I took my girlfriend out to our favorite restaurant over the weekend. For those of you who have never been there, just think of your favorite high end restaurant (i.e. good food, good service, high prices) and you get the idea.
When we sit down at our table, the waiter always offers us our first choice of the evening . . .
"Do you want the sparkling water, or the bottled water."
We also chuckle a bit when he says this, because clearly the waiter has been instructed not to inform us of our third water choice, tap water.
What I find even more amusing is the subtle social pressure the waiter applies when offering the incomplete set of choices.
Picture someone is at the restaurant on a first date, or with a big business client. Clearly, they want to impress their dinner companion. So imagine their shock when right off the bat, the waiter puts the squeeze on him by essentially saying . . .
"Do you want the expensive sparkling water, the slightly less expensive bottled water . . . or are you going to be a cheap bastard and get the free tap water?"
Now remember what I said at the beginning, this is our favorite restaurant. This is because the food and the rest of service far outweighs the clumsy way the restaurant starts the evening.
But whenever they run the "water routine", I can't help but wonder if it is really worth it to them.
Does the few extra bucks they get when someone purchases the water outweigh the risk that they might even slightly offend a customer at the start of a meal where he or she may end up spending several hundred bucks?
More importantly, think about this example in light of my last post about how everything you do is marketing.
Here is a restaurant that has probably spent millions adding little touches to their product, promotion, etc. to make it clear to the world that they are an elite fine dining establishment. Then they run the small risk of blowing that whole image to shreds for a few bucks.
Perhaps I'm making too much of the whole thing. But it just strikes me as a risk not worth taking.
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