Espresso: Oisín Rogers, The Devonshire Why The Word "Hospitality" NEEDS A REBRAND NOW!!!

0:01Espressos is sponsored by supply chain software gurus unleashed it talks to ecom and accounting software where it's helped islands cut admin time in half, get granular clarity on your margins, know where your stock is, don't miss availability. Brands like Candy Kittens, Tiny Rebel and Trip, all used Unleashed and so should you. I've got a really good network of close friends who keep me from being a dead, I think. But, you know, you met Lara there earlier on. He's already taken the piss about himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and like you know people like you know my mate Bob or you know Mike or even you know my brother Connor he'll text me and go hope your fucking head isn't getting too big you bollocks do you know what I mean that's right oh by the way I don't swear on you you can swear what you want mate yeah go for it yeah go for it but no I think that's useful to have you know an oversight you know my wife tracy as well she'll like go you know you need to just keep it on the level you know you're just a pub manager you know you're just running a single place and i don't really want to change because that's that's what i am oh yeah but also i think it's good to show i'm show off like i think showing off is not a bad thing but how would you say um like how would you say ego has been important for for this to get in this place to where it is like what's I don't know.

1:26I think I was fortunate to have a long career of doing okay before and trusting my instincts when it came to the pub stuff in particular. You all right? Yeah, all good. um you know i i spent long enough taking what looked like gambles in terms of doing stuff with the pub whether it's the social media side or the product side or menus or pricing or um you know special nights or you know uh doing things in a different way in terms of service uh that that i knew that even if my decision was slightly wrong i was going to run with it and make it right and such as such as oh i don't know maybe i mean one of the things you might want to mention is the way the reservations work i think i made a decision that i didn't want to have like long-term reservations where people had booked four months in advance and we're going to be looking forward to it for that length of time and then coming with a really massively high expectation that they they've done it so that that's the reason why we made the decision that you can only book three weeks in advance so that people you book and then you do the thing and you come along so there's not that building sort of thing and that sort of came from to be honest it came from a discussion i had with uh russell norman bless him yes yeah and he was doing something similar at bruto and i just thought fuck it i'll do it and it's ended up we've ended up making it work even though it kind of doesn't make sense yeah that's so clever like i was reading um something the other day but well it's like uh happiness is reality minus expectations i think expectations and it's a book called um the name by a guy called morgan house a really interesting guy and he was basically saying the issue is is everything's got better in the world like you look at it compared to say you can get a fucking hot shower in america say 50 60 years ago which now we can do that but the issue is is that everything's got better but our expectations have gone up so much of what has to be expected especially with social media, all this stuff.

3:31I think that's so shrewd of just like saying, right, we've got three weeks here. Yeah. You're not going to give you, set these massive expectations because the bigger the expectation, the easier it is just to not meet that. I really feel that a lot. Yes. Because I think, you know, social media and what happens on the internet really amplifies, you know, the expectation that people have. And, you know, at the end of the day, we sell pints, steak and chips, a few sides and some sauces. you serve the steak and the chips and the sides and somebody does this unbelievably arty photograph and puts it on the internet going this is the best steak i ever had you got to go here blah blah blah of course it's good but is it the best in the world no probably not but it's good but you know people reading that going right i am going to have the best steak in the world and all of a sudden they come in and it's raining outside the pub might be too busy their table might not be ready when they come in they might sit in a in a table that's a bit noisier than what they wanted to be they might be too close to the table beside them and all of a sudden their expectation for us to actually deliver them a really great time becomes way more difficult because their the difference between what they expected and what happens is more tangible because of what someone else put on the internet a couple of weeks before so you know we grapple with that quite a bit and we try and watch out for those tables and it does happen of course it does yeah of course you're having a bad day right and you've had an argument with your boss or you you hate work or the tube was stuck for like three hours or you got soaking wet before you come in if you sit down in a restaurant you ain't gonna be happy it doesn't matter how good it is and i and i've said this as well before i think when you're not happy sitting at a table at a restaurant and you get the food it doesn't matter if it's the best food in the world doesn't taste right it'd be almost when you're in that mood you're looking for anything to go wrong i love that little trick of managing expectations with the booking system how would you if there anything else you've got in place any of these little incremental things that kind of um when some someone comes like bulging in or whatever that you can kind of ease them off a little bit well you know i mean i mean the danny mayor a pint well you know what pint is the best thing you're a glass of champagne we've got a medicine cabinet upstairs of of of stock that's not on the tills so we got some sweet wine we've got some madeira we've got some champagne yeah you know and i want to see that being used by the by the staff you know i don't want to look in that and have it be the same as it was yesterday so you've got medicine cabinet yeah so that is like And so people will see that?

6:08No, no, no, no. They don't see it. But what happens is if we see a table that's obviously pissed off, it's up to us to go over there and go, how can we help? What's the story? By the way, here's a couple of glasses of champagne. I hope you enjoy your evening. And that, quite a lot of the time, that smooths it or at least makes it a bit better and then the expectations a bit easier to manage. You mentioned Danny Mayer. Yeah. He's, so, yeah, for listeners, he's, I think, was it, he does Gramercy Tavern in New York he does he set up Shake Shack he's like hospitality he wrote a brilliant book called Setting the Table and I think he probably wrote it in the 2000s I need to bloody check that of course but it was sort of a bible for me because it's one of those books that tells you what you already know in a really well put down way and you go ah you know he talked about guest experience guest expectation what the difference between service and hospitality is what's that for you difference between service well i think to quote danny mayer um service is black and white hospitality is color yes you know it's uh it really is about how people feel but i've gone on to ban the word hospitality from the business i don't know whether i said that to you before no no go on i feel the word's been hijacked a bit by corporates and government and it's become a political word as in people talk about hospitality right which which encompasses everything from cinemas to hotels whereas i think when when we're running individual entrepreneurial brilliant businesses where we're really trying to make people feel something then we need another phrase that doesn't put us in the same group as you know a chicken shop or you know or or a high street or that phrase be we're in the looking after people business yes you know yes yeah i think hospitality is too and also it just doesn't make it i listen to something it's a weirdly ugly word ugly word yeah it's like it doesn't say it's it's not a beautiful word it's not a beautiful word and also someone's saying this about ai is ai needs a rebrand because it's freaking the shit out of people people thinking when i was young ai was a bloke who came to fertilize cows yeah You know, so...

8:31They were saying they should rebrand AI to co-intelligence. So you rebrand it to co-intelligence, it's like this is going to help you get more smart, or it's going to help you do shit. I've got no idea what's going on in there. Yeah, neither, but I completely agree, is the word hospitality is too reductionist, and for like, it's blanket word that, you know, what's happening here is so different to fucking McDonald's around the corner. But I do think going back like 20 odd years when Danny Mayer began to use that word to describe what we do it meant something different and in that book setting the table which i still um give copies to our restaurant managers and our senior people you know you go in there and you you look at he he spent a lot of time looking at how he learned what he did and danny is somebody with a huge brain who really understands that how people feel when they leave his businesses defines what his business is and i know that sounds really simple but that is really what we do you know because we're retailers right so which means you know retail means you sell a product every other retailer on the high street or wherever you go in you buy the product and the value of what you bought is in a bag that you walk out or at least you've got a tangible thing It's a pair of shoes or a jacket or a hat or, I don't know, makeup or whatever you're buying.

9:58It's there and your value's there. Whereas you come to us, you spend 50 quid on a load of pints with your mates, or you come and have a hundred pounds a table for two or a thousand pounds a table for two. When you pay that bill and you walk out, you don't have a bag. You don't have a tangible thing. all you have is a memory of what you did and a feeling of being full or sated or otherwise and that's what you take away you know and and we're we're in the in in and also you've you've spent a big chunk of your time to do that yeah and we want to make sure that people walking out have feel value for that time and that that intangible thing with they bought which has now disappeared becomes a memorable thing that can be traded as a story to friends family work colleagues that sort of thing and you know that can't be described in one word that's not yeah it's not hospitality yeah you know you know what i mean yeah for sure i think he's he's got in that book um and i've read i've read the book unreasonable hospitality which is by will good goody i think yeah yeah yeah really great book great yeah really fucking good book apart from the bit with the maharachi band in the fridge i'm not sure about that yeah yeah it's weird that's another story but he talks danny mayer talks about um the moving the salt principle you know remember that so he's basically saying he's in new york and he's he's got his whole idea in his head about what he wants i don't know what the restaurant was he wants it to go to be this place and he's he's got this vision in his head but he's trying to get the staff to to be on board with that vision and he gets in the guy from is it sparks steakhouse who comes in he calls me look man i need some help with this he goes right danny um take everything off the table and put the salt shaker in the middle because where do you want the salt shaker where a bit like you with the phone mate you know you're moving that phone where do you want that salt shaker and danny goes there and then the guy goes right and then he grabs the salt shaker and moves it there yeah and he your job as a leader is to constantly be just showing people this is where the salt shaker goes this is how i want it to and i think the whole point of that what he's saying is it's not necessarily it works on two levels it's one it's moving the salt shaker and it's show them and remind them i think that's remind them is what he says in the book but the other part is you've got to understand and have the empathy for your staff is that and i think this is no one's going to care about as much about your business as you.

12:34It's just that that's a fact of life. And I think it's a really, it works on two levels. It's like one, show people and really move it into the middle. This is how we do things. But the other thing is have empathy. It's like, it's not their business. What would you say is the Austin Rogers, like moving the salt shaker principle? Well, I'll give you that one quite easily. I think an awful lot of businesses make the mistake of assuming that the staff know what you're doing and how to do it. and thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast share this espresso on whatsapp if you liked it and also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description i spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy it's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink.

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