How can a free lunch help pub operators to improve standards of quality and service? Alison Daniels reports
Gordon Ramsay spends £250,000 a year employing the services of mystery diners to report back on his restaurants.
The Michelin-starred chef's significant investment is a tactic increasingly shared by pubcos and restaurateurs to help them measure their customers' quality of experience.
As the old saying goes: "Give customers a good experience and they'll tell a few people, give them an unsatisfactory experience and they'll tell everyone". The chances are that the only person they won't tell is you, so monitoring the quality of experience your diners enjoy is an essential consideration.
Pubco Laurel has run a mystery-dining programme with Retail Eyes for 18 months in its Slug & Lettuce sites. The company's commercial director Suzanne Baker says: "Our priority is to ensure our customers enjoy their experience every time they visit any Slug & Lettuce. Our mystery-dining programme is core to achieving that. We are committed to raising standards and satisfying our customers every time".
Spirit market knowledge manager David Martin stresses the need for continual input to optimise a mystery-dining programme.
He says: "We continually refined our measurements with input from our pub managers and business development managers.
We now have a trusted, respected, stable
survey that helps drive higher levels of service and standards over time, so that we keep pace with customers' needs and priorities. We particularly emphasise service in the construction and scoring of our assessments."
David says each brand has its own visitor specification to ensure that the company matches the mystery diner to the type of pub. In the company's value food businesses, such as Two for One, it requires the visit to be made by adults above the age of 30 from mid-range socio-economic groups, who are accustomed to eating out as a family on a regular basis.
Emphasis on diversity
"A diverse pool of mystery diners to suit the different types of pubs or restaurants is vital," says Emma Chambers, a director of the Mystery Dining Company, which works with several companies in the pub and bar sector including Peach Pubs and Corney & Barrow.
Emma adds: "Our pool of 1,800 diners ranges from retired doctors to office clerks, and from families to finance directors. The diner profiles show that their satisfaction lies in completing such feedback as well as having their meal paid for. People enjoy providing this information in the knowledge that it will be used constructively within the company".
Mystery diners are carefully screened and prepared for an assignment, receiving a brief of what to order and measure and guidelines on what constitutes an ideal level of service.
Many companies provide a one-page checklist which diners use as guide and often update during inspections of toilet facilities.
After the meal, diners complete a detailed questionnaire that includes space for comments, and clarify their responses by phone.
Mitchells & Butlers director of pricing and insight Mark Sergeant says the company has used mystery dining across the entire pub estate for more than 10 years, with each pub receiving a minimum of one visit per month.
Mark says: "We evaluate operational procedures - from service times to cleanliness of toilets - to specific standards and values expected from a given brand. Customer experience is paramount and we want to ensure that customers receive the same excellent standard across all our pubs."
Smaller pubcos, such as Geronimo Inns and Compass Bars, also benefit from mystery-dining schemes. Geronimo commercial director Ed Turner outlines the company's approach: "We run our scheme in-house. New recruits visit and evaluate pubs as part of their training, and experienced staff participate in the scheme as a reward. Each mystery diner takes along a friend. They are asked to have a drink and two courses but can choose what they order - just like any other customers."
Criteria for success
"Judging criteria are based on our training programme," says Ed. "The programme encourages individuals to be themselves in a structured framework that can be adapted to the individualities of each site. Questions relate to quality, standards, atmosphere, interaction and being made to feel like a regular."
The company plans to expand the scheme to include regular customers as mystery diners to obtain direct feedback.
Compass director Dominic Worrall asks people he knows and trusts to go into his four pubs and report back on standards.
He says: "Usually I pay for their meal and they give me information about the service and food. I'd rather do this than use an agency, as I already have a bank of people I trust.
"The main problems usually arise from lack of attention to detail, which can make the difference between some owner-occupier sites and managed sites. Tables left uncleared, glasses unpolished, and condiments failing to arrive are among the most common complaints, but generally feedback is positive."
Laurel's Suzanne Baker also believes it's important for company personnel to be involved in the assessment process. "We operate a dual quality programme, working with Retail Eyes, and our own personnel. This enables us to obtain quality external feedback and gives our staff the responsibility of engaging with the operation and feedback experiences, based on set criteria that we can measure."
As in most mystery-dining programmes,
visits are unannounced and happen at peak times to ensure standards are maintained at the busiest periods. Immediate feedback is given to both the general and area manager, backed up with weekly results reporting.
Emma Chambers says using mystery dining to improve performance and reward excellence constitutes the strongest approach.
"We work with each brand to understand its values, and build a questionnaire accordingly. A 100% questionnaire score demonstrates to staff what the perfect customer experience feels like. The survey can be used as a training tool as well as rewarding staff if they achieve a certain score," she says.
Fast turnaround and reliable results are vital. Emma says: "Speed and accuracy of results is important. All our mystery-dining experiences are reported back to restaurant management within 24 hours."
Improving standards
"All reports are read thoroughly to check accuracy and clarity before they are approved for the client. Trustworthiness of the reports is crucial when they are being used to reward or retrain staff, with financial incentives attached to scores."
"Slug & Lettuce standards have improved in the last year. We have seen the company outperform the market and increase food sales by more than 30%. Mystery dining definitely helped our performance," says Suzanne.
David also feels satisfied with progress made by Spirit. "We've pushed service and quality up the corporate agenda using regular, high-visibility reporting from the board through to our area managers. Finishing our last financial year with record scores reveals the benefit of consistent focus."
David sums up the strategy's benefits: "Mystery dining means we measure the right things that matter to our customers, clearly, consistently and repeatedly. It's that old adage: what gets measured gets done."
Making mystery dining work effectively for you
1. Be very clear about your objectives and comprehensive about what aspects of the business you want to evaluate. Focus on service, menus, food quality and appearance, facilities, setting, and staff.
2. For best results, match mystery diners to your clientele.
3. Unless you have very few outlets, or your entire estate is wildly differentiated, consider using an external supplier with a large database of trained diners to save you spending time on scheme administration.
4. If you represent a small company, and are prepared to fill in a detailed questionnaire, try registering as a diner with one of these