#5: A Beacon Of Light
“I never thought it would become this,” said Brandi Felt Castellano, who owns the restaurant Apt Cape Cod in Brewster, MA. In what had become all too common late in the pandemic, that morning a customer berated a team member to tears over something completely outside of the employee’s control. In this case, the guest wanted his breakfast prepared immediately despite the restaurant not being open. Fed up, the owners closed for the rest of the day to treat their staff to a “day of kindness.”
The trauma of the pandemic will continue to shape how guests engage food service for years to come. More than 50% of us believe our mental health suffered “significantly” because of the pandemic. Who could blame us? Not even considering the terror brought on by a deadly, global virus, tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs. Those of us lucky enough to hold onto our work just spent two years locked away, isolated from human contact. We lost our routines, our social support systems. As it turns out, our need for human interaction actually increases during times of stress.
For the last two years, the Urban Field ownership team has been acutely focused on our core company values because as our lives and communities continue to open up and normalize, we believe hospitality can be a beacon of light to guide us. It has never been more important to simply be good to one another so we created a moral compass composed of four principles that guide us through all company decisions and engagements with our community:
Kindness – Love is a verb at Urban Field
Acceptance – No one is excluded
Patience – Is complimentary
Empathy – We’re committed to seeing through your eyes
At Urban Field, hospitality is not the act of service. Hospitality is how we make you feel while we serve you. Whether you come in for dinner, a drink at the bar or to pick up a gallon of milk from the market, our goal will be to elevate your day. If you’re having a terrible day, we’ll try to make you smile and forget about your problems. If you’re having an average day, we’ll try to turn it into a memorable one. If you’re celebrating a special occasion or a personal success and spirits are high, we’ll offer a toast and a high five.
To prepare for hospitality in a post-pandemic landscape, the first thing we did was forget everything we knew about service. In traditional restaurants, a server is assigned a geographic location—a section—where he or she sells the company’s food and drinks to consumers. The agreement is that the server receives a very minimal wage and gets to keep whatever money is left over after the consumer pays for the food and drinks.
In this model, servers are trained to “sum up” their sections. They glance over their five tables and list in order of priority all actions that need to happen at each for service to continue in an acceptable fashion. Rather than improve days and boost the human condition, the goal of this kind of hospitality is not to screw up any step of service. A lack of mistakes is victory in a traditional restaurant model. The problem is it becomes too easy for servers to focus on the glass or fork needing pre-bussing than with your contentment and happiness.
Think of a memorable service experience, and I guarantee it will include a relationship with your server deeper and more meaningful than is typical. Not long after the Southern Sun Pub and Brewery opened, we received a guest comment card that I’ve been referencing to service staffs ever since: “Tonight was AWESOME! It felt like the staff was throwing a party and invited me!” I had worked on the floor that night, and it was an effortless shift. The staff was present in the moment and genuinely engaged with guests and team members. Energy moved freely amongst the entire pub of guests, servers, cooks, and managers because feeling good and making people feel good spreads.
Meaningful hospitality means forgetting yourself to treat someone else. It entails using your entire self in the effort to elevate the human condition of another. The reason why both guests and staff went home that night from Southern Sun feeling jazzed was because there’s health benefits in providing and receiving genuine hospitality. It reduces blood pressure and stress and thus promotes longer life and better health.
At Urban Field, our hospitality vision begins by trusting and respecting our people from the moment we begin interviewing them. In the dining room and in the market, they will be autonomous, free to govern themselves and be as creative as they can be in their interactions with you. They will have the tools to act as your tour guide, pointing out secrets on the menu or treasures in the market. They will feel empowered because they will have the ability to make decisions in the moment as though they were managers.
We believe the beginning of providing memorable hospitality is serving our staff. We hope that when you meet them, they act like they own the place because we plan on making them feel that welcome.