One of my good friends has, as one of her several part-time jobs, a gig as a “secret shopper”. It doesn’t pay anything but she gets some free meals in exchange for writing a report about how the food and service was. It’s an interesting niche of the restaurant business that you might not have been aware of.
I bet all of you who eat out have been served meals you didn’t enjoy, and I tell you, it’s a whole different kind of experience when you know that your report with chapter and verse about what was wrong is going to the general manager.
The clients are usually restaurant management companies with multiple locations in the area. The shopping company gets a contract and then announces it by email to their shoppers and someone signs up. My friend, call her Joan, spent years as a waitress and bartender, mostly in quality restaurants, so she has a good understanding of how staff should behave beyond just getting the order right. I suppose the other shoppers have similar food service backgrounds. The restaurant being “shopped” expects a couple, so I get to eat for the price of the tip and maybe the wine.
Usually it’s fun, and often a real bargain. The gigs Joan signs up for range from above-average family restaurants to fine dining, and we’ve had some very good meals. There are several clients she’ll happily go back to any time — most of those hotly contested by the shoppers.
Most of what the shopper is there to do is observe the staff. If they take reservations, is that handled well? Some clients specifically want us to sit at the bar and watch the bartender, because bartenders have more opportunity than the waitstaff to rip the place off. Do they measure the liquor? Do they give you your bill promptly after serving you? If paid in cash do they ring it up promptly and put it in the register?
Reporting on the food service is like a checklist. How long to be seated, greeted, served each course. Upselling is expected at every level, whether it’s “do you want fries with that?” at the burger place or bearnaise sauce at the steakhouse. Does the server mention drinks, starters, salad? What are the specials, and what are their recommendations? At the end does the server offer dessert and coffee and then finally bring your check and handle payment promptly? [Having your server disappear just when you’re ready to pay is extremely annoying and surprisingly common, including at expensive restaurants where they should really know better.]
When something’s wrong with the food, the key issue is how they handle it. First, did the server check on you quickly enough after serving the food? When they leave you there for several minutes looking at your burned pizza it kicks everything up a notch. An underdone steak can just be grilled another couple minutes and brought back; something overcooked might need to be done over. Joan thinks do-overs need to come with a profuse apology, preferably from the manager. The client with the burned pizza got a bad report about the waitress and manager; the client where an overcooked piece of fish was quickly replaced got a good report.
Service issues in general are what the clients are most interested in. Besides what we see our waiter doing or not doing, we're keeping an eye on the rest of the staff. People in view of customers need to be looking busy, not looking at their phones or visibly goofing off [a big problem at one casual place with a mostly teenage staff.] The restaurants that get shopped most frequently are the low- and middle-range places that know they have training issues: there’s lots of staff turnover and lots of people with their first serving job or first managing job. Some issues are of course more subtle. We ate this week at a fancy steakhouse that’s the most expensive client the shopping company has right now, and the fact that it’s our third trip in a year suggests that the management knows things aren’t quite right. There seems to be plenty of staff, not visibly slacking, yet somehow our waiter isn’t ever as attentive as we’d like. Our opinion has been the same each time: “at this price it should be better”.
---—
Today I’m playing my once-a-month gig at a bbq restaurant; we don’t get paid but do get food, so dinner will be a brisket sandwich. What’s for dinner at your place? Maybe you can write it up for a future WFD; message ninkasi23 to sign up.