How can restaurant owners survive and thrive? (courtesy of Food photo created by freepik – www.freepik.com)
We love delicious and great tasting food. We love chatting about our latest dining escapades on social media.
If you are Asian, you probably enjoy taking and sharing photos and videos of your food on social networks. You probably also love consuming food related content – recipes, new dishes, menus, the list goes on.
Oh dear! Customer satisfaction has dropped this year, according to a survey done by the Institute of Service Excellence (ISES).
Reading various reports in The Straits Times, TODAY and Business Times, several sobering statistics await us:
What do you get when you combine exquisitely prepared Italian cuisine with nature-inspired imagination?
Inspired by the ancient Greek word Gaea which means “Mother Earth”, Gaia Ristorante and Bar is located at the Goodwood Park Hotel. Infusing natural elements in the aesthetics of its decor and food, the venue houses a martini bar, dining rooms of various configurations and an inner courtyard dining room decked to resemble a garden. Lush and luxuriant, Gaia features plush leather booth seats, elegantly comfortable arm chairs and a glass-enclosed wine cellar cum private room that seats 10.
What is fabulous service? How do you define a “delightful experience”?
To many, an exceptional encounter is a heroic one, epitomised by a smiling human being who jumps through flaming hoops to provide memorable encounters.
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Customer service is one of the most talked about topics in Singapore. Hell hath no fury like a Singaporean customer scorned. At the same time, we have this incredible obsession to share what we eat, wear, buy and do, often with “value-added” comments (“yay” or “nay”).
Unfortunately, retailers and F&B operators are often oblivious of what their customers think. While a few do trawl the web to search for answers (good or bad), most continue their operations in blissful ignorance.
Considered the world’s largest restaurant chain serving 64 million customers daily, McDonald’s is probably the most pervasive fast food chain on the globe. Founded by Ray Kroc in 1955, McDonald’s worldwide generates some US$24 billion in annual revenue from more than 32,000 outlets (mostly franchisee and affiliate run restaurants).
Famed for its superior supply chain management, ultra-efficient service quality, lightning speed kitchens, and franchise business model, its ubiquitous golden arches is probably the most instantly recognisable brand symbol in the world. Here in Singapore, McDonald’s serves some five million customers a month from over 115 restaurants islandwide.
First established in 1979 with an outlet in Liat Towers (once the world’s best performing McDonald’s restaurant), the hamburger chain is encouraging members of the public to participate in its “Open Doors” global initiative. Since 2009, over 5,000 customers have participated in this programme, inclusive of a guided kitchen tour. I suppose this is a good initiative to combat some of the controversies surrounding the burger behemoth.
After visiting her regular TCM practitioner at Yishun last Saturday, my wife Tina and I decided to drive along Upper Thomson Road to have a late dinner at this cosy little porridge place located at Springleaf Estate. We ordered a couple of dishes to go with our bowls of steaming sweet potato porridge and had a pleasant meal.
Last Saturday (28th April) we celebrated my dad’s 67th birthday at Broth, a charming Australian style restaurant along stone-cobbled Duxton Hill. For the unitiated, Duxton is a charming little neighbourhood of clubs and restaurants sandwiched between the financial district and the more boisterous Chinatown area in Singapore.
Good things come in small packages, and this boutique restaurant never failed to live up to its promise. After reading several rave reviews here, here, and here, we decided to give it a try. I worked with its owner Steven Hansen before on an event at a museum and it went pretty well. A nice and friendly chap who came here from Melbourne a couple of years ago, Steve also runs River Cafe located at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute at Robertson Quay, another quality Aussie style dining joint.
The overall ambience and food quality was superb. We gave a thumbs up for most of the dishes, including the lamb loin, steak, pork chop, salmon and starters. Of course, the dessert of sticky date pudding literally took the cake!
Last weekend, I brought my family to Ka-Soh Restaurant, a famous old chain specialising in Fish Head Noodle. Tucked away in a nondescript corner of the Singapore General Hospital – of all places – the restaurant was literally sitting in darkness in the hospital campus when we arrived for dinner.
Despite its relatively inauspicious location, the restaurant had a good crowd when we arrived. Apparently, Ka-Soh is one of the original purveyors of fine fishhead noodles which does not use evaporated milk to thicken its soup. Instead, the milky white soup came from hours of boiling the bones of “Sang Yu” or snakehead fish. I understand that this dish is especially popular due to its purported ability to heal one’s wounds.
Although the wait was somewhat long, we enjoyed our dinner that night. The decor and ambience was casually comfortable, with a modern and minimalist Zen look. Waitresses were also generally attentive towards our needs and even advised us not to order too much for fear that we could not finish our food. Our favourite dish without a doubt was the fish meat noodles and we lapped up every single drop of the yummy soup.