Delivering beyond the expectation in hospitality is the expectation.

In Hospitality, the goal is and should be to deliver the unexpected to not only the guests that walk through your front door but the ones that enter through the back. The status quo in general is not good enough and competition is fierce. My team has heard me say this time and time again, if you are not serving the guests directly, you need to be serving those who are. Delivering beyond expectations is not the challenge but the expectation. 

When I ran my own restaurant and still to this day, I coach on the purposeful action of executing the fundamentals of service. Focusing on this with great intent so those routines and basic fundamentals are as natural as breathing is essential. When it comes time to deliver hospitality beyond expectation, the capacity to deliver memorable and invaluable moments to your guests is ever-present. There is brilliance in the basics and beauty in those details which ultimately lead to an exceptional experience both for the team members and just as important the guests. Listening with great intention to every stakeholder is the key to being a great leader and operating a successful endeavor.

To ensure this mainstay principle is not only a practice but the culture, every leader in the restaurant organization needs to have a bottoms approach or “servant leadership” mentality. Culture isn’t something that is just “taught” but “caught”. Exemplifying delivering beyond the expectation starts with serving your teams first as this becomes the model and recipe for a fruitful, trusting, and successful relationship with your guests, team members, and all stakeholders of your business.