July 1987: Restaurateur Rights

A writer writing in a national publication discusses the plight of the diner, arguing that diners are rarely treated decently. He says that people who eat out don’t have rights. So, he writes what he calls the Diners’ Bill of Rights and lists them. According to the writer, rights are what diners are entitled to and if they aren’t accorded them, they have the right to . . . well, how about the right to call the cops.

Here are some diners’ rights: the right to a check without mistakes; the right to refuse bad food; the right to complain about poor service; the right to get what you ordered; the right to a table at or about the time you reserved it. Speaking of which, here’s what really irritates the author of Diners’ Bill of Rights. You’ll find it in the chapter, The Wait List Paradox. “If I arrive at the restaurant at precisely the time I made my reservation, I am often asked to wait for half an hour to an hour before my table is ready; yet, if I arrive late, say 10 or 15 minutes late, I find I no longer have a reservation or a table. That’s an infringement on a diner’s rights, totally unacceptable.”

There are, you’ll be pleased to know, restaurant-owner rights, too. I’ve divided them into inalienable and alienable rights. Inalienable rights are those you are entitled to. Not so alienable. An alienable right may be tough to enforce. It’s a right based on your relationship with your customer.

Inalienable rights

                                                              Tom Wang

You have a right to the American Dream. No other business (go ahead: name one, but it has to be legal) comes as close to this pursuit of happiness as does running a restaurant. You want to own a restaurant? Go ahead. It’s a right. Don’t be discouraged by the number of them out there now; or by the number of them, a year from now, that won’t be.  So, create a restaurant. If it’s not like any other, has good food and service you’ll make lots of money (see picture of happy restaurateur, right) and friends, some of whom you never knew you had until you opened your restaurant. Never open a restaurant because you think that’s a terrific way to meet people.

You have the right to drive your accountant nuts. There are so many line items in your P&L that adding one more, say, “non-charitable donations” under business expense deductions is OK with us. You can probably think of more.

You have the right never to be sick (this right is a bit tricky). They say that dining out is like going to the theater; and that the courses come and go the way the scenes and the acts of a play flow. The show must go on, you are the lead, and your customers expect you to be there. Break a leg.

You have the right to set any trend you want to set. What you want to do is leave a legacy for your kids, for your country. Talk to Ray Kroc’s wife.

You have the right to open whatever kind of restaurant you want to open and to be whatever kind of owner you want to be. This is America. Your restaurant can be whatever you want it to be: conceive a style that nobody else has thought of and open it; copy a style and improve on it; be real or fake, outlandish, sassy, or smart. Same goes for you: being whatever restaurant owner you want to be is part of the American dream. So, like your restaurant: set a style; copy a style. Be real or fake; outlandish, sassy, smart; philosophical. Be loud, nutty, boorish, gracious, welcoming, fawning, modest, chic, smiling, insulting. Try not to be condescending. Be married, single, gay or straight; black, white, red, yellow, brown, or any combination of those colors. Be whatever. But before you pick a style for yourself or your restaurant or decide to set a style or think about being stylish, know of the consequences of the style you pick, whatever it might be.

Here are alienable rights
The restaurant is your business and your life and you have the right to do everything in your power to keep it solvent. Here are some examples:

You have the right to kick anybody out of your restaurant for whatever reason. That right is your most important alienable right.

For instance you could kick out someone who has written a Diners’ Bill of Rights; or a critic you’re not particularly fond of. It’s been done. If someone complains that your Chinese restaurant doesn’t serve pasta fagioli, kick him out and tell him why you're kicking him out.

Beware the disclaimer, “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone.”  Use it at your peril. It’s so often been misinterpreted, it could get you into a legal bother that could leave you penniless; or, without your restaurant.

If dining out is supposed to be a pleasure, a palliative to both body and soul, and someone in the restaurant is annoying other diners (infringing on their Diners’ Rights, as it were), kick her and everyone else in her party out.

That goes for babies, too. Your customers want comfort, romance, the subtle smells of food and flowers when they dine out. Babies that howl or hurl in the dining room are a nuisance. So are kids playing with their food. They are not cute. Kick them and their parents out. That’s a right.

Here’s an example of someone enforcing that right: Before he closed Ma Maison, owner, Patrick Terrail, handled annoying behavior this way: he’d politely ask the offending party to stop being offensive. Should it refuse, Terrail would grab the tablecloth at its corners, lift it and whatever else was on it off the table and order the party out. He would then toss the tablecloth and its contents over his shoulder—much like a knapsack—and walk with it to the kitchen often to the accompaniment of customers cheering and clapping.

Finally, if—as stated in the Diners’ Bill of Rights—a customer has a right to expect a check tabulated correctly with tabulations legible then you have the right to expect the customer to call your attention to an understated check. Be advised, however, even though that’s a right, it will never ever happen. As far as the customer is concerned, it is too much a diner’s right—it is as much his or her American Dream as it is yours to open a restaurant. You could look it up.