Playbook, restaurant
The guest is not asking for information
Somebody writing the morning after a bad dinner is not looking for your service standards. They are describing a specific evening: which table, which dish, how long they sat with empty plates, and what the person who came over said. An assistant that responds with a paragraph about how seriously you take feedback has escalated the complaint, because it has proved that nobody read it. The whole job here is to take the detail accurately and get it in front of the person who ran the floor that night.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for complaints holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Almost everything that goes wrong in a restaurant is fixable at the table and free, a dish returned to the pass or taken off the bill, so a complaint arriving afterwards usually means nobody was told at the time and the redress window has already closed.
- The detail that makes a complaint actionable is unusual to this trade: the date and sitting, roughly which table, what was ordered, and which section it was, because that is how a manager works out which chef and which server were on and what actually happened.
- Complaints here split into kitchen and floor and they go to different people, since a badly cooked main and a forty minute wait between courses have nothing in common except the evening they happened on.
- A meal is a memory rather than an object, so there is nothing to inspect, no photograph that settles it and no record beyond the ticket, which is exactly why the assistant must collect and never adjudicate.
How it arrives
- our food came out cold
- we waited an hour between courses
- the steak was nothing like what we ordered
- who do i speak to about last night
- nobody came to our table for ages
- we were put right next to the door
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Who handles a complaint and how fast they reply | The role rather than a personal name, the address it reaches, and the honest turnaround. A restaurant manager is on the floor six nights a week, so promising a same day reply is a promise you will break on the day it matters. |
|---|---|
| What you need to know to investigate one | The date, whether it was lunch or dinner, roughly what time, the name the table was booked under and what was ordered. Write this as the list the assistant should gently collect, because a complaint without a date is one nobody can look into. |
| What is fixed at the table and what is not | Your own standing position on returning a dish, replacing it, or taking it off the bill during service. Published, this quietly teaches guests to say something at the time, which is better for them and cheaper for you than anything that happens by email. |
| The wording you want used when somebody is upset | Two or three sentences you have actually approved, saying that it will reach a manager and that they will reply. Left to write its own, an assistant reaches for corporate apology language, and that reads worse to an angry guest than a plain sentence does. |
The reply
That should not have happened and I am sorry it did. I am not able to look into it myself or put anything right from here, so the useful thing I can do is get it to the manager who was running the room that night. If you tell me the date and whether it was lunch or dinner, the name the table was booked under, and roughly what you ordered, I will pass all of it on with your message [1]. They reply on the days they are off the floor, so it is usually within two or three days rather than the same evening [2].
It apologises once, briefly, and does not repeat it, because repeated apology from something that cannot act reads as evasion. It asks for the four facts a manager needs rather than inviting more narrative, which is what turns a message into something that can be investigated. The reply time is honest about a manager who works services, which is better than a promise broken on the third day.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any message describing something that went wrong on a visit, however mildly it is phrased, and immediately if it mentions illness, an allergic reaction or an injury.
I want to get this to a person rather than answer it myself. Leave me your name, an email and what happened and it goes straight to the manager. If anybody was taken ill after eating here, please call the restaurant now rather than waiting for a reply, because that needs looking at today.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never offer a refund, a free meal, a voucher or a discount, because redress in this trade is a manager's judgement about a specific night and an assistant giving it away sets a figure nobody agreed.
- Never explain why the kitchen was slow, since a reason offered by a chat window reads as an excuse and the guest hears it as being told their evening was normal.
- Never dispute what a guest says happened, even where the ticket suggests otherwise, because that argument belongs to a manager with the ticket in front of them.
- Never treat a report of illness after a meal as an ordinary complaint, as that needs a person today and may need to be recorded formally.
Questions
- Can it decide when to comp a meal if we write the rules down?
- No, and you should not let it try. Redress here depends on what the section was like that night and what the guest has already had, which are judgements made by somebody who was there. It collects, it does not settle.
- Does a form feel too cold for somebody who is upset?
- Only if it reads like a form. Write the wording yourself, make it one human sentence and a short list of what you need, and it lands better than an unanswered inbox does. The thing that reads coldest is silence until Tuesday.
- Should complaints go to the same address as everything else?
- Separate them if you can. A complaint mixed in with private hire enquiries and supplier mail gets read late, and late is the difference between a guest who feels heard and a guest who writes a review instead.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling complaints in generalThe job is to route, not to resolve. Acknowledge without conceding, name the escalation route, and get it to a person fast.
- The menu price is not the line at the bottom of the billThe set lunch runs on certain days, the fish is market price, the steak carries a supplement, and service goes on at the end.
- A cancellation typed into a chat box is a no showReleasing a table takes notice the kitchen can still use, and cancelling in a chat window is not cancelling. Say which channel counts.
- Step free to the door is not the same as step free to a tableThe question is which table, not which room: fixed banquettes, a step at the door, and a toilet down a flight of cellar stairs.
Try it on your own material
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