Restaurants are fairly familiar and routine experiences for most of us. If you’ve been to a few, you will feel fairly comfortable with the procedure, as it were, for dining in a restaurant. You are seated by a host, or you choose your own seat. A server approaches your table, introduces themselves, and asks you what you would like to order, perhaps starting with an offer of drinks. But sometimes the first question you get asked is ‘have you been here before?’ Why do servers in restaurants ask us whether we have been there before? Why does it matter?
I’ll start by answering the last question: In regards to your experience, it should not matter at all if you’ve been to a restaurant before A good restaurant treats every guest as an honored one.
Sure, if you are a regular the experience may be more comfortable but for all practical purposes, a restaurant should want to apply the same standards to every single guest, even if they are just passing through town and may never revisit the establishment. Given that, making a first-time guest a regular guest is of the utmost importance.
Still, there are three common reasons why a server might ask you whether you have been to the restaurant before, a practice that is more common in corporate-run chain restaurants.
1. Simple Market Research
A restaurant needs new customers. But more importantly, a restaurant needs repeat customers! To succeed, a restaurant needs to turn a first-time guest into a regular guest.
A server might ask you whether you have been there before simply as an easy way to gauge whether they are getting repeat patronage which will, in turn, tell management if the restaurant is doing a good job turning those first-time visitors into regular guests.
This simple question is a great way to do some cheap research and if the answer is ‘no, I’ve never been here before’ too often, well, then something needs to improve!
By the same token, if every customer is a regular and the restaurant is not attracting new customers, then the business is probably doomed.
Regardless, the importance of regular customers cannot be understated. The percentage of guests who should be repeat customers will vary depending on the type of restaurant, but any restaurant should be getting at least 50% repeat business or more and ideally, higher than 60%.
Most people will not travel far away from home to visit a restaurant According to consumer research performed by Brightlocal, the farthest distance most people will to eat at a restaurant is 17 miles and most visits come from an area not more than 3 to 5 miles away.
This means that most of a restaurants guests must be repeat customers frome a small, finite area. In turn, these regulars will be the best word-of-mouth advertising for the business. So, ‘have you been here before’ is a very important question!
2. First-Time Customer Perks
Sometimes restaurants like to pull out all the stops for first-time guests in order to incentivise them to become regular guest.
So, when a server asks if you’ve been there before and you say no, perhaps you get a free round of drinks or a free appetizer. Or, you may be asked to become part of a loyalty program so that you can earn incentives for future visits.
Loyalty programs can be very good investments for restaurants, but trying to wow a guest into coming back by giving them free stuff once, or making a big deal about their visit in some way, only to fail to offer a consistent experience in the future, will probably backfire.
If repeat customers are the most important customers, then a consistent experience is also the most important. Therefore, trying to impress a first-time guest during their first visit only to take them for granted later on is not a good way to reach that 60% or more mark for customer retention.
3. To Explain To You ‘How the Restaurant Works’
Now we’ve come to the last and worst common reason that servers ask this question. Usually, when this is the reason, the full question is: “Have you been here before? Do you know how it works?”
As I wrote at the beginning of this article, most of us are familiar with how a restaurant works. “I tell you what I want from the menu and you bring it to me” would be the smart-alec answer to ‘do you know how it works.’
If a restaurant is trying to re-invent restaurants, there should be a good reason. For example, the restaurant is offering a unique experience. If you had never been served a sit-down dinner at a music concert, or in a dine-in theater, then it would make sense that the procedures may be a bit different and staff may need to explain things to you.
But if, for example, a restaurant has several different menus (Ruby Tuesday is notorious for this) and the server hands you all of them and then has to explain which one you can order from, then there’s a problem.
On the other hand, if the restaurant, perhaps, is using a new at-table POS system that allows the guest to order using a digital system at their table, then some explanation may be required.
In other words, if you are asked ‘have you been here, do you know how it works’ and ‘the way it works is an inconvenience to you, the guest, then the restaurant is doing a bad job. A digital POS system as the table that allows you to order another drink, or a dessert, etc. is a convenience to the guest, and can even be fun. Needless complications in an effort to be cute or ‘different are simply a way to fail that all-important customer retention test.
Therefore, the first two reasons given are the most legitimate reasons to ask ‘have you been here before.’ The third reason is only sensible in select circumstances.
