Being a client to be a good waiter

Empathy is putting yourself in the place of the other person, this is an important quality that a waiter must have: you should put yourself in the place of the client, being clients ourselves.

Going to different gastronomic places helps us to know all the varieties that gastronomy can offer, of food, drinks, to know diverse ways of providing service and to understand how a client feels when they go to a restaurant or any other type of gastronomic place. It is also important to visit our workplace as clients, it helps us to live the experience that our clients live.

We must ask ourselves: How do we like to be treated? What things do we highlight about the service? What things annoy us as customers? What attitudes make us happy as customers? etc.

All this helps us to improve as professionals, taking the good things that we experience in the places we frequent and avoiding doing with our clients all those things that bothered us during our experience. It is the idea of ​​identifying with the client since we all are at some point.

Some professionals stand out… 

“The first error arises when the waiters do not learn to think like the clients, to put themselves in their place. I do not tolerate invasive closeness, I am in favor of close and personalized service, but the most common mistake occurs when treating the client as a friend. That line is fine and many times it is easily crossed. We sommeliers make the mistake of trying to indoctrinate by making our tastes prevail, instead of listening to what the client wants” explains Pablo Sacerdote. 

«The waiter can never think that he is above the client or act as if he were,» adds Fertilati.

Going through establishments with different profiles helps us understand the weaknesses and strengths of the profession.