What It Truly Takes to Drive Repeat Restaurant Business

Hey there, restaurant pros! It’s David Scott Peters, and welcome to the Restaurant Prosperity Formula podcast.

For over two decades, I’ve been guiding restaurant owners to success with the proven principles of something I call the Restaurant Prosperity Formula. I originally created the formula based on the daily practices of the most successful restaurateurs I coached, and it’s now the foundation of what I teach restaurant owners like you so you can achieve success.

What do I mean by success? Success is a restaurant owner who dictates the terms of their life and their bank account instead of the restaurant dictating those things for them. Success is a restaurant owner who has freedom from the restaurant and the financial freedom they never thought possible. How you define success is up to you, but I do know the way to achieving it is by using the Restaurant Prosperity Formula.

This season, I’m diving even deeper into the core elements of the formula: leadership, systems, training, accountability, and taking action. Along with my insights, you’ll hear from special guests, industry experts, and inspiring success stories from fellow restaurant owners who’ve turned their businesses around and found their definition of success.

In this episode, number 136, our guest is a good friend of mine and no stranger to the podcast, Darren Dennington. Darren has over 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry and has an extensive background as a food and beverage director, executive chef, general manager, restaurant owner, staff trainer, restaurant coach, and consultant. He holds the most prestigious certification available for a hospitality professional, being a Certified Food and Beverage Executive. He is the founder of Service With Style Hospitality Group, a hospitality firm offering secret shopping and team training services.

Listen in as Darren shares with us what it truly takes to drive repeat business, grow your sales, and deliver wow customer service.

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Darren, I want to thank you so much for doing this with me again.

Thanks, David. Glad to be here.

Well, for those of us who maybe are brand new to the podcast, or maybe haven’t seen that you and I did a podcast, probably one of the very first ones that I had done with the Restaurant Prosperity Formula, let me give a little background.

You and I have known each other now for just about 23 years. We spoke at a conference together, became friends from that point in time, and then I came to consider you a very close friend. We have traveled the country, in fact, the world, together. We’ve spoken on many stages together. We have done our own events together. We have competed against each other because, over the years, you have done restaurant coaching as well.

I always tell people that if you had gone with Darren and not me, I know you’re in good hands. We’ve been pretty tight for a long time. I want people to understand that when I bring you on and recommend you and your company, it’s not just, “Oh, he’s great.” I truly believe your core values are solid. You really care about your customers, and you are the foremost expert when it comes to customer service in my book.

We’ve talked about that over the years. Do me a favor. Before we get started, tell people a little bit about yourself so they can hear from you.

Well, first, David, thanks for having me. I truly value our friendship. We’ve helped each other, challenged each other, and had a lot of fun together. So, nothing but respect here, right back at you.

I’m Darren from Service With Style, and I guess we’ve been doing this a pretty long time now. Secret shopping is our primary business, and we help some restaurants on the side with a little training once in a while. Secret shopping has been a very valuable tool for a lot of businesses, so we keep expanding how we do that. It’s been a long time, and I’m enjoying it.

I have no doubt. I want people to understand that I’ve known you for 23 years. You’ve been doing this longer than that, and the fact of the matter is, from 23 years ago to today, I consider you the very best. I put you at the very top of secret shopping services, as well as considering you a phenomenal trainer.

There are very few people I like to listen to from the stage because I’m a little cocky about my abilities. I get bored when people suck, and you do not suck.

We’ve had many members actually bring you out to do training at their restaurants for not only management but also customer service, and it’s been phenomenal.

If I’m not mistaken, I saw your very first presentation. That’s when we met, and you knocked it out of the park there. You’re pretty good from the stage. I’ll give you that.

I tried. That was a terrifying experience, just to be clear.

With that said, let’s go backward. We’ve started opening up about customer service, customer service, customer service. Really, let’s get down to the root of things. What brings a customer to a restaurant in the first place?

People are worried about the economy right now. They’re worried about inflation. They’re worried about everybody pulling back. I’ve seen in my membership groups that a lot of the Yelp reviews and Google reviews are still high. What they’re not seeing is repeat visits.

That means it’s even more important to bring people in because there aren’t as many dollars for people to spend. When they pull back, they pull back on restaurants. They’re still coming in, but they’re not coming in three times a month. They’re coming in once or twice a month.

We’re seeing this dip, and everybody wants more sales. There’s a lot to say about how more sales cure all ills. We’re going to ignore what I talk about, which is operations and how you’ve got to have your act together before you do that. But let’s assume a restaurant is a good operator. What is it that brings somebody in the first place?

There are a lot of different areas, right? First, it’s easy to go to marketing. You can create buzz. Whether that buzz is a new menu, a Friday night feature, or a landscaping makeover out front, something that catches their attention can bring in those first-time customers.

A lot of people come in because of some type of food craving, right? I’m looking for tacos. I’m looking for pizza. We’re searching for those things and making our decisions based on what type of restaurant you are.

Then there’s a situation that sometimes determines where we want to go. Your kids are home, and you haven’t seen them in a while. What’s a good place to go for that type of situation? It might have nothing to do with the food, but it might have everything to do with the ambiance or the location.

Then there are places we go to based on pure convenience. You pull into a parking lot to get something from another store. You’re hungry, there’s a restaurant, and that’s where you’re going.

Those are different categories to look at, but typically, that’s what brings customers in the first time.

And it’s competitive. It is so competitive.

When I was a franchisor, we often looked for places that had ancillary businesses that would bring our type of customer, our demographic, into the area. Usually, it was a tire store or a repair shop. It was often a Kmart or a Walmart. It was a grocery store, wherever it drew people in.

Over the years, we’d have a lot of people say, “Oh, I don’t want to open a restaurant near all these other restaurants,” like a shopping mall where there’s chain, chain, chain, independent, independent, chain, chain, chain.

Quite honestly, sometimes that’s a good thing. Even when there’s all this competition, if somebody next door is crazy busy, you can get their business because people don’t want to wait.

But more importantly, there’s the situational part. We’re in an area, and you just scan the options. My wife and I sometimes drive down the road, and even though we know all the restaurants, we scan them and make a decision based on what we’re in the mood for.

We often lose sight of that. The other part is that it’s often about the first impression.

You talked about marketing. Marketing is the first impression. A phone call is another one, although that’s more old-school because I’m old-school.

My mom was probably the best hospitality trainer I’ve ever met in my life, and she was award-winning. I remember she came to Kaidu Springs and did a training for us. Everybody felt strange about it, but this was back in the 1990s, when we were answering a telephone in the restaurant, not something like we were answering today. I had a brick phone, to give you an idea.

She taught us and trained everybody that you had to smile before you picked up the damn phone so customers could hear the smile.

It’s about having someone who knows what they’re talking about. It’s making sure our guests don’t encounter an attitude of indifference from one or more employees, which is the biggest reason customers don’t come back.

But what do we need to think about when it comes to first impressions? It’s hard to overcome when you don’t do a good job.

And like you said, there’s a first impression from the marketing, the branding, the website, and the app. We get little first impressions there, but typically, that first impression when you’re trying to break down the wall and get me into your restaurant for the first time is challenging.

Once you finally get me there, now I’ve got a decision to make. I’m evaluating you and deciding whether this is somewhere I’m going to come back to.

That first three or four minutes of walking onto the property is critical. It really is. Those are the pieces that are most memorable. It’s the walkway, the flower bed, the fact that your front door is all scratched and chipped and just looks old, or that very first greeting from the first employee I encounter. What impression do I get?

Those are things we know are fairly easy to address. But when you’re spending a lot of marketing dollars to create buzz and pull people in for the first time, remember that we’re looking at everything. We haven’t been here before. We’re checking you out.

Those simple little basics that get away from us make a really big difference to first-time guests.

And that’s something in my world and yours. We’ve always trained and talked about checklists. You can put those standards on a checklist. You can have a manager follow the checklist to make sure the team completed theirs, so the guest notices nothing out of place.

They walk up the sidewalk, and there’s no black gum stuck to it. There’s no situation where, because you’re in a city and all your deliveries come in and out of the front door, there are black wheel marks from carts going in and out.

It’s making sure there are no fingerprints on the door and no cigarette butts near your entrance. All these little things matter.

One of the things you taught me over the years is that wow customer service isn’t jazz hands. It’s connecting with your guest, but more importantly, making sure your guests stay connected.

When they come in, walk through the door, and meet up at the entrance, they’re engaged with each other. When they come in, they shouldn’t be wondering if they’ll ever get seated and have that break their connection.

They’re greeted immediately and properly, so they can continue their conversation. They get seated, and somebody comes to the table within the two-minute rule. Otherwise, they start to stop listening to the person across from them and have a conversation in their heads about when they’re going to get service.

Those are little broken opportunities.

Can you talk a little bit more about that first impression and why it’s so important that we don’t break that flow?

What you’re trying to do is transition someone from a first-time guest into someone who ultimately trusts you and wants to come back quite frequently. That is a transition.

What you’re ultimately trying to do is build value to the point where, to me, it doesn’t matter if I’m spending $6 for a breakfast sandwich or $60 on a nice entrée. I want value.

We see that value in several different areas as customers.

The first and foremost piece, the one that has to be there every single time, is food quality. It doesn’t matter if I’m buying a breakfast sandwich from an airport counter-service restaurant or I’m out for a nice dinner with my wife. If I’m spending $6 or $60, my perception might be a little different, but I still want a good breakfast sausage sandwich, even if I’m only paying six bucks for it.

That part of the value has to be there 100% of the time. It’s tough, we get it, but that’s one of the things we’re always evaluating when we think about value.

The second component of value is the location, the ambiance, the setting, the cleanliness, and the appearance, because we gain value from those things.

We’re coming to have a nice, comfortable setting with you. We just want a clean environment. We want somewhere to relax. Part of how we decide on value is based on those small, simple things we see, and a lot of them are created in the first impression.

But the biggest portion of value is almost like the free card restaurants have to build value. It’s service and simple connections: the hellos, the smiles, the thank-yous, and “Thank you, Mr. Peters. It was great to see you tonight.”

That simple connection may not be what’s pulling me in initially, and a lot of times it’s not even what gets me back for the second experience. But that service is what starts to make me feel comfortable there and increases those visits.

It’s also a way to offset price increases, right? Every one of your members is probably challenged with whether to raise prices now or keep going.

If price is a concern, service really makes it less relevant. If I walk out of a restaurant feeling comfortable and happy, feeling like somebody valued having me there and showed me hospitality, then I don’t think about the price I paid.

But when I feel like I got shortchanged, didn’t receive good service, and encountered an attitude, that’s when I think, “Wow, I just paid $60 for that? Really?”

Most of the time, price can be pushed aside by providing great value, including the highlight of value: the service connection and the people portion of the experience.

And I would tell you, you could tell me I’m full of it and I’m wrong, and I’m good with that. But I think service is number one, and food is actually number three on the list.

You can have a great chef, a great menu, and everything else. The food can be phenomenal. But when I get terrible service every time I go, now I’m a once-a-year customer.

Man, I crave that dish, but every time I go, there’s a long wait. They’re never attentive. I always need a drink. You start to go through all these hurdles just to have that dish, and eventually, you give up on it. You go to places that pay attention to you and make a connection.

I’m going to get back to that in a second because I think that service part is number one.

This is what I want to talk about. You said connection.

I’ve seen you speak hundreds of times at this point. You and I have seen each other’s presentations so often that we could probably give each other’s presentations ourselves.

There’s a story you tell that I think is really important. I want to divert us for a moment and talk about making that connection.

You were a server at a chain restaurant as a young lad, and you were crushing it with upselling the specials. You had a manager say, “Darren, tell everybody how you do it.”

You started going through a checklist: the special is such and such, it’s $27.95, blah, blah, blah. But that wasn’t it. It was how you created a connection that allowed you to give a great experience to a guest and sell more.

Can you go back and tell that story?

Back to Red Lobster.

Yeah, baby.

And the general manager, Liz, was a little fireball who had suggestive-selling contests all the time. I liked that competition.

I remember the shrimp appetizer, the garlic shrimp scampi add-on, and I think it was about $6.95. She would challenge all of us during our shift meetings: “How many are you going to sell? How many are you going to sell?” We’d have prizes, and she had a big board up in the kitchen where we tracked our sales for four weeks.

I kept winning little prizes. Then she called me up at the next staff meeting and put me on the spot. She asked how I was doing it.

What I didn’t realize then was that it was about the first connection with the guest. It had nothing to do with the drink special or what they were ordering.

It was about asking what brought them in that night, where they’d been, whether they had plans later that day, or telling them I loved the logo on their hat because I was a Bruins fan, too.

It was about creating a little casual conversation.

I guess the goal was always to try to get them to smile. I felt like once they smiled during that very short window of the introduction, they trusted you.

When you came back five minutes later and said, “Six shrimp, $6.95, garlic shrimp scampi,” they thought, “Okay, Darren says it’s good. I trust him.”

It was just like an add-on. You weren’t selling anything, but you connected with the guests first.

So, yeah, it’s been a long time since Red Lobster.

Yeah, but nothing has changed.

I can remember you and I having so many discussions and sharing many drinks at many bars over the years while traveling.

You know, sometimes chain-level service today isn’t quite what it was in the ’80s or ’90s. It’s very impersonal.

“Hi, my name is David.”

You know what? Nobody at the table gives a rat’s ass that I’m David.

“Have you been here before? Oh, let me tell you about our rock shrimp special.”

Blah, blah, blah. They don’t care. They take the order, go away, and won’t remember my name.

But when you approach it the way you did, you might say, “Hey, were you watching the Bruins game last night?” Or, “Oh, you guys went to the zoo? Where did you go? You brought balloons? Oh, you went to the zoo.”

You kneel down and talk to the kids real quick, giving the parents a breather. You make that connection, whatever it may be.

Then you go through your specials and do what you need to do. As you start to turn away, you come back and say, “Oh, by the way, I’m David. If you need anything, I’m here for you.”

Now I care about you. You’re a human being. You connected with the table. You’re listening to me and showing me that you care.

That’s powerful.

Now I want to stay on this for a moment and talk about value. You and I have had so many conversations about this.

I can remember you giving speeches more than 20 years ago, talking about value and saying, “Hey, when I take my family of three, you want my $50. A burger is now $18. A family of three or four isn’t getting out of anywhere for $60 or $80 anymore.”

It’s become a real decision when we go into a restaurant.

You alluded to it when we talked about value. One of the things I teach is a very simplified way to think about pricing. How do I choose how to price myself? It’s about value.

I can undercut everybody and be the dive bar. I never want to be that. I can be like everybody else, the Applebee’s, the Chili’s, or whoever, and charge just like them, even though they get their food for cheaper. I can charge just like them because I’m perceived as offering the same value.

Or I can provide incredible service and an incredible product, be better than everybody else, and charge more.

If I go to a terrible restaurant and they give me asparagus that’s awful, bitter, and causes things to happen in my body that we don’t want to talk about, and they comp the meal because it’s so bad, it’s still too much money. Free is too much money.

I go to Ruth’s Chris Steak House. They sell me four of those spears for $35 with a little spritz on top, and I’m saying it’s the best asparagus I’ve ever had in my life.

It wasn’t just the food. It was the atmosphere and the level of service and care.

Can you talk a little about that before we move on? A lot of people think value means price. It doesn’t. It’s the experience, right?

Well, that’s where everything adds together. The experience comes from several different parts of the dining experience.

Whether I’m getting a breakfast sausage sandwich or having a really nice sit-down fine-dining experience, if the food is disappointing, it instantly pulls away from the experience because of the expectations I had coming in.

The expectations I bring in are always that I want good food. A lot of times, I’m not expecting someone to make me smile or laugh or kneel down and talk to my daughter.

That’s why those things are hidden gems for increasing perceived value. I don’t expect them when I come in, but I do expect good food.

When somebody genuinely connects with me and finds out that we went to the zoo that day, and we have a simple little 20-second conversation, that’s all we’re talking about. It doesn’t have to be five or ten minutes. It’s little things.

That’s what I walk away with, thinking, “Wow, I really received this extra value.”

That’s not necessarily how we describe it, but it’s that warm, fuzzy feeling that you had a great experience and feel like you got your money’s worth.

People just don’t understand. They think service is robotic. They even train their people to say, “My name is…” and drill it into them. Then they go through the specials and so on.

That’s not how you make a connection.

Wow customer service and great hospitality are what truly make anything you put on a plate valuable. We don’t want to compete on price. If you want to compete on price, you’re competing with a gas station, and you can get food at a gas station nowadays.

You want to deliver an experience. That’s what hospitality is: creating a great experience. Or better yet, creating memories.

You and I have created a lot of memories over the years.

I’m going to go one step further. I can remember when you and I spoke at the California Restaurant Show. We went to a large seafood chain restaurant right outside the arena and convention center. We didn’t have great service. The place was clean and nice, but it was expensive for the time.

I think this was probably 10 years ago, maybe even longer. It was the beginning of minimum wage going up in California, and prices were going up. We were in a tourist trap next to the arena and convention center.

We ordered seafood, and I remember looking at my plate when it came out. I think we may even have had a steak as well.

I looked at it and thought, “We’re now approaching a point where, for the first time, what we’re charging doesn’t match the value on the plate.”

Before we go on, I want you to talk about this because people don’t know you have a culinary background, including a degree and all that wonderful stuff.

Talk about when it’s important to make sure our value also matches what’s on the plate. Maybe it’s time to change the menu because even the greatest hospitality in the world can’t overcome a guest’s perception that you’re overcharging for something.

The part that can easily keep me away from your restaurant is when I feel like it’s going to be an expensive dinner.

A lot of times, we’re just going out for something quick to eat. If you get flagged in my mind as an expensive experience, then I save you for special occasions or just every once in a while. You don’t become a regular in the circle of restaurants we frequent.

The experience provides extra value in dollars because it’s not what we’re expecting.

Food portions are a big part of it. The way you display the food, the extras, the price of your drinks. There are so many ways to be smart about it.

Look who I’m talking to, right? You have to understand the costs behind it and sell products that work for the restaurant to ensure you have enough sales coming in to cover your prime cost properly.

That’s the bigger picture.

If you’re not able to staff properly, then you’re not able to provide the experience I’m expecting as a guest.

If you’re in cost-cutting mode and labor is your biggest focus, you might say, “We can run with four tonight. We don’t need that fifth or even sixth person.”

Then they scramble, run around, and get behind. To me, that’s about leadership. That’s what drives all of this: having the right management team in place so that, when it comes to service and value, you have all the tools you need to provide that to the guest.

If you’re running a 68% prime cost and your food cost is way out of line, you’re considering shrinking portions and raising prices. But maybe you talk to David, put in some more work, and find those extra 12 or 15 points so you can have the right number of staff to provide the experience.

The other part is making sure the management team is in great shape so all the little, unnecessary problems are taken care of and operations run smoothly.

When the first guest of the day orders iced tea with a lemon, I shouldn’t come around the server alley and see that it hasn’t been made yet.

No big deal to the server, right? They throw it together. But it took me six minutes to get my iced tea, and now it’s warm.

Those little things add up. Checklists and good management help provide that value.

Let’s stay on the lemon. There are things that drive you and me nuts. We’ve gone out together all the time, and I think you’ll agree that if I’m in a dining party, odds are the restaurant is going to fall down.

I swear, nine out of ten times you and I go out, because I’m there, they fall down. I swear to goodness, it’s the worst luck in the world.

It’s either a home run or a strikeout. It really is with you. We have some great experiences because of your character and how you socialize with people. You’re wonderful to talk to, and when a server really jumps onto that, we have some memorable experiences.

Well, our good friends, the Salvi brothers, say I’m intimidating to a server, and I don’t believe that. I have fun.

With that said, let’s talk about some of the things that drive me nuts and drive you nuts, and how that affects the dining experience, because you’ve got to pay attention to everything.

Basically, what you were saying a moment ago is that you’ve got to have your act together. You’ve got to do Restaurant 101: hot food hot, cold food cold, a clean and safe work environment for your guests and employees, wow customer service, and an incredible product.

Now we know that we have to get that product to somebody’s table in great condition.

What are some of the things that turn you off?

Well, you’re trying to build a relationship with a guest who’s going to come back over and over. You’re trying to build trust.

We talked about the first impression. One thing that fits right into that first impression is confusion, which guests simply don’t like.

Whether that’s not knowing how to get to your drive-through, not knowing how to order on your kiosks, or looking at a menu and wondering how many choices they need to consider, confusion is an instant turnoff.

To me, the biggest turnoff is any sense of attitude I see, hear, or feel from any staff member.

I experienced this with my daughter the other day. Someone was pushing a customer out right at closing time, and the guy just needed two more minutes. The employee was rude. I wasn’t involved in it, but I felt it.

Anytime the staff is a little distant, distracted, or frustrated, we sense it and feel it. That’s not why we dine out. We don’t want to be involved in your issues between staff members. We want pleasant, wonderful smiles all the time.

Going back to food, that’s another major turnoff. Anytime I get poor food, it’s an instant turnoff.

Some things turn people off very quickly, while others are things we’ll put up with for a little while.

There’s one restaurant locally that I thoroughly love. I love their food and the owner. It’s a husband-and-wife team, and you can tell they’re working their butts off. They’re there all the time, and everyone feels like family. It’s so much fun.

But the place is filthy. I cringe a little each time I go in. I know it’s hard, and he’s running a busy restaurant and doing his best, but there are things I’ll put up with for a little while. If I go in again and see that it’s still that dirty, I don’t know if I can keep going back.

I feel you. Some of the things we’ve seen are my pet peeves, especially when it comes to service.

When we travel, you and I are often on our own. You walk up to the host, and the host says, “Just one?”

Yeah, I’m a freaking loser. I’ve got no friends. What do you mean, just one?

Then there’s the waiting. The drink is half full, and if it’s soda or iced tea, that means there’s very little left because there’s so much ice. I’m about two sips away from being out of anything.

I don’t want to be out of a drink and have to wonder when someone will refill it.

I don’t want soup to arrive without a soup spoon on the table. I don’t want a steak to arrive without the table being set with a knife.

There are so many little things that drive you and me crazy.

We might be a little more critical than most, but I don’t think we are. I actually think we’re more forgiving because we’ve been in the industry. We understand what it’s like.

With the couple whose restaurant you like, for example, you feel for them because you know what it’s like. We’ve been in the industry. We give them a little more leeway.

We may notice more, but I think we’re less harsh on them. Today, most guests who have a bad experience go online and tell thousands of people.

Can you go through some of the key pain points or things that drive you crazy that every owner really needs to pay attention to?

You hit a point in your dining experience where you reach a certain level of frustration, and when the value isn’t there, that’s typically when it hits you: “I paid what for this?”

At that point, you want your voice heard.

Good management teams understand that they need to talk to guests before they leave the building. Somehow, some way, don’t let them leave without addressing the problem. Solve it right then and there.

I think, for the most part, that’s a major focus in chain restaurants. It always has been. They’re putting out fires before they get carried away.

We always relate it to secret shopping scores because that’s how I put a marker on it.

If you have an experience below 50%, you’re done. You’re just not coming back. That’s when you’re frustrated and want to tell somebody. Social media is pretty powerful in that regard, and it really matters.

The goal is to get those dining experiences into the 90% range. The 90s are about the little things that we fully understand.

We didn’t get our silverware. No problem, here it is. I’m sorry.

Those things might take away from a secret shopping score, but they don’t necessarily take away from the overall value.

We’ve always found that if you have about three dining experiences at a high level, that’s when you start building a relationship and trusting the restaurant. You start coming back.

In between, it’s easy to see the difference. Restaurants that continually score 82%, 77%, and 75% seem to struggle with sales and don’t get into growth mode.

A lot of the clients we work with who score in the 90s are working at it and genuinely enjoy providing value through the entire service model. They’re opening new stores, growing, and building.

It’s a true reflection of whatever experience I have when I walk out the door. I either want to come back quickly or I forget about you.

When we forget about you, sometimes that just means three or four months before we return. We might come back because of a particular food dish we enjoyed, because of the price, or because of the location.

Those things might bring us back every three or four months after a mediocre experience.

But what we’ve found over the years is that the thing that doesn’t bring anybody back is the people portion of the experience. When there’s no connection and just basic, simple service, we don’t come back for basic.

Let’s stay on this for a second.

I remember seeing a video clip of Gary Vee and John Taffer talking about customers coming back. John Taffer quoted some numbers and said that after a first visit, you have less than a 50% chance of getting that person back.

Now, let’s be very clear. There are only three ways to increase your sales: get a brand-new customer to come in for the first time, get them to come back more often, and get them to spend more.

Getting a brand-new customer is often the most expensive form of marketing. It takes money to grab somebody’s attention and bring them through your door.

Getting them to come back and spend more helps us build our business.

In fact, some experts talk about doubling your sales if you get customers to come back one more visit a month, spend 10% more, and so on. We can get there.

Repeat business is critical, especially if I spend a lot of money to get somebody through the door. If I do a terrible job, they don’t come back, and I have less than a 50% chance of bringing them back.

Then he says that if you get them back a second time, you have a 70% chance of getting them back again. If you get a third visit, you own them. They love you. You’re now part of their routine.

So what does it take to get that second visit and move from a less-than-50% chance to a 70% chance? If I do a great job on that second visit, odds are I’m going to earn that third visit.

What does it take? What do you pay attention to in a restaurant to make sure you’re delivering a 90% experience because you’re doing these things right?

All that trust, what he describes as owning them, comes from having tried everything and feeling comfortable.

They know your menu a little bit. They know where to park. They know your hours. There’s a comfort level.

That’s why it’s so hard to get people in the door the first time. They don’t know where to park or what your hours are. Getting them in for the first time is the biggest challenge.

The ideal model is to turn those first-time guests into regulars. Getting them back for a second visit is also tricky.

They know a little about you, but they might not have found the food dish they love yet. They might not have known what to order and felt a little hesitant.

That person starts to build a relationship with you. Answer a few questions for them, take 20 or 30 seconds extra to explain the menu, and help them feel comfortable.

One of the biggest things I recommend is giving them some type of welcome-back offer that brings them in again.

That starts with simple, basic service systems. Identify who the first-time guests are. If the hostess identifies them with a red napkin on the table, it’s now the manager’s role to follow up and talk to them, helping bring them back for that second visit.

The second time around, they’re much more comfortable. I’m going to take a few extra minutes to explain the menu and maybe ask a few more questions.

That second visit is key because you’re starting to build a relationship with those people.

That’s where I begin to feel comfortable with the people who work there. They seem friendly and upbeat. I can feel the morale. It just feels like a good place.

That’s what we seek, whether it’s a burger place or an upscale restaurant. We want to feel comfortable, and the people have the biggest effect on that comfort.

By the third visit, there’s trust.

If I trust you, I’ll throw in a caveat to that statistic: you want all three of those visits to be in the 90% scoring range. You want to prove to them right off the bat that they can have three great experiences.

Now that trust makes me willing to tell a friend or two, bring somebody else with me next time, and maybe, after a couple more visits, post something nice about you.

That’s the relationship, but it takes time to build.

Restaurants that have been around for 20, 30, or 40 years understand this. Table seven has been coming in for brunch every Sunday, week after week after week. They love it there. That’s their place, and they feel connected to it.

We want the local Italian restaurant to do well because that’s where we celebrate our anniversary. We’re cheering for you, rooting for you, and we want to feel connected to what you’re doing.

That’s so important.

Sometimes we have different kinds of guests. We have guests coming in from out of town who may only visit once, or who come in routinely throughout the year but aren’t locals.

Then you have your locals, and we want to get them to come back.

Here’s the real power. Let’s say your restaurant only has visitors who come in once a month. Every customer in the place comes in once a month.

If you could implement systems, provide great hospitality, and make them feel comfortable enough to come back twice a month, you would double your sales.

The power of getting that second and third visit is immense.

It’s not unusual for a restaurant to ask, “Could I increase my sales by 10% to 25% if I really paid attention to service, food, and cleanliness?”

In a moment, I’m going to ask you to tell people what you do as a secret shopping service and what that really means.

But can you talk about the major categories? Where do the questions come from? Service, product, timing? Maybe five different things people should pay attention to right now.

Everybody has categories that are more important to their guests, so it varies.

Some are trying to drive business through a different type of accountability. Maybe they’re already running really well and want to improve suggestive selling, or they want to make sure their managers are on the floor.

Sometimes the goal is simply follow-up.

Typically, we’re looking at individual sections of the first impression. That’s everything in those first three or four minutes, broken down into individual sections.

We look at the hostess, the server, and the quality of the food and beverages.

Timing becomes a big factor throughout the shopping reports because it’s a big factor in the dining experience. Delays are something we don’t appreciate. Everybody wants to get out of there.

Sure, if you’re going out for your anniversary, you don’t mind a few delays. But for the most part, we want to come in, have a nice experience, and get back on the road.

Whether it’s a delay in getting that first drink or a delay in delivering the guest check, we pay close attention to those things.

We also look at the ambiance, the lighting, the air, the music, and how comfortable the environment is. We get very detailed about cleanliness and organization because those are things we can see with our own eyes, and they’re often easy to address.

The reports are individualized for each restaurant, obviously, and much of it is driven by the restaurant’s priorities.

Honestly, one thing that seems to come up more and more frequently is suggestive selling.

Restaurant owners really understand the opportunity. You’ve paid to get the first-time guests in. You’re trying to make them comfortable, build trust in the environment, and provide value through everything we’ve talked about.

Now it’s about bringing them back for more visits and selling a little extra to enhance the experience.

I always look at it as enhancing the server’s income. If you can teach them how to sell $800 on a shift instead of $650, they’ll make a few extra bucks.

You’re also enhancing the restaurant’s bottom line. That extra $12 after the guests are already there and ordering has a great profit margin.

And you’re enhancing the guest’s experience. That shrimp scampi for $6.95 was fantastic and went really well with the meal I ordered.

I don’t think about the price. I walk away thinking, “That was a great appetizer. That was a wonderful drink. I’m really glad we got that add-on sauce for the bread. It was perfect.”

All these little pieces help everybody involved.

Yeah, great. Upselling is about giving your guests a better experience because you’re adding the dish they should have had.

You know that going from a well vodka to Ketel One or Grey Goose is a better drink. You know that if they leave your restaurant without trying your signature side dish or appetizer, they’ll miss out.

You go out of your way to say, “Man, I really highly recommend this.”

You can even get to the point where you say, “If you don’t love it, I’ll take it off the bill. No questions asked.”

When you’re that confident, you’re making your guest’s experience better and creating a memory.

Those are what you’re ultimately trying to identify: memorable experiences.

They’re not necessary for every normal dining experience. Maybe I’m just hungry and two friends are catching up over a meal. I don’t need to make it memorable.

But when you look at a week or a month and consider how many guests come in and out of your doors, you can make it memorable for a handful or a couple dozen of them quite easily if you’re looking for opportunities.

The extra sales, the extra conversations, or walking a lady out to her car because it just started raining are all silly little things that can be memorable.

Now you’ve really brought me into trusting you because I’ve got a memory of you.

Yeah. Is there anything we didn’t talk about when it comes to creating a long-term guest? I know it’s about having consistent scores in the 90s, but is there anything else we missed?

It’s all the fine little details that we take for granted.

Really good restaurants know how to run really good operations. I find that distractions, extra time, and problems that come up because your shift isn’t organized really affect the experience I have.

I feel like it’s simple to do, but too many restaurants overlook the little things and think they’re no big deal.

They say, “They love us anyway,” or, “They had a great experience. I’m sure everything was okay.”

That’s just not enough.

We’re in a business where the little details are all around us. There are so many tasks to do every single week, and you’ve got to track them and make sure you’re ready for the lunch shift at 10:50, not at 11:50 when you’re scrambling to get everything back in order.

Pay attention to the little things and make your guests smile.

I know it sounds silly, but it’s still that one X factor. If I smile, I feel good about where I ate. It’s a simple little gesture.

Well, I think the way I look at it is this: it’s systems, checklists, and all the details. It’s training, making sure you don’t have a great experience at each table if you haven’t trained your people on what that experience should be.

They won’t handle a busy Friday night if they weren’t trained to handle a busy Friday night.

If they’re learning on the job during a busy Friday night and they’re failing, you’re losing those guests.

You have to train, which ultimately comes down to having a leader on the floor. Whether it’s you as the owner or a manager, someone has to lead the process, and that’s critical.

All of this goes back to running a great hospitality organization and a great restaurant.

We can talk about how to make money in the business, which is a whole other thing. But right now, if you don’t do service well, if you don’t put out a great product, and if your place is dirty, that’s on you.

This is where secret shopping is so important. It’s not only a great barometer of how you score with your guests across all these areas, but it’s also a great training tool.

You can come back and say, “We had a guest come in and have a terrible experience. Let me tell you what happened. This is how we overcome that, and this is what we do with it.”

Another thing is that you and I have one of our favorite restaurants, my favorite, and I’m not trying to slight any of my members, but it’s always been Okeechobee Steakhouse in West Palm Beach, Florida.

They’re former members of my old company, and I love them to death. They deliver an incredible experience.

You and I have driven two hours out of our way from a completely different city in Florida to go there because it’s so phenomenal.

I know for a fact that they consistently score in the 90s and continue secret shopping because that one day when they don’t score a 90, whatever the reason, even if it’s an 89, that’s a major red flag that something needs to change.

Talk about what Service With Style does. What do you do?

Okeechobee has been in business for 65 or 70 years now. They have a phenomenal reputation.

My personal opinion is that it’s because they take care of every single little detail. Nothing is overlooked, and they continue striving to be a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better.

I think secret shopping is an important part of that.

It’s about communicating back to the team. A lot of times, managers understand what type of service is needed. They’ve hired good people, so they assume those people are doing everything required. They’re joking around with them in the kitchen, so they must be providing great service.

Secret shopping provides follow-up to make sure that’s actually happening, but there’s also a communication component to make sure the team understands all the little details.

Most people think service is pretty simple. We smile, greet guests on time, and make sure their refills arrive.

For the most part, it is basic, but what we’re trying to do is keep the team’s focus on it.

We assume employees are doing these things, so we don’t talk about them very often. Communicating the results back to the staff during shift meetings is the perfect opportunity to review details from a secret shopping report.

You can say, “Hey, we did these few things great, and here’s our total score. We’re trying to get up to 95%. Here are a few things we can work on.”

Hopefully, everyone’s having a weekly manager meeting. When you discuss a secret shopping report, that’s where a few focus items come from.

You can say, “Hey, here’s four or five things we need to keep our eyes on.”

When those become talking points in your shift meetings and you reiterate them throughout the week, you create consistency.

For example, you might say, “Hey, everyone, it’s the greeting times. We’re at 45 seconds. That’s what we’re looking for.”

You create consistency through training.

Then you sit down with the manager, server, or bartender and review the results. Here’s a few things we loved, here’s a few things you might not have been aware of, and hopefully not, but sometimes, here’s a few things we never want to see again.

You just continue trying to get a little bit better.

Most of the restaurants we work with find that a once-a-month visit is enough. It keeps their staff on their toes and keeps the focus on service where it needs to be.

It’s enough to provide a lot of really great information, broken into all the sections, with scoring, pictures, receipts, and the whole works. We also have fantastic software behind it that tracks all your scores and includes all the bells and whistles.

Ultimately, you want to communicate that information back to your team and use it constructively.

You can say, “Hey, we just got shopped. We scored 91%. Thanks, guys. We’re up from 86% last month. What’s it going to take to get us to 95%, and how do we do that consistently?”

It’s something that has to be worked on. It doesn’t go away.

It’s like managing your labor. You never stop managing your labor. Every day, you’re focused on it. Service is the same. There’s something new all the time that you have to keep your focus on.

I just want to be clear. I gushed about you earlier and said you’re the number one secret shopping service out there, and I mean that.

Part of it is your core values and how you approach this. You’re a lifelong hospitality trainer, coach, and all those things. You care so much that your reports are phenomenal.

You and I had a discussion just the other day. I asked, “Hey, are you using AI?”

You said no, that you were going to continue using human editors because your standards are too high. You don’t want something that isn’t going to meet those standards.

I want people to understand that not only do I put my name on you and say you have the best reports, but you live it. You’re delivering exactly what you want people to have, and it’s only the best.

How would people learn about you? How do they find Service With Style if they want to start secret shopping?

Well, again, I appreciate that, David. We make it really simple. It’s just a helpful tool.

Our website is where you’d start: servicewithstyle.com.

If you go to servicewithstyle.com/DSP, there’s a special offer. If anyone wants to try it, we’ll comp your first shop. We’ll also give you a discount on all the shops going forward.

Even if you just want one shop, no problem.

Most restaurants do a visit once a month. Some do it once a quarter. Some do a breakfast this month, then two months later they do a bar visit and then a dinner.

Every report is built around your exact questions.

There are no startup fees, cancellation fees, or hidden fees. It’s nice and simple, with no contracts and no minimums, and you get really detailed reports.

We take a lot of time to build them the right way and train the shoppers the right way. We’ve got a phenomenal base of shoppers who’ve been with us for decades and know what to look for.

The manager gets that report and says, “Hey, this is great. Let’s now go to work on a few things to get better.”

Yeah, amen. So, servicewithstyle.com/DSP for David Scott Peters.

All they have to do, David, is schedule a quick call with us. It takes 10 minutes. We run through the program and get you set up. If it’s something you like, great.

Just spend 10 minutes on the phone with us, and you’ll get all the details you need.

All right. If you don’t call and set up a call, you just don’t know what you’re missing.

It’s one of those things where you don’t know what you don’t know. You need to at least do one shop and get a feel for what it is.

I’ll tell you, it’s probably going to be like a crack dealer. Here’s your first hit, and you’re going to want to see these reports on a routine basis because they really make a difference.

Again, I want to thank you for doing this for me today.

Before we go, is there anything we didn’t talk about that you want to bring up? Maybe a favorite book or a favorite quote you’d like to leave people with?

That’s a good one.

I guess one of the points we barely touched on, but that I think is at the core of everything, is service, restaurants, and operations. It’s that core manager meeting.

It’s something I fully believe in.

The reason I bring it up is that recently, at the California show, I had a good crowd and happened to ask, “Who’s running a regular manager meeting?”

There were hardly any hands up in the air.

I just feel like this is the one piece that brings together every project you’re working on and every problem you’re trying to solve.

It’s fantastic for training your young managers little by little through education.

I hope everyone’s having manager meetings and talking about service at least a little during those meetings.

Run them smart. Death by Meeting is a fantastic little book to help you set up meetings.

I just think the communication piece is a harder topic to maintain in restaurants because of all the moving parts. For me, the weekly manager meeting is the center of communication.

Preach, my friend, preach. It’s gold to my ears.

Darren, I want to thank you so much for doing this. We’ll do it again sometime soon.

Again, really powerful stuff. I hope everybody looks you up and goes to servicewithstyle.com/DSP. Get on a call, take 10 minutes, and do a first shop.

I’m promising you, it’s going to change your world when it comes to training standards and meeting your guests’ expectations.

Thanks again, Darren.

I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on again. Hopefully, they can use service as a sales-building tool and get better and better and better at service. It’s just going to help them drive sales.

Amen.

Thanks, David.

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