SERVICE: The Real Product of Your Restaurant - You Know It, So Do Your Customers

No one makes you feel good about spending your money better than the Walt Disney® Company does. Bring a family of four into one of its parks and even if you exit with an empty wallet and an exhausted credit card, you'll still be smiling. It's not magic; it's a calculated result of the Disney service culture.

Disney employees are trained to be "cast members" in a grand production, designed for your enjoyment and convenience. Even if one of the "cast" is busy sweeping a walkway, he'll not only be able to answer your question, "Where are Mickey and Goofy," he'll tell you in a way that makes you glad you asked, as if you did him a favor. Ask where the restroom is, where you might get a snow cone or some film for your camera. You can't stump the street sweeper because Disney is a service operation, and he knows that his job is to serve you. You and your family walk away from the experience gushing about the "service."

We can teach the technical skills, but it's much tougher to teach people skills... We have had servers that maybe are less technically superior... but they are so genuinely caring and personable at the table that it more than compensates for their technical imperfections. -- Legendary Chef & Owner, Charlie Trotter

You might not be able to define service, but like true love, you know it when you find it. Pity the management consultants who try to reduce the concept into a neat, measurable, and tangible package. Countless business seminars and books have been written on the subject of service. Nearly every company touts service as its goal. Even Webster's College Dictionary has a hard time pinning down an exact definition of the word. Hospitality industry scholars, such as Melvin N. Barrington of the Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Travel Administration at the University of South Carolina, acknowledge that "service is an elusive concept, which is extremely difficult to measure and evaluate."

The irony of "service" is that while it seems "elusive and intangible," it is the lifeblood of the restaurant industry and is going to be the guts of your new restaurant operation. It will form the relationship with the people who bring the money to your door, the customers. While it defies definition, hospitality "black belts" like Disney can deliver it on a silver tray day after day, year after year. To succeed in any new restaurant, you need to do more than say the word, you need to embrace and understand it. You also need to figure out ways to measure it.