As usual, this friend is into dining and so he suggested a few restaurants. One of them is located in Orchard Central Shopping Mall.
If you've been to this shopping mall, you probably won't feel that you are at Orchard Road, Singapore's famous shopping street. It's quiet with very few shoppers, a sharp contrast to the street outside. It's practically dead.
However, there are still a few restaurants that are surviving well. If you're at Orchard Road and do not want to waste time waiting for a seat at a restaurant, on a busy weekend, you probably won't have that problem at Orchard Central.
Is there a gourmet burger there? Is it new? I definitely didn't hear of it. So I googled for it.
Hmm.. it's located on the 11th floor.
Then suddenly "Tink!" the light bulb turned up on my head. I asked my cousin whether the Chinese restaurant we went to at the same shopping mall few months back is located on the 11th floor.
Ok, now I know. The last time I went to the Chinese restaurant for lunch, there was a high-class Italian restaurant next to it. The restaurant was HUGE. It has a wine cellar and all the tables were set up with different sizes of cutlery and wine glasses.
I was carrying my friend's baby out to take a walk and saw that there's only one table of customer in the whole restaurant. And it's lunch time on a Saturday. I wondered how long can a business last.
If my guess is correct, the gourmet burger restaurant must have taken over the Italian restaurant which has closed.
Anyway, we decided on this particular burger restaurant. And since it's a Saturday, we made a reservation to avoid having to queue.
The three of us were late. When we arrived, we were worried if our seats have been released and was expecting a long queue. Fortunately, the place was only half filled and there's no queue at all. We walked in and saw my friend already seated. At the same time, a service staff approached us and my cousin said we have a reservation and pointed to my friend. The staff said, "Mr Andrew?"
Impressed that the staff could remember the name of person?
I beg to differ based on the crowd. It looked more like we were the only one to make a reservation for the night. Well, I could be wrong.
Then we flipped through the menu deciding what to order.
This restaurant has a buffet counter serving pasta, tapas, salad and dessert. If you order a main course, you could enjoy the buffet for an additional $7.90. You could also opt for only the buffet, priced at $21 per person. All these I got from the restaurant's website.
But you know that sometimes website information can become so outdated. After flipping through the menu, we checked with a service staff to confirm.
We took a look at the spread and decided to just order the main plus one side dish as the spread did not look interesting.
Ok, we decided to go for a platter to be shared. This includes two burgers, half dozen wings and combo fries.
Now, we are ready to order and got the attention of staff who happened to walk by. She said someone will come and take our order. So they have different people doing different duties.
Now the order taking staff came over.
We asked him if we could choose any of the burgers listed as the picture on the menu showed a Wagyu Burger, which costs over $30 on the ala carte section.
He began to fumble and said he's new and he will go check out for us. He came back with a rather ambiguous answer. Was it his first day at work? Was he given any briefing and training? Did he even bother to go through the menu? Did the senior highlight to him the common questions asked by customers? We decided to ask another staff and told the new guy to give us more time.
Then we spotted someone who looked like the supervisor and checked with him. Now we're clear.
We continued chatting and after a while, we realized our food were still not here. Just then, we spotted what looked like our order on the kitchen table.
The food came and it was plonked on our table and the staff just walked away. I think another staff came to give us our individual plates.
During dinner, I noticed half of the restaurant is closed. While it is not uncommon for certain section of a restaurant to be closed during the non-peak hours to better serve customers or for cleaning or to conserve energy, it is quite rare for half a restaurant closed on a Saturday's night in this location. Perhaps it's still new and unknown. If it has been in business for a while, is there something wrong?
Without fail, we talked about places serving good gourmet burgers too.
In business, a lot of times, your customers can know more about your business than you.
Did your staff leave customers alone with the menu? Why don't they explain to your customers how the buffet works, even though it's written on the menu? Why your staff knows nothing about the menu? Why is there a picture of Wagyu burger on the platter when it is not one of the choice available? How are food served to customers?
Take a look at your business, experience how it's going to be like as a customer.
This doesn't have to be in your own business. Look to businesses in different industries.
P.S. If you are interested in creating a whole new level of experience for your customers, email me at [email protected].
P.P.S. I only work with clients who are open to new ways of thinking and doing things.