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Who is the boss?? - Swiss Farm Franshoek (11/07)

Recently I have visited a lot of my old favorite restaurants and they all seem to have one thing in common - when you arrive at the door you are greeted by a familiar face -the boss!! And that in a nutshell is what I believe is the secret to success.boss But if your going to be the boss then you need to act like a boss!!!

A few weeks ago I thought I would try a place I haven’t being to for many years - in the old days it was called the Swiss farm excelsior. This used to be a very upmarket hotel swisstucked away in the mountains just outside the high street of Franshoek. Unfortunately as things do, the original hotel changed hands and it became a time share type place. Needless to say nothing stays the same and after one or two not so good experiences I stopped going.

Magically the Swiss Farm has been replaced by Le Franshoek. More than 70% of the original property has been extensively renovated and new luxury suites have been added, and I can only agree it is magnificant.

It was about 11am in the morning and I really needed my morning coffee fix!!! We were seated (there were 8 of us) and we proceeded to place our coffee order. My order is fairly specific so I repeated it 3 times just to be sure waiter understood what I wanted. We weren’t really in a big hurry and we spent our time looking around and enjoying the fantastic views. The hotel is situated in one of the most beautiful spots in the Cape - a recipe for success. About 20min later the coffee arrived!!

5 of the 8 coffee orders that arrived were correct. We repeated the other 3 orders again and away the waiter went. He was back in 5 minutes but again my coffee order was incorrect! By this time I was becoming a little irate and the manager that was standing in ear site near the bar came over. He introduced himself, apologised and promised to sort out my coffee order - and away he went..

AFTER another 5 minutes or so my coffee was still not there.. I was just about to get really upset when the coffee order arrived with a new waiter.. no manager…. AND YES IT WAS WRONG..

The manager was nowhere to be found so I went with the waiter to sort out my coffee order - a single expresso with hot milk. mmmmmmmmmmm very complicated! So finally after some direct supervision I finally had my cup of coffee.

Well I understand that people are new!! I understand that they make mistakes!! What I don’t understand is that when you have a group of people that are clearly unhappy AND you promise to sort it out THAT you disappear. And no the restaurant was no full, it was not busy - in fact there were only 2 groups in the restaurant area.. If you don’t intend on seeing it through to the end; well then don’t bother introducing yourself in the first place!!

A good boss / manager has the ability to turn a bad situation into a good one. His job is to make sure you leave with a good memory and not a bad memory..

By Francois Heyns

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