The recent cold weather has reminded me about the great two weeks I spent in Majorca, Puerto Pollensa, with my wife and youngest son in August. The weather was great, the company was great and the holiday was fantastic. We rented a superb apartment on a more residential complex, but for those of you who know the area, it was less than five minutes’ walk from the Pine Walks. There was a very convenient mini supermarket close by and I noticed they had a restaurant and bar attached. This looked extremely inviting, it was located very close-by, it had freshly cooked chickens everyday and also sold all the normal tapas that were available at other bars, of a similar quality and in fact the wine was sold at the supermarket prices and they also had cold beer on tap served in ice cold glasses straight from the freezer.
 
You would have thought we would have been there most nights – in fact, we never ate there at all. They had one thing wrong – their staff.  They were miserable and rude – they were the same staff that worked in the supermarket and everything was too much trouble.  One breakfast I ordered a coffee (cortado) for take away, but although I had other goods to go, the member of staff did not realise it was for take-away. She produced it in a cup on a saucer. When I told her it was to take-away, she muttered something in Spanish and she threw it down so hard, breaking the saucer. She reluctantly gave me another cortado with several tuts. This was indicative of the service everyone got each and everyday.
 
They had approximately room for 30 people – most nights they were lucky if they had four.  So it wasn’t about price – they would have been the cheapest, it wasn’t about the offer – you could get everything and more compared with other local restaurants – it was all about service. The staff were miserable. The owner unfortunately didn’t realise and the gold mine he was sitting on was rapidly becoming a bad cost.
How good are your staff, how good are you and your team?  How good is the patient journey and the overall experience? It’s always worth reviewing how you all perform and whether there is a real training need for improvement – would you go to you?