I tried to have dinner at a luxury restaurant over the weekend, but I couldn’t stomach it.
The evening started with promise; we sat down to the usual fanfare and while we waited for drinks and starters a well dressed, well spoken young man brought round not one, but two different types of breads.
Accompanying the two different types of breads were not one, but two different types of butter to go with it. Both butters were beautifully piped into little rosettes on a serving tray.
The well dressed, well spoken young man explained that one was plain salted butter, and that the other was biltong butter, and with a flourish, encouraged us to enjoy our evening.
I turned to my companion, and with a satisfied smile I said, “These guys understand that they’re in the experience economy”
And then, eager to taste the biltong butter, I took the tip of my butter knife and spooned some Vaseline into my mouth.
The butter wasn’t butter, it was margarine. They’d mixed biltong powder with margarine and then served it up with as much fanfare as they could muster. The unsalted butter… also margarine.
A very strange choice for a high end restaurant to make. I called over the nearest well dressed employee and asked if I could have some butter for the bread. He cast a confused eye over the all-but-untouched margarine sitting on the table, but didn’t say anything and disappeared off to fetch some butter.
It must have been a hunt because it took many minutes before he returned, and proudly presented me with 6 blocks of wagyu butter.
He began the tell the same story as the initial well dressed young man about the biltong butter… “You mean margarine” I corrected, “Yes, you could call it that” he stumbled.
I tested the wagyu butter. Also margarine.
So now I’ve had two different, very well dressed, very well spoken men in a well to-do restaurant both either misidentify one of the most basic ingredients of cooking, or both knowingly try to deceive their customers.
Both alternatives were so incredible that I asked the second man who’d brought the wagyu margarine if I could speak to a manager so that I could try and solve the mystery.
He was a manager.
I was so shocked that a manager either;
- didn’t know the difference between butter and margarine, or
- didn’t know the difference between lying and telling the truth;
that I my face must have been one of utter disbelief. I certainly had no words.
I must have looked a picture because this manager quickly mentioned that there was another manager higher up than him… a General Manager!
This has become a long post about butter, and this is supposed to be a blog about the experience economy, so we’ll skip the game of tennis which the GM and I played. He confirmed that they use margarine and that they lied about it, and that “he’ll have to talk to the staff about this” and when I pointed out that if they can serve me margarine and tell me that it’s wagyu butter, then they’re equally capable of serving anything they like and calling it wagyu beef, and of pouring cheap wine into expensive bottles and so on ad infinitum.
Of course he protested. He promised that they didn’t do that. But the man before him, also a manager, had kept exactly the same straight face as he presented the “wagyu butter”, which this GM concedes it most certainly was not.
And summarily, we left, and we had a great meal across the street.
Integrity is not just a sign of good character, it is an essential hygiene factor in the experience economy.
If I cannot trust you, there is simply no way that I can have a good experience.
That nagging feeling that you’re going to spit into my food when I’m not looking means that I can never, ever eat at your establishment.
That nagging feeling that your server will go down, that your team will fail to show up, that your data is incorrect, that what’s inside whatever bottle you sell isn’t what is says on the label; that feeling means that your customer can never have great experience, and they’ll get up and go across the street for dinner.
Integrity is an essential input in the experience economy.