• Make a first time guest's experience exceptional - One restaurant trains their staff to always ask if it is a guest's first visit. If it is, the server brings guests a complimentary appetizer as a way of saying "Welcome." This surprise will stand out in a customer's mind, and they will always remember this small, yet wonderful gesture.

Another restaurant "flags" first time diners in a simple, unassuming manner. If the server learns that it is a customer's first visit, they will place a purple napkin in their bread basket.  Managers are instructed to visit that table to welcome the guest and check on them at the end of their meal to ensure that they enjoyed themselves. As servers and bussers walk by these tables, they are also instructed to stop and say "Hello" and "Welcome." They are unaware that a simple napkin alerted staff to their "first time" status.

 

• Actively listen to customers -  A couple enters the restaurant, and as they are being seated, they are talking about the flat tire they just got as they pulled into the lot. The server hears this and alerts the manager. Before the couple is finished with their meal, two employees of the restaurant had gone out and fixed the couple's flat tire.

A family was seated at a table and the server learned that they had just spent a long day moving into their new home. They were from out of state and not at all familiar with the area. At the end of the meal, the server wrote down a list of businesses that the family would need to know about - the post office, the best grocery store in the area, a good doctor, the park district, etc. The family was impressed and are now regular customers, mostly due to this wonderful gesture.