When walking around the port area of Buenos Aires with my wife Nadine we encountered two opposite extremes when it came to a pleasant welcome or not to a quality looking restaurant.We first decided to go into a nice looking busy restaurant called Cabana las Lilas, only to wait at the restaurant for over 5 minutes while waiters and waitresses walked past without even a hint of acknowledgement. We thought they clearly did not need our business and walked two restaurants down to La Cabana where we were immediately acknowledged and greeted by a young waitress who said she would attend to us as soon as she had served the drinks she was carrying to two other guests.
She sat us down, and when she took our order, she surprised us. She told us we had ordered far too much because the steaks were so big we ought to only order one big one between the two of us – or two smaller ones – wow she was turning away our money!
We explained about the reception we had received from the competitors two doors up and she was very professional in expressing surprise that they did not appear to have cared.
The young lady called Constanza explained this to her manager and sommelier Max Ortez who came and spoke to us about the wine we would like to drink with the steaks we had chosen to eat, and recommended a very nice Malbec from Mendoza naturally. On learning that we were travelling to Mendoza the next day, he gave us the name of his friend who ran the wine tastings at the famous Trapiche vineyard in Mendoza.
Basically he engaged with us and made sure we were well looked after, and guess what?
Yes you guessed right – not only did they earn a good tip but the restaurant received an excellent write up in Trip Advisor, whereas their competitors earned a “Don’t touch them with a barge pole” review on trip advisor.
Let’s face it – people like to deal with people they like, and if you want people to talk about you (as my good friend Steve Pipe says), you have to give them something to talk about!
In this case both did – one gave something negative to talk about and the other gave me something positive to talk about and now I am telling you!