Rant & Raves

This morning we went to The Curve to do some work and at night, we had our dinner at Lan Kway Fong.

After we ordered our food, we noticed the lady sitting next to our table wasn’t too happy about the food she ordered, so she called the waiter. Unfortunately, due to the cheap labor shortage, the restaurant owner hired those foreign workers to work as waiters. So the language barrier was there, and the waiter got no choice but to call the restaurant owner.

The owner came out from the counter, and we overheard the lady customer complaining that the food was not as what she has ordered. The lady restaurant owner then explained to the customer about things. I didn’t hear the whole thing, but I can pretty much figure out what was happening.

Customer: “Can I change the food? This is not chicken chop and it has no sauce.” [pointed at the menu to show the difference between her food and the picture in the menu]
Owner: “Miss, the picture in the menu is for illustration only. Beside, this chicken chop is being cut into pieces for easy consumption.”
Customer: “But it doesn’t look like a steak anymore and it is very dry.”
Owner: “This is a chicken chop. We cut the whole meat [and she waved her hand on her flat chest to illustrate] and then we cut it. So miss, this is still a chicken chop.”

The whole thing got our attention, and I couldn’t help but to turn and look at the food. Yup, the whole plate look…er…very plain and white. The so-called chicken chop was white in color, the rice was white in color, and it just looked.. er… not delicious at all.

And then I also shot the restaurant owner a quick glance and I am not a feng shui master, and I am not formally, in any way, trained in the field of feng shui or fortune telling. But once quick glance at her face and I can tell that she is those very unhappy person and everyone around her, including her dear customers, owed her more than 300 millions USD. In Hokkien, that’s called “chao bin” [direct translation: smelly face, and that is how to describe those with utterly unhappy face.]

Obviously, this lady restaurant owner is those who should be behind closed door, like in the kitchen or at home. She is not capable and skilled to run the restaurant outside the kitchen, and her attitude was like she got shitload of customers and she doesn’t care about loosing one good customer. Besides, anyone would loose the appetite once take a look at her “chao bin” face.

Anyway, the whole commodity continued…and the restaurant owner was raising her voice.

Customer: “Okay, but I don’t want this. Can you return this plate back to the kitchen and give me one whole chicken chop, and I want the sauce too.”
Owner: “But miss, this IS THE CHICKEN CHOP! It was just being cut into pieces.”
Customer: “Okay, I understand. But this chicken chop is so dry, and I just want sauce. So can you get your kitchen to put in those sauce?”
Owner: “Miss, the menu is only for illustration purpose only…”
Customer: “OK! Fine! Is this how you treat your customer? I do not like your service…”
Owner: [interfere and cut in mid sentence, and she increase her voice another octave] “Miss, THIS IS THE CHICKEN CHOP you ordered…”
Customer: “I don’t like the way you treat me, and fine, don’t change the food. But be sure than this will be the last time I will dine here!”

The owner was basically glaring at the lady, and she stood there for a good 5 seconds. She was at the brink of saying something, and she hesitated a bit before she walked away without saying a word.

The lady refused to eat the so-called chicken chop, and she took some of the food from her friend’s plate. Once she and her friend finished the food (well, I can’t say that she finished her food since she didn’t touch the chicken and she didn’t really eat the rice as well), they quickly pay and left that place like her butts were on fire.

Normally when we finished our dinner, we will sit there for at least few minutes, just to talk or to enjoy a bit. But they left quickly and I knew for sure that she will never ever return to the Lan Kway Fong restaurant.

So this lady restaurant owner is the classic case of bad business person, and the food there wasn’t particularly nice. The lady owner was lucky that I wasn’t the one complaining, or else I would be scolding her big time and just walk off from the spot without touching the food, and I will refuse to pay the food. Anyway, this is why I am writing this:

The Guide to become Good Restaurant Owner:

The Customer is NOT always right. But it is your job to make them feel that they are always right.
I admit, some customers can be a–hole. But you don’t have to tell them straight in the face that they were wrong. Instead, do anything you can to make the customer feel that they are right, even though they were wrong big time. In this case, try something like this: say sorry, change the fucking food with what the customer wanted. Simple as that. Why create a big scene out of it where all your other customers were watching?

Make sure your picture in your menu is not too far off from your actual food
Some restaurant owners can use very pretty picture and exaggerate some facts about their food. Please don’t do that as it is very misleading. Of course pictures are for illustration purpose only, and no one can deny the fact that Big Mac is not as big as shown in picture. But at least make sure that you have the sauce covering your fucking good if the picture obviously good sauce, You don’t see a Big Mac without the bread, or the beef patty, right?

Make sure the food is not too bad
Okay, I will admit that the food at Lan Kway Fong is not the worst. We had the worst food in the whole Klang Valley (that means the whole Kuala Lumpur and almost 90% of Selangor area) in SS2, PJ. But the food at Lan Kway Fong could be better, much better. Like the food I ordered, it was spicy, and that’s it. There is no other taste and I ordered cheese-bake rice, not laksa. Maria’s food tasted like the Chinese cooking wine, and there’s no other taste. The food is not cheap, and it certainly doesn’t taste good, so does it take a genius to figure out if I will go back to that restaurant?

Your job is to diffuse situations, not infusing them
You, as the owner, will have to diffuse any problems between your waiters and customers, not infusing them. In the case of Lan Kway Fong restaurant, the waiters are actually the nice people and they are polite. The owner came out, and create a big scene out of it, infuse a tense situation and simply piss off the customer big time. That is totally wrong.

If you are not a people-person, do not open a restaurant.
If you do not like the meet people nor interact with new people daily, please do something else instead of opening a restaurant. When you open a restaurant, you have to deal with people (that’s your customers), and you have to give them friendly service and give them a lot of smile. In the case of this Lan Kway Fong restaurant, this lady owner is suitable to open a Funeral Home, not a restaurant. Her face was so “chao bin” until both of us lost our appetite quickly, and the attitude she gave to her customer was bad. Besides, the tasteless food didn’t help the situation as well.