To think some hospitality businesses don’t help themselves?

However we just recently ate out at one of those two and were surprised to be told they now close at 9pm on a Friday and Saturday night. So from 8.30pm onwards, they were cleaning up around us and getting ready to kick us out.

I work in an eating/dining pub - its busy as the price is set right - about £14-16 for a main course and £15 for carver on a Sunday. There are always plenty of staff and the tips are good - which to me is a gauge of service and quality. We dd. 600 for Sunday lunch last Sunday, so something is going right and its better than the national chains.

I have noticed though that people coming to eat, and its open from 12 midday through to 8pm, they come for tea/dinner between 5pm - 7.30pm and rarely is anyone booked for after 7.30. Thus they shut the kitchen at 8.30 and start cleaning don at 8pm. We don't though clean around people out front as it is a pub and we do get a few drinkers.

40 years ago I worked in a pub where we didn't open until 7pm and served food through until 9pm with the kitchen closing at 10pm. Times have changed as many more families eat out and food is wanted early.

We have dozens of restaurants to choose from in our upmarket local town and are down to only eating out in 2 of them due to cost and service issues.

However we just recently ate out at one of those two and were surprised to be told they now close at 9pm on a Friday and Saturday night. So from 8.30pm onwards, they were cleaning up around us and getting ready to kick us out.

So we'll possibly be down to one, an Indian restaurant with proper old fashioned service and you dont have to pre book, which is such a treat these days!

@Mishmashs the difference being that in US they have to give good service to ensure tips give them minimum wage. Not saying it's good here but it's a scandal how the US treats restaurant workers in the US.

I've had quite poor service the last 4 times I've eaten out, similar to op, young waiting staff standing around doing nothing, felt I was hassling them to even get their attention and then get them to come over and serve us. felt like standing up and screaming 'don't you want my money, all I want is a 2nd drink".

Most staff are 30/40s in one of the regular places we used to go. The very young ones actually offered better service.

I recently had the opposite experience. I can only describe it as 'american style' service. He was over the top and I found it annoying tbh. He grabbed an empty chair then sat in it backwards to take our order and was asking pointless questions about our lives. The whole thing felt really performative and I'd have much preferred normal service.

We’ve stopped going to restaurants unless it’s a special occasion now. You get poor service and they want you in and out asap so no time to even order an extra drink they rush over with the card machine.

I was speaking to a friend the other day who spent half term in New York with her kids. She said it was eye opening how good the restaurant service was. I totally hear you OP - went out the other month for a special occasion and god it took so long for each element. First to order drinks, then to get them to come back to order mains. Finally managed to order pudding and after 20 mins they brought us the bill forgetting they hadn’t brought us the puddings! The kids were bored and frustrated. All for over £125!

I went to the local Indian restaurant and their service was perfect. Attention to detail and could answer any question/recommendation.

The problem with hospitality in this country are majority of them are young and working just to get some extra cash. Same goes for retail. Plus very little training.

In America, people make a career of these.

It’s online courses that are very uninspiring rather than in-house face to face, which I admit could be will but somehow you learnt better for stuff like customer service

It’s the staff training that’s the problem.
Nobody does it, or even appears to know how to do it, anymore.
Also, pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

It does if the tip is a percentage of the total bill. And part of the job is upselling and optimising all the various opportunities to sell.

It’s mostly casual workers not the owner so makes no difference to them if you have pudding or not.

Many service people are not in it as a career, they are in there way to something else.

as pp states, service career isn’t valued & looked down on, so service isn’t trained or regarded as important

this is the end result, advice mediocre service

It does seem that many restaurants don’t train their staff in basic manners or building rapport with customers. So often in the UK you get service staff who don’t smile and barely speak and make zero effort. I don’t understand it. It feels like it’s almost wrong to want or expect good service. They want your money but don’t want to have to put it any effort to get it,

There's no welcome and it's like they don't care if you stay and it always feels rushed once you've asked for the bill. No asking if you'd even like a coffee.

I worked in hospitality for years so I get vicariously bothered when service is rubbish. It’s got so expensive to dine out that it’s special when we go out, and poor service only underlines the expense. Drinks, desserts and coffees have much higher profit margins than main courses, so it galls when businesses don’t follow through and lose sales in the process.

yeah me too. It's truly awful out there. I'm not paying good money for that.

Agree. I actually think it stems from people having no training and so they don't know any better and people who have businesses that they don't know how to run (and must also not eat out much either of they don't know what they should be doing!)

I've basically stopped going to restaurants. I can't justify all the money for a good meal but poor service which is practically everywhere at the moment.

*unhelpful, not helpful

Absolutely

The problem is, they're not bothered

YANBU. Food is basic and Service is dire. It doesn’t help that people treat service workers like they’re some sort of marginalised group who have the god given right to be sulky and helpful, rather than people doing a job. I’ve worked in the service industry, it wasn’t easy but I still worked with pride, that seems to be lost these days

She didn’t. That’s why the establishment lost the money.