TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION - THE STORY OF WILLIAM WALDORF AND GEORGE C. BOLDT

  

WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR AND NANCY ASTOR

GEORGE CHARLES BOLDT
(April 25, 1851 to December 5, 1916)
He was a Prussian-born American hotelier. A self-made
millionaire, he influenced the development of urban hotel
as a civic social centre and luxury destination.

 It was a stormy night. an elderly couple looking for a room for a night, came to Belle Vue Hotel, Philadelphia. The young clerk at the desk informed the couple that all rooms of his hotel were booked and also that not a single hotel room was available that night in Philadelphia because of an international conference. 


          However, seeing their plight, he decided not to let them to go out in that bad weather. He, therefore, offered them his personal room. The couple were reluctant as that would cause great inconvenience to the young clerk. "Where are you going to sleep, young man, if you give your room to us?" asked the old man. "Oh, I am young and single. I can sleep at the reception area in the night. I insist that you accept my offer as I cannot let you go out in this storm. You may not even get a taxi in this kind of weather." Having been left with no choice, the elderly couple accepted the young man's offer and spent the night in his personal room. 


          Next morning, before leaving the hotel the old man after having expressed his gratitude offered a handsome reward to the young man. "Please don't embarrass me with offer of money for my room. I didn't give my room expecting any monetary compensation. I just wanted to be of some help to you." The old man was really touched by the young man's compassion as well as high sense of honesty. "You are really a good human being, my son! I thought God had stopped making people like you. What are you doing herein such a small hotel? A person like you should become the manager of the best hotel in the world."


          "I am quite happy working here in this small hotel and moreover, I don't have skills to run anything bigger than this. However, thank you for your kind words and compliments." said the clerk.


          "Tell me, if I built some day the best hotel in the world, would you come and join me?" asked the old man with a cunning smile. The young man thought this as some kind of jovial gesture of an old man at an emotional moment. "Yes, if you built one, I will definitely join", said the young man, wanting somehow to get rid of the old couple as he had to take up the pressing list of day's work lying on his desk. "Good bye", said the old man. "You would hear from me soon." "Good bye", replied the young clerk.


          Three years passed, the young clerk was already promoted to become manager of the hotel. While going through his mail one day, he opened an envelope and found a return air ticket to New York, with an invitation letter to attend an inaugural function. However, not much details about why was he invited, were given. 


          The young man became curious and decided to go. Upon his arrival at New York, the young man was welcomed by his host who personally took him downtown. There, in front of him, lay the finest hotel he had ever seen.


          "That," said the gentleman, "is the hotel I built for you to manage." While standing on the street corner beside the soon-to-be world-renowned WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, the young clerk, GEORGE C. BOLDT, was titled its first manager. 


          For the next twenty three years, until his death in 1916, Boldt remained faithful to the hotel and to the confidence WILLIAM WALDORF ASTOR had placed in him.    

WALDORF ASTORIA HOTEL

Article Source :

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION - THE STORY OF WILLIAM WALDORF AND GEORGE C. BOLDT

The Moral of this Story:- "Do not turn your back on those who are in need, for they might be angels"

A great artitcle that I've found on the web

Here's a great article that I've found on the net about how different cultures look at customer service

A Tale Of Japanese Customer Service

Restaurant Promotion Ideas:- HalloweenTheme Party

Halloween like Valentine's Day and Mother's Day is another festival that is currently being commerlized by businesses especially those related to Food and Beverage. Instead of doing it on the Halloween day like most establishments, we held our ipromotion for a week and on the Halloween’s Day we made it really grand. As with most of my promotions in this blog, below is a simple account on how we organised our Halloween Week. Hope if it will be of some help for your establishment.

Halloween Cocktails
 First of all we needed to have cocktails. A word of advise when creating cocktails for promotions, avoid using heavy juices, cream or milk. Reason being these heavy juices will make your customers full, therefore they will avoid ordering another one. Also don't make too strong, as customers will be too drunk to order another. You can search the World Wide Web for cocktail ideas. What I normally do when searching for ideas for a promotions is to go to any site even ones that talks about how to organise Hallooween parties at home. Some of the ideas can be used or modified to suit your establishment. A great site that I happen to come across is www.endlesssimmer.com. Just click here to view it www.endlesssimmer.com.There's one interesting cocktail called the Brain Hemmorage. You don't even have to purchase expensive garnishes, you can create some with simple things around. Just buy cookie cutter shaped like a ghost or skeleton. Cut thin slices of honeydew melon or other fruit that doesn't break easily that is white or cream in colour. Use the cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Create dark red cocktails and float a ghostly garnish on top of it. The www.endlesssimmer.com website have a granish that is created from lychee, black olives and some red food colouring to make eye balls. Its really gross and simple to do.

Halloween Decorations There is alot of Hallooween decorations for home websites that you can use. Just choose your theme. You don't have to do the normally ghostly house, just do something different. As our Pub had a Pirate Theme, we chose the Theme from the Flying Dutchman of the Pirates of the Carribean Series. The entrance was shaped like a scene from a ghostly pirate cave. Staff was dressed in Ghostly Pirate Costumes. We even played ghostly piped organ music. Just think what's your theme is and search the web. You can even go a step furtherby offering a discount to anyone that comes dressed as the theme. Try this website for some ideas http://tlc.howstuffworks.com.

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Halloween Games
To add more fun to your promotion just add some fun games. Listed below are sites where you can find some interesting pub games to try. If you have an adult pub (what I mean is if your clientele are mainly adults not families), then add some games for couples to make it fun. We had a couple game where we tied a large sausage in the middle and hung it up. Each couple had to start eating at each end. the couple that finished the sausage is the winner. Another was the toilet seat toss. We put a road cone on the dance floor measured the distance and gave three toilet seat for the guest to throw into the cone. the winner is the one with the highest number of toilet seats around the cone. Or you can also watch sme game show like a gameshow using household items “A Minute to Win It”. You can search the show on YouTube. I found it to be really interesting and simple to organise.

Halloween Flyers I my last post Free Restaurant Templates, I found a website that has a great Halloween poster. The website is called http://www.menutemplates.org. They have a eent menu templates that you can redesign to suit your promotion. You can also add anyone that comes dressed as in a Halloween Costume will get drinks at a special price.

Theme Parties are fun to do. It also will create a buzz on the social networks when guest post their pictures or write something in their blog on the fun they had in your place. Do drop by often for more Restaurant Promo Ideas.

Restaurant Promo Ideas #14- Repeat Business with Balloons

Balloon Giveaway To Kids

Recently I joined a family resort as the head of the Food and Beverage Department. As with most businesses, we are always looking for ways to enhance our customers experience thus bringing in repeat business. In my previous post "Restaurant Promo Idea #13-Promote through Kids", I've mentioned that kids choose 50% of restaurant visits and according to a recent study 75% of parents consider their kids preference when choosing a restaurant. So we added a few things like a corner in the breakfast buffet, food ideal for kids like oatmeal porridge, fish fingers. All kids love balloons, so we have incorporated some balloon giveaways in our restaurant. Below are two ways we used balloons to enhance our customers experience, thus bringing in repeat business.

Give out balloons

Most hotels and resorts in Malaysia include breakfast with their room. Ours is one of them. As most families will come for breakfast especially on weekends and public holidays, we took this opportunity to capture the kids. What we did was to have one staff go around giving out colourful balloons on sticks to the kids. The balloons had our logo on them. Kids was happy (I noticed all kids love balloons, my son included) and the parents was beaming. And balloons don't cost much. You can also go a step further by putting in lucky draw vouchers in the balloons. The kids can pop the balloon and claim a prize at the cashier. Prizes can be toys or games for the kids. Have some extra empty balloons on standby cause some kids would rather not lose their balloon. You can give them a replacement one after they pop theirs.

Balloon Sculptures

For dinner which was not packaged with the room, we had to use a different approach. We got a Balloon Sculpturing Tutorial CD, practiced and learned balloon sculpturing. We set up a team of staff that knew a few balloon sculptures. So when the dinner crowd started dining, what my staff would do is go around from table to table making swords or balloon animals. The kids was so happy and it was fun for us too. They will surely remember us as a place that gave them balloons during dinner. And when their parents ask where would like to have dinner or stay they will sure to suggest our place cause of the happy memory they had. An easy balloon sculpture to learn and make is sword balloons and its a big hit with everyone, especially the kids. You can search for balloon sculpturing tutorials on youtube, but if you don't want the hassle of searching just do like what we did. Purchase a video cd. One such site selling this is www.balloontwistingwithsam.com. If you don't own a restaurant, you can also learn balloon sculpturing and be the life of any kids party.

Don’t Eliminate the Middle Man—Add One!

I came across this interesting article by Richard Saporito. It highlights that the service personnel in your restaurant is equally as important as the chef at the back. As mentioned in my Creating Great Customer Service Culture , 60% of restaurants fail in the first year. Reason being is that the food is only 20% contribution to the sucess of the restaurant. The article is as follow.

Don’t Eliminate the Middle Man—Add One!

Today, there are situations when we actually add a “middle person” instead of eliminating one for increased service efficiency. If it’s cost-effective and demand is high, then proper market positioning will make it a worthwhile endeavor. For example, my sister just informed me of a food delivery service in New Mexico that will let you choose one out of many different food outlets (all types of ethnic/fast food)- and then guarantees delivery within a specific time period. This not only gives the customer assurance of reliability, but more choices for dining take –out style.


In other areas of industry, the same idea holds true. There are electrical suppliers that no longer manufacture the product of electricity, but now are involved only in the delivery process of electricity to the customers. Because of market fluctuations, the new delivery supplier will utilize many other different energy suppliers to get the product of electricity to the customer efficiently and at the best market price. Again, adding the middle man seems to benefit all around.

In relating this theory to restaurants, it is the food runner that has become popular, especially in the larger dining establishments that rarely existed years ago. Food runners are employees who only work the rush hours of the dining room- only running food back and forth from the kitchen to the tables with light dining room table interaction (condiments, fresh pepper etc.). It is a 2-4 hr. shift, depending on how long the dining rush lasts.

Before large restaurants existed, the waiter would complete the process of order taking and delivering of the food. Today, the food runner can be implemented (additional middle man) relieving the waiter of this time consuming and sometimes painstaking process. The waiter must share a percentage of his tip with the runner, but in return his job is eased because the food is delivered for him- allowing extra time to work more tables and up sell to customers thereby increasing sales. Though, it does remain the waiter’s nresponsibility to check the table for additional diner needs-- either while the food is being placed by the runner or shortly thereafter. The tip-out to the runner is usually 10-15% depending on the service system, but well worth it if waiter sales can increase by 20-30 %.

The main point is the food runner addition improves delivery service efficiency while being cost-effective (if the sales increase outweighs the payroll increase). Properly integrating employees into the dining room with exact middle man connections always makes for smooth service flow. It’s not a matter of just blindly throwing extra employees at a service problem, but organizing the best system possible with the minimal amount of labor.

Adding the middle man can sometimes streamline operations in such way that it becomes irresistible and impossible to ignore. Always, the demand arises when delivery routes of a service system become overloaded.

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About the author: Richard Saporito is a NYC Restaurant Insider with more than 30 years experience. He is currently the President of Topserve Restaurant Consulting, Inc. and the author of "How To Improve Dining Room Service." Discover how to improve your restaurant's dining room service and dramatically increase your profits here: How to Improve Dining Room Service E- Book


Restaurant Promo Ideas