Dessert Determination – 6 Steps Towards Designing the Perfect Eating Experience

Hello World!  Welcome Friends!  Dining out is a time-honored tradition both for first dates and for fun times with friends and family. It’s about eating delicious food in new places and not having to do a spot of washing up afterwards. Not every restaurant or cafe can get that combination right though, and sometimes there are things lacking from a restaurant experience. Maybe your steak was too dry, or your vegetables unseasoned, or maybe the service was lacking.

Whatever it was, it doesn’t take much to ruin your experience out.

In running a kitchen, the goal is to have complete satisfaction in every aspect for your customers’ enjoyment. We have set up a list of six things taken into consideration when designing the perfect eating experience. 

Kitchen Set Up

The way your kitchen is set up is the first step (or stumbling block) in your restaurant experience. Do you want your staff to have the cheapest materials and equipment to work with, or will you be outfitting them with an Electmax Stovetop/Oven and a Norris dishwasher?

The quality you’re willing to put into your kitchen can hugely impact the quality of food you put out, and this is the start and end of the first step to a successful restaurant. Stock your kitchen with garbage, and that’s more than likely what you’ll put out when compared to what you could be serving.

Basics

The basics are things like your restaurant set up.

Your chairs and tables, your decorations, EFTPOS availability, and the rest of your customer-area setup. These are the things that affect the ambience and the background feel of the restaurant, and these can harm a restaurant’s overall dining experience if not properly managed. Things like having warm lighting for places that serve hot food, soft music in the background with appropriate tempos for the speed of the dining, and furnishings on the tables for atmosphere.

Complementary Courses

This doesn’t mean you should be giving your food away free of charge, not by a long shot.

This is more geared towards total dining experience curation, and involves matching entrees, mains, and desserts in flavor and texture and timing to produce an overall effect instead of a mish-mash of meals.

This isn’t for everyone, but it’s a mark of fine dining if the kitchen and the waiters know which meals complement each other in taste, and having that expertise in any setting can increase the enjoyment of your customers.

Wine Matching

Another mark of a fine dining experience is having a wine matching service. Put simply, this means that your customers can, for a price, have their wines matched with their meals.

Selecting a vintage red, for instance, with a perfectly marbled rib eye steak can go a long way in helping your patrons submerge themselves in a unified experience at your restaurant – one which they’re sure to recommend to friends and colleagues.

Options

Having different options for your menu can help to bring people back a second time, but more so if the rest of your restaurant is synchronized in it’s goals of a perfect dining experience. Your menu will reflect your kitchen’s capabilities, and this is the best time to show your returning guests that this is where you really shine. Try a seasonal menu that changes two or four times a year, based on the ingredients available in the relevant seasons and the foods best suited to those ingredients. This stops your menu from stagnating and can keep people coming back for years.

Service

All of the above mentioned points, all of the hard work, all of the months and years of preparation for your consumers’ benefit can be ruined by a single unprepared or uncaring waiter or waitress. This is a crucial sticking point that many people get wrong, because they finalize every other aspect of their business and rush the hiring of their floor staff, which can mean a sad end to a promising start.

This loose guide to a perfect dining experience is largely based on your choice of cuisine and location, so be sure to do your research before settling on those things for your future business.

Have a glorious day/night depending on where you are in the world!  Go with God and remember to be kind to one another!

Toodles,