

What I think

Four things I will say in your dining room that nobody on payroll can.

  1. 01

    The restaurant model was never a winning model.

    Labor, commodities and the cost of living are finishing what thin margins started. Pretending otherwise is how good operators go broke slowly.

  2. 02

    Tipping or a service charge. Pick one, and disclose it.

    Guests will forgive either. They will not forgive a surprise on the check. Gen Z reads the screen, so the screen has to be honest.

  3. 03

    “The room where I was paid less an hour, I made way more.”

    Standards pay. A dining room where a member ate dinner every night for eight years, and special events twice a month, runs on the same checklist every shift.

  4. 04

    Retention is a management habit, not a perk.

    Train people, let them make decisions, then hold them to it. Loews taught me that order matters. Find Your Four: the handful of people every guest and every employee needs to know by name.

How it works

Thirty days. Four visits. Your managers run the standard without me by the end, or I stay until they do.

One club or restaurant group at a time. I walk the room on a real night, rewrite the service standards with your team in the room, settle tipping versus service charge with the numbers disclosed to everyone it affects, and train the managers to run the checklist. Then I leave. That is the point.

  1. Walk

    A full service, front and back, on your busiest night. I write down what I see before anyone explains it.

  2. Rewrite

    The service standards, in plain language, with the managers who have to run them.

  3. Settle

    Tipping or service charge. The numbers on the table, disclosed to the team and the guest.

  4. Hand off

    Managers run the checklist for two weeks while I watch. Then I stop watching.

The fee

Fixed for the thirty days, quoted on the call, and it does not change if the work runs long.

Payment books the first visit.

Book the twenty minutes