As I lay in bed the other night thinking back to some more superlative customer service I'd received that evening, the light bulb suddenly went on and a common thread became blindingly obvious.I thought of all the establishments where I'd received more than your average customer service, and pretty well all of them were places out of the city.
Farm Gate, Cradle Mountain Lodge, Pecora, Divinge, Ebb to name but a few. All out of the city. What does that tell you? What conclusions can I make there? Does that mean that generally, in the more outlying areas, the waitpeople have more reverence for, and time, to provide you with that more individualised, and interested service? Does it mean that country folk are generally more civil and friendly than city folk?
If you take that thought, then look at the named 'best restaurants' of my blog posting and the comments from a few days ago, many of the restaurants my commenters have named also are ones out of the city as well.
Conclusion - if you love great service, you'll be more likely to find it out of the city, where they seem to be a bit more relaxed about life!
PS the photo above is of a fabulous Lamb meal eaten at Ebb in Swansea last Friday night. To die for.
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9 comments:
Its true Rita, the service in the two main cities is crap! Launceston is far worse than Hobart. I had lunch today at Jolly Rogers on the beach at Boat Harbour, the food was brilliant, thanks to Chef and owner Tim Last and the service was excellent! this simply holds true to your comments about recent service standards. Places like Stanley and Smithton also have excellent service standards at establishments like The Stanley Hotel & Tall Timbers Tasmania and for a truly remarkable lunch or dinner The Old Cable Station @ Stanley is just amazing and the service and foos will blow you away, conclusion! us country folk have the city slickers on toast when it comes to service, we are good at it and we have a pride in boasting about how good we do it! come visit Stanley some day soon and be stunned ! cheers Rita love your work!
I really think this is being unfair to people in the city. I have had excellent service from the guys at Monty's, the ladies at Piccalilly, the Henry Jones crew and the staff at Mee Wah. it is too broad to say that all the people in the cities are bad there are a lot!!!!!! more places to compare than in small country towns. Not that I am taking anything away from Pecora I love that place!
Marketing guru - thanks for that. Yes, I intend checking out the NW area soon, and am looking forward to seeing if you exaggerate or not!
Anon - I too have had excellent service from city establishments. That wasn't exactly the point I was raising. I was generalising, and asking the question of you all that maybe you could look at your outer-area dining experiences and see if you too had had better or worse service experiences than you've had in the city.
If you compare the number of places outside the city that you've gone to and had a great time, with the number of city ones you've had a great time at as well, how do they fare?
Tall timbers has good service? Maybe on the front desk but definately NOT in the resturant in my experience.
Sorry Rita wasn't having a dig at you. The comment above however did say that the service in the two major cities was crap and I was trying to show that maybe they should try a few different establishments.
Hi Anon - thanks for the explanation. Yes, Marketing Guru does get pretty fired up about his subjects! I happen to know that his favourite haunt in Hobart is T42 - a place that some commenters on this blog have slated big time for their lack of good service.
But - as I've said before, it's interesting hearing people's opinions - they're always so varied.
Zelda is in part correct when she slates the service in the Bistro @ Tall Timbers! Part of the big picture that Rita is on about with service is the sadly all to prevelent notion that waiting tables or providing customer service in Hospitality is a shit kickers job! not so in this day and age, witness the two youg members of the team @ Ebb who Rita has given massive praise to! people its all about training and the team at Drysdale house simply dont get that bit right, also we have a pretty poor industry involvment with training so we suffer from poor service across the state.
I still reckon that the service you get in regional Tasmania is a cut above the rubbish dished out in Launceston & Hobart, why is this? because the service providers in the regions are doing the work to earn a quid! they are not filling in time before Uni goes back or topping up the government funded hand outs that young people get for study purposes.
Am not quite sure what you're getting at there Marketing Guru - are you saying that Drysdale is good or bad? Are you saying that Drysdale staff are merely doing their job because they get paid to do it? Are you saying that young people who go into hospitality are just doing the waiting job because they're on their way from A to B?
Please explain!
Marketing Guru. You seem to make sweeping statements that demoralize the people who are hospo for life. There are plenty of us in Hobart and I think you saying that hospitality staff are just there to make a buck while they are at uni is harsh. Sure there are a lot of uni students working in restaurants ( I was one of them) but if you have places that support their staff and make them want to put their best in while they are at work then it doesn't affect the customer. And maybe the person will love hospitality so much that they end up having a degree sitting round gathering dust!
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