Competition is the first major event that entrepreneurs should seriously consider at the beginning of restaurant preparation.

Once the dishes are served, they will not be returned. VS There is no reason to return them.

Traditional thinking: once the dishes are served, they will not be returned.

I believe that many restaurants have such regulations, especially many hot pot and soup pot restaurants, and they even put a sentence on the menu, "Please order as appropriate, and once the dishes are served, they will not be returned." Is this good for the restaurant management? Let's analyze it:

Why do customers change dishes or return them?

There are several reasons why customers want to change dishes and return them after serving:

The dishes don't match the pictures.

In many restaurants, the menu is beautifully made, and the photos of the dishes are even more appetizing, but the actual dishes served on the table are quite different. Of course, customers don't like it and feel cheated, so they ask for a refund or a change.

② There is a difference between the quantity and price of dishes.

In many restaurants, there is a price on the menu, but there is no quantity label. When the dishes are served, customers find that there is a big gap between the quantity and price of the dishes, and they feel slaughtered psychologically, so they ask for a change or a return.

③ The quality of dishes is not good.

When the dishes were served, customers found that the dishes were not fresh and tasted bad, and asked to return them.

(4) the way of cutting and matching dishes is not good.

For example, tofu, many hot pot restaurants cut tofu into square chunks, but as a hot pot, this square chunk is not easy to taste. There are many dishes in hot pot that require cutting and matching methods. If the cutting and matching methods are wrong, customers may not like them, and they may have the idea of returning or changing dishes.

⑤ There are too many dishes.

When ordering, the waiter didn't give reasonable guidance, and the customer didn't know the weight of the dishes in the restaurant, which led to too many dishes. When the dishes were served, the customer felt that the dishes could not be finished, so he wanted to return them.

Influence of not returning (changing) vegetables;

For restaurants, the benefits of not agreeing to return (change) dishes are to reduce the workload of employees and ostensibly ensure the income of restaurants. Why is it ostensibly?

Because if the customer asks for a return of food for the above legitimate reasons, and the restaurant can't satisfy it, it is very likely that the restaurant will lose this customer, and if it loses the customer, it will lose the opportunity of secondary consumption, which is the biggest loss for the restaurant.

Differentiated competitive thinking: there is no reason to return food.

A restaurant with excellent products should dare to exchange dishes for no reason. When a guest offers a returned dish, the first reply from the service staff should be: "OK, I'm very sorry for the trouble", and then ask the guest the reason for returning the dish, so as to facilitate the improvement of the production department.

Many bosses will worry, is this a lot of returning vegetables, a lot of waste, and the income will be greatly reduced? First of all, we should trust our customers (don't get bogged down), and generally don't ask for a return of food for no reason. It must be that our own work has not been done.

Now the customer gives us the opportunity to correct, but you don't accept it. It is conceivable that the probability of customer churn is very high. If the customer gives us the opportunity, we will make up for it in time, and there must be a great chance to gain the customer's approval and favor.

The better your products and services are, the less chance that this will happen (returning vegetables). On the surface, we have reduced our income and profits, but we have won the approval of our customers.

Customer recognition is our greatest source of wealth.

The dishes and services are immature and unsatisfactory, and customers should be given no reason to return the dishes, so as to promote our employees to improve our products and services quickly, knowing that customers are our best teachers. If your restaurant really does this, you will stand out from many competitors and form a huge difference with your competitors, and your business will get better and better.

The kitchen is an important place, declined to visit vs. visited the kitchen, and sent it politely.

Traditional thinking: the kitchen is important, and visitors are not allowed.

This sentence, I believe, can be seen in 90% of the kitchen doors. This is a normal thing in traditional catering operations based on various considerations.

However, for modern catering business, the catering competition is becoming more and more fierce, and customers pay more attention to health and hygiene. Therefore, many restaurants have now realized fully transparent kitchens, in order to let customers see the whole process of food preparation, make customers feel more at ease, strengthen their sense of experience, and make them stand out from the competition.

At present, many restaurants are still designed with traditional closed kitchens. Some local government departments are vigorously promoting the "bright kitchen" project, which transmits the working scene of the kitchen to the screen of the front hall through cameras, so that customers can supervise the restaurant through monitoring. However, for these closed kitchens, this "bright kitchen" is far from competitive.

Differentiated competitive thinking: visit the kitchen and send it with courtesy.

At the beginning of the restaurant design, we should design it as bright as possible. If it is really impossible due to objective conditions or the restaurant has already opened, we should also introduce differentiated competitive thinking here. Ask the kitchen staff to manage and tidy up the kitchen, and invite customers to visit the kitchen.

Customers enter the restaurant, sit down, invite guests to visit the kitchen when serving, and say that visiting the kitchen restaurant is polite (send some drinks or cold dishes). No matter whether the customers visit or not, if we do this, it means that there is no problem with our raw materials, and customers can eat them boldly and safely, and they will be impressed by us.

Some poorly managed small restaurants or restaurants with poor raw materials simply don't dare to do so, so we have formed a huge difference with our competitors.

Send fruit after dinner VS the last gift

Traditional thinking: delivering fruit after meals.

In many restaurants, fruits are delivered after meals, which are delivered by your family and my family, thus forming a convention. Customers will basically not come to your home for consumption because other families deliver fruits and your family does not deliver fruits.

Therefore, sending fruit will basically not have much effect on your business. At the same time, the cost of fruit is relatively high, which means that the restaurant has spent money, but it has not done a good job.

Differentiated competitive thinking: let customers remember me with the last gift

Since it costs money to give it to customers, why don't we spend some time and use this thing to deepen customers' understanding of us, and why not do something meaningless? Here are two real examples. I used to run a 400-square-meter Korean restaurant. At that time, other competitors would give each guest a small pudding ice cream after dinner. At that time, we thought, although the price of small pudding is cheap, if we also send it, it won't mean much, and customers can't.

Because you decided to eat there with or without pudding, our shareholders began to think about what we should give to our customers.

The second example was made for a customer. The customer is engaged in Northeast cuisine in Nanjing. I asked the customer to send ordinary fruits to Northeast frozen pears instead. Frozen pears in Northeast China are known as the best in Northeast China. They are very unique and delicious, and the cost is not high. As a result, customers' feelings and comments on restaurants are greatly deepened.

In these two cases, we have deepened the customer's experience and evaluation of the restaurant with the least cost, and differentiated ourselves from our competitors. Why not?

The purpose of making products and services with differentiated competitive thinking is to gain relative competitive advantage and thus gain development opportunities. In the course of our restaurant operation, there are many links that have such differentiation opportunities for us, depending on whether the operators can discover and use them.