How Do You React When Customers Say They See No Value?

If you're lucky, the customers and guests of your dining, catering and conference services will tell you candidly what they like and don't like; what they'd like to see on the menu; whether your hours of service are convenient; whether your staff is courteous and efficient, and much else.

It's something to encourage, because it's your best tool for ensuring your operation is satisfying employees or students and learning what you need to do to ensure your service is of greater value to them than their other alternatives.

Here are some comments from among 214 in a customer satisfaction survey we're currently running for a corporate client.

"Prices are too high. Too few choice [sic]."

"I am quite dissatisfied with the food quality, variety [and] vegetarian options. The price is quite high for what we receive."

"Clear deterioration in the price/value ratio."

"Staff are nice and very efficient. Managers are useless."

There were more than 100 comments along these lines (as well as some saying the opposite about food quality). Clearly, the dining service has a problem with its customers' perception of value.

How would you respond to this type of complaint? Send us your suggestions at info@clariongp.com and we'll publish them here and in the Spring issue of Dining Insights.

'I have no problems, only complicated situations.'

That's what George Kuzmich, then VP of Operations for my former food service company, T J Mac Dermott Corp., told me many years ago when I asked, "What's the problem?"

George, a Ukranian whom the Soviets sent to Siberia for something at the outbreak of World War II, escaped to Afganistan, joined and fought with the British Army and was among the last British soldiers to leave Palestine as their mandate expired and the Israeli War of Independence started, certainly knew something about complicated situations.

It seemed to me then - and still seems - a pretty good way to deal with difficulties. Problems can be thorny and knotty. Complicated situations can be unraveled, simplified and settled.

Virtually anything that can go wrong in a food service operation - except equipment or power failures - involve people. Someone didn't show up, someone did the wrong thing or nothing, folks working at cross-purposes, quareling, grumbling, offending customers, you name it. Even equipment and power failures require human beings to fix them.

This means anything from poor food to high cost to customer dissatisfaction can only be solved by dealing with the individuals involved: complicated situtations.

Your solution can be a blunt-instrument command: "Don't do that again, or else."

Or, you can start to find out by using the magic word, Why. "Why did that happen?" The answer you get may be unsatisfying. Asked why something went wrong, most people become defensive and blame dark forces outside their control. There are an infinite variety of versions of "the dog ate my homework."

But, if you press on a little further to ask about how those dark forces affected the work or spoiled the soup or insulted the customer or caused the big discrepancy in the cash drawer, you'll eventually find the answer, unravel the complicated situation and see the solution. That works better than just, "Don't do that again," which usually causes fear or resentment and reluctant compliance, but doesn't really solve anything.

Your solution can be a simple change in work procedures or schedules, training or retraining or shifting an employee out of a job he/she can't perform well, up to, if necessary as a last resort, termination.

Sometimes, it's hard not to get angry or blow up in frustration when things go wrong or folks are obstinate or seem obtuse. That's human, but not productive and may create more difficulties for you, and certainly solves nothing.

If saintly patience isn't your style, try the old "count to ten" remedy and then, in as calm a voice as possible, ask "why." It will work.

This article also appears in the Consultants Corner section of the Society for Food Service Management's website, sfm-online.org.

The Penalty Zone . . . Where Good Ideas Go Bad

By Angela Phelan
Senior Vice President, Clarion Group
http://www.clariongp.com/

In response to the article in Food Management, announcing the loss of revenue in the Ontario, Canada, schools because of resistance to "healthy food," I ask that the food police on school boards everywhere us a modicum of common sense when revising the school menus.

To the kind of knee-jerk response to the notion that "kids won't eat healthy food," I offer the following:
Roasted chicken mashed potatoes, broccoli-cheddar soup made with fresh chicken or vegetable stock, pasta dressed with lightly cooked, fresh tomato sauce, crisp roasted potato spears, baked sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, blueberries, strawberries, bananas, apples, lemonade made with fresh lemons and sweetened with honey, hamburgers made with fresh-ground, hormone-free, lean beef broiled and served on a bun (whole wheat) with a side of lettuce (mixed spring greens) and tomato (vine-ripened, pesticide-free).

Are these "healthy foods"? Yes -- if they are prepared from fresh ingredients, free of hormones, pesticides, trans fats and other "fillers," so often the silent ingredients in convenience foods. Homemade food, prepared by people who believe that we are on a mission to feed healthy children and keep them that way. That's what makes food "healthy," not overcooked brussel sprouts.

This is a tiny, very basic list. But this is healthy and delicious food. The idea should be to add to the nutritious enjoyment of food and not create a penalty zone for healthy eating. Simply removing candy bars is a good idea turned on its head. Seventy percent dark chocolate is good food. Can we offer real chocolate instead of a mound of chemically treated fillers and seduce a child into a mouth-watering snack attack? Adults make choices based on price and quality. Children make choices based on simple gratification. It is our job to offer children choices that reflect the quality we ourselves feel we deserve. This requires research and not a blind obedience to a health initiative that means well and at the same time turns children into involuntary gatekeepers.

We could withdraw the fryers by offering alternatives that re really good. Baked sweet potato "fries," sweet and slightly salty fresh potato "fries" baked in the oven. If anyone cares to source it, there's a new perforated, heavy metal roasting pan designed especially to create a crisp surface on the hallowed "french fry." It is a simple marvel. It is widely available. Shouldn't the operators try it? Potatoes are a great source of vitamin C and potassium. No reason not to make them a part of a student's diet. But not if the potato is coated with chemicals to keep it from moulding during packing and shipping and then it is dropped into a few gallons of very murky hot fat.

Do those fatty potatoes sell? Of course. It's all about conditioning a child from pre-toddler days to pick up a "french fry" as one of his very first non-baby foods. This conditioning can be changed by creating new habits at home. Schools can -- and must -- follow through and add to new normal. Bake potatoes in their skins, or peeled and mashed, roasted with rosemary, or cut into batons and oven-fried on the baking sheet mentioned above. It could be a brave new world! A healthy alternative to the hot dog? Maybe it's a freshly made meatball (oven baked) hero, using homemade ingredients, dressed with some fresh sauce and served with a sprinkling of low-fat cheese.

The planners of student menus need to consider the fact that these students have even more highly-tuned palates than their parents. Taste buds die off as one ages, but the healthy child and teenager still has the very heightened olfactory and sensory monitors that signal "yes" or "no," with little room for "maybe." Why is it that "Mom's fabulous roast chicken" works? It smells wonderful and tastes even better. When food in school cafeterias is made fresh and smells wonderful, children will eat it.

We are on a national mission to snatch our children back from the looming medical crisis they face -- overweight, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. In the very young. It is simply not acceptable. So, reeling off negative sales figures as a justification, possibly, to revert to menus "designed to sell," is a disservice to the entire community -- but most especially to the students -- who are blissfully unaware of their own vulnerability.

Why not treat the student at school as you would treat yourself? Make changes slowly, but keep moving forward. Offer high quality alternatives and most important: Remember that school feeding is about nourishing children so they will be in optimum condition to learn and live. Finding the best way to healthy and delicious eating for students will not be found in the penalty zone.

Food Safety Roulette

Two recent events have caused my thoughts to turn to food safery and the absence of effective protections in most dining service operations:

• The recent, multi-state cantelope-listeria outbreak that caused several hundred illnesses and some deaths.


• A survey of restaurant managers and food handlers that found many didn't know basisc precautions to keep food safe for consumption, like where to store raw meat in a refrigerator or why hambrugers should be cooked thoroughly. (You can see the article about this survey at www.clariongp.com/newsletter , "Food Handlers Flunk Food Safety Quiz")

The contaminated cantelopes traced back to a single, very large, farm, where processing practices were lax. That was the cause, but isn't an excuse for the thousands of food handlers (in restaurants, campus and corporate kitichens and homes) who didn't take a normal, simple and quite routine precaution -- washing all fresh fruits and vegetables. In the case of a rough-skin fruit like cantelope, this means scrubbing with a brush to get into all those little crevices. This might have prevented many of the illnesses that resulted from this outbreak.

You need to cut open a melon in order to eat it, whether you're eating a wedge or cutting it into cubes. When your knife cuts through the contaminated skin, it brings the microbes that were on the skin into the flesh. If the same knife is used for other tasks without being sanitized, it becomes a miniature Typhoid Mary, spreading the contamination to everything it touches.

So, why aren't this and the many other food safety prepcautions taken? They should be as automatic as a chef garnishing each plate he/she sends out of the kitchen, but it's not.

The fact is, food safety is ignored routinely, without consequence. If the penalty for failing to take these precautions were as sure and certain as the penalty for sticking a finger in a live light socket, there would be no problem with compliance.

What does your dining service staff know about food safety? We've developed a 10-question, multiple choice quiz that you can use to find the answer. For a copy, please e-mail me at TWM@clariongp.com and I'll forward it to you (with an answer sheet).

Green up Your Campus Dining Service

With the start of the fall semester nearly on us, college dining service directors need to look to "greening" their healthy dining and sustainability credentials. Students, far more than other groups, are keenly aware of environmental issues and expect their college or university -- especially the dining services -- to be at the leading edge of sustainability and wellness trends.

Independently-managed and contractor-operated campus dining services generally reflect the most popular environmental trends: fresh food, recycling and waste reduction. But students, as well as faculty members and administrators, will expect more this academic year.

In the past, many dining services provided organic and/or vegetarian foods is a separate ghetto-like section of the dining facility's servery, saving the best locations for the more popular pizza, sub sandwiches, burgers and the like. Today, however, students expect environmentally-favorable foods and features to be center stage, including pizzas with whole-grain crusts, vegetarian subs and burgers made from hormone-free beef, as well as other healthy and meat-free options that are organic and locally-sourced.

One of the most successful ways to say "fresh," "wholesome" and "nutritious" to diners is the "action station." Here a chef prepares the diner's meal to order on a countertop cooking unit on the serving line, adding or omitting ingredients to the customer's order.

To-order cooking is cost-effective as well as customer-pleasing. Ingredients are cooked only when the customer orders a dish. The only leftover are raw products that, if properly kept at a safe temperature (40 to 35 degrees F) will remain fresh and safe for reuse in another, different dish at the next meal or the next day. Food cost is significantly lower than for food prepared in large batches that may not all be served right away, creating leftovers of minimal or no value.

Students and many other people are aware of the nutrition and environmental values of locally-sourced foods and now expect to see them in the dining center. Buying from local farmers may take more effort than calling a wholesale distributor, but the end product, delivered just a day or a few days after being harvested is worth the effort.

Many states now have programs to support institutional purchasing from local farms, making it easier than traveling the countryside to search out farmer-suppliers. Many distributors now also offer local farm products as par of their lines.

The other half of an environmentally-friendly dining service, a sustainable operation, requires more thought and effort and it includes waster reduction (helped by to-order cooking) and the conservation of water, electrical and other utilities.

Waste reduction begins with more careful menu and purchasing planning to reduce over- production and a plan to properly dispose of the waste that does occur. Food waste can be composted and used to enrich a campus vegetable garden -- which can sell fresh product back to the dining service.

Paper products made from recycled materials and plastic eating utensils from corn- or soy-based materials that degrade more quickly than conventional plastics in a landfill can be used. A better option is to reduce or eliminate disposable tableware, replacing it with real china, glasses and stainless steel knives, forks and spoons.

Reducing water and utility consumption takes a two-pronged approach: Turning off equipment, like ventilation systems, ovens and electrical appliances when not in use is one important approach that costs nothing and saves a lot. The second prong is the replacement of old, inefficient equipment with new units, such as dishwashing machines that use less water amid cooking equipment that requires less power.

A good resources for the improvement of a dining service's sustainability is the Green Restaurant Association, whose website, www.dinegreen.com, offers a comprehensive listing of steps any restaurant or on-sit dining service operator can take to improve its environmental standards.

The GRA also offers a Green Restaurant Certification program, similar to the LEED certification for buildings. There's no better way to show the campus community that you are doing your best for the planet than to gain this certification.

Bringing Healthy Meals and Sustainability to Food Service

For far too long, the operators of company and campus dining services have focused on the popularity of the foods they offer, with no concern for their nutritional value," says Angela Phelan, senior vice president of Clarion Group. "Now it's time to reverse that trend. Customers are asking for better, healthier foods and expect their at-work or on-campus cafes will provide it."
Under the new federal health care legislation, all food service operators of 20 or more locations will be required to post calorie counts next to food items on their menus. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will determine whether more information will be required.

Operators also must make written data about dishes' nutritional content available to diners on request. The U.S. Food and Drung Administration is empowered to determine whether the information was developed "on a reasonable basis." The requirements will be expanded in the future, Ms Phelan predicts.
The increasing demand for healthier foods dovetails with the need to improve the sustainability of our environment, according to Ms Phelan. "The use of fresh, organic foods, grown locally, and efficient food preparation and operating practices are key elements of an effective sustainability program, she said.

Clarion Group's Fresh & Natural program may be a solution for companies and institutions seeking to improve the value of their on-site food services. The program was developed by Clarion Group under Ms Phelan's leadership to constructively respond to these issues for on-site food service operations. The program includes imaginative, nutritious meals prepared "from scratch" using fresh, locally-sourced ingredients; elimination of junk foods; promotion of nutrition information and education, complementing the company's or college's own wellness initiatives.

The Fresh & Natural approach includes enhancing sustainability and reducing operating costs by incorporating efficient operating practices; employing energy-efficient "Energy Star" equipment; conservation of utilities, water and energy, and waste reduction through recycling, pulping, composting and other ecologically-beneficial practices.

Fresh & Natural currently is in development or under discussion at three Clarion clients, Ms Phelan reports.

The Dining Center as an Oasis

By Angela Phelan
Senior Vice President
Clarion Group

The business of hospitality, running a food service operation, rests on its core mandate: To offer good, healthy food to customers, whether they are students in a large university or the staff of a high-powered law or financial firm -- or to the very youngest customers trying to get through their day in fifth grade.

But hospitality connotes food and rest.

This central goal of providing good, healthy food costs time, money and above all, the good will of the team designated to run it. But note that I suggest food and rest. This is a novel concept. I rarely hear anyone talking about rest when discussing what food service has to offer its customers.

Interestingly, the only client I ever had that considered the rest that its dining service could offer to its customers was one of the Swiss banks who, from their main headquarters abroad carefully guided the U.S. designers in the art and science of caring for its employees. They insisted on a separate area for dessert and coffee, a few yards away from the main servery and seating area. Chairs are softer, lower, set around coffee tables (literally). The floors in that area are carpeted, the lighting lower.

The Swiss concept was that the downtime offered by dessert and coffee was a better way to transition back to work at a desk, telephone and any number of competing computer screens. This novel concept -- at least for the hard-charging Americans -- seemed almost quaint. To consider the psychological as well as the basic nutritional needs of employees (or students) was partically off the scale.

Restaurateurs, of course, are well aware that the time devoted to dessert and coffee can add many dollars to their bottom line. To be sure, one must make a choice between "turning the table" and the benefits of adding dollars to the check by selling the customer another hour's worth of food and drink. The downtime tends to enhance the customer's mood; tips are more generous.

Now we should consider the news reported in The New York Times recently. There is new data being assembled in some school districts in Texas and other states. Educators have discovered that simply by reversing the order of lunch with recess, the students were more relaxed, ate their meals more slowly, drank more milk or water and were generally in a better frame of mind to resume their classes and focus more readilly on their work.


This uptick in productivity, arrived at by such a simple and "old fashioned" notion of allowing students to take a full half-hour for lunch after their recess period was enormously revealing. All those time-and-motion studies designed to increase productivity have been turned on their heads by this simple, timeless notion. Let them rest before taking up the balance of their workday.

This could be an important way to give the employee a quiet time to "reset and recharge."

For those of us who design dining facilities for our clients, this is a very interesting and satisfying study. Americans traveling to Italy and France return with newfound respect for the leisurely meal, noting that the temperment of the diners appears to be more relaxed.

This is an extraordinarily difficult time in the world. Stress is the word on the lips of just about everyone over the age of seven: Too much homework, too much overtime, too much and too little of everything.

Serving the needs of one's employees, stressed as they are, requires some thought. Perhaps we should think about providing not only excellent food, but offering a quarter-hour of restful time before returning to work. Suppose we consider carpeting a quarter of the seating space, taking out the lunch tables and arranging some comfortable chairs and coffee tables. Sounds a little familiar? A little like your neighborhood Starbucks?

This could clear the dining area for others and subtly move them to the coffee and conversation area fo a little rest and recharge. A lawyer at one of our client firms, where we were in the throes of redesigning the cafe made this suggestion. Clearly, his travels abroad or a good deal of time in a Starbucks influenced his thinking.

So the firm created an "Oasis" for their associates, complete with foosball tables, a big coffee bar and some comfortable armchairs. It's actually on another floor from the cafe and it's a great success.

We would like to see the good will that could come from giving employees a restful, healthy break at lunch, encourage the R&R concept by moving some tables out and bringing in some comfortable chairs.

Do you have some room in your cafe or in an adjacent space? If you would like some help in putting it together, give us a call. Clarion can make it work.

After all, an Oasis shouldn't be a mirage.

Contact Angela Phelan at 973/544-6223 or e-mail us at info@clariongp.com.

PS: Do you have an arrangement like this that works for you? Write and let us know, either by leaving a comment or by e-mail to info@clariongp.com.