We at One Fat Frog love restaurants, especially small restaurant startups. We also love to go out and eat, though the company nutritionist says that should be cut back a little. “Can you at least not order dessert every time you go?” he pleaded. No, we cannot. A good meal without dessert is like a concert without an encore. You leave thinking wait, it’s over already? When did that happen?
Our love for dining out doesn’t mean that all of our restaurant experiences have been good, though. We don’t like to call out other members of the restaurant industry, but passing along some bad restaurant experiences can help the restaurant entrepreneur avoid the same mistakes. Here are a couple of the worst restaurant experiences that this Frog can remember.
The dirty broccoli incident.
We at One Fat Frog believe in a well-balanced diet that includes eating healthy vegetables. If nothing else, it gets the company nutritionist off our backs about those desserts. So when this Frog got a plate full of broccoli at an Irish restaurant with his meal, I scooped a forkful and ate away. And that’s when I noticed it was crunchy. Now, cooked broccoli will never be crunchy, but the dirt it picked up when dropped on the floor will. After inspecting my restaurant plate further, this Frog found that the entire serving of broccoli was caked in dirt. So I didn’t have any more broccoli, but I did get some free dessert. As a restaurant entrepreneur, offering free dessert to your customers is a great idea, but not as an apology for serving dirty food.
The ‘ignore the white people’ incident.
This Frog loves Peruvian food, so when I heard about a great Jacksonville restaurant, I had to try it. Upon sitting down, I quickly realized that our table was the only one with people speaking English. I was excited, thinking it meant we had found an authentic place. For whatever reason, though, the restaurant server wasn’t thrilled to have us there. That became apparent when she avoided our table while giving great service to every other table. We also noticed that our food sat out getting cold until we stopped the server to ask if our food was ready. At One Fat Frog, we say that the easiest way to ensure a failed restaurant business is to insult or alienate your customers. Poor service is always bad for your restaurant business. You can bet this Frog won’t be hopping over to that Peruvian restaurant any time soon.