Exceptional Customer Service

All companies strive for exceptional customer service, or at least say that they do. It’s easier for large companies to make sacrifices to keep your business than for small companies. We’ve been told by large companies that our call is important, just not important enough to talk to a live human being. We’ve been trained by large companies to buy a membership or pay a fee for better customer service. We have even been bribed with free stuff after receiving poor customer service. But are you really getting exceptional customer service from large companies? Aren’t the large companies hoping you’ll hang up the phone before getting to the live customer service agent, hence hiring less agents? Aren’t large companies taking their sweet time picking and shipping your order if you don’t upgrade to VIP membership? Aren’t large companies keeping track of customers who complain too much in order to black list those who only order to complain for free stuff?

Small companies, mom and pop shops, desperately need your business and deeply appreciate your business. They smile every time they see you. They answer the phone personally. They help you as much as possible. Small businesses cannot sell cheaper, because they can’t buy cheaper. They can’t give away a lot of free stuff, because they don’t have the cash flow or the profit margin to pay for it. But know in your heart that you are a hero to them just because you patronize their business.

As a small business, you have to decide what you’re willing to do for customer service and stick to that. There are always going to be dissatisfied people. There are always going to be customers trying to bleed you dry for free stuff. Make your rules and stay within the guidelines. If you lose a customer because you didn’t do ‘enough’ to keep them, you are probably better off as nothing will ever be enough after that and they will cost you more than they spend with you.

Where Your Hockey Ticket Money Doesn’t Go

As you’ve read in previous posts, Todd stole from us a lot. And not just inventory. Sometimes I would come to work and the bar would be full of uniforms and children. Todd never asked if they could use our area for their team kickoff. This was a violation of our contract, which stated we had exclusive rights to the cafe and bar area and our landlords could only enter to service it, inspect it, or in an emergency. And they were supposed to give us fair notice. Obviously, they didn’t care about our business, our contract, or the fact that we might have a party booked, etc.

One day, they actually asked to use the bar area as they had overbooked their party rooms. I’m guessing they asked because the parties were at a time when we would already be there so they couldn’t sneak in and just use the room. I think they charge $50 to rent their party rooms for a couple hours. So I agreed to host their parties, but I told them I wanted the $50 fees they were charging. They agreed but never paid. Here’s a local hockey team that makes millions in ticket sales and they never paid the $100 invoice I sent. I don’t know if that bothers you, spending your hard earned money to support your local hockey team and then they screw whomever they can. I just wanted you to know how they handle their business and your money. You’d think they would want us to be successful and continue to pay them rent but they just steal and steal and steal. I often wonder what 561 thinks about this team he’s so proud of hiring a bunch narcissistic thieves.

Too Little Too Late

Todd came into the kitchen to talk to me after we called the police on Will for stealing. During our conversation, he told me he had fired Will and he indicated he had decided not to help himself to our food anymore. He didn’t say it in so many words, but we both knew what he was talking about. He followed his indication by saying he wanted to set an example for his people. I was appalled. We had to call in the police to get the general manager of the building to stop stealing from us. My feeling was he realized his job was on the line if we caught him on camera.

Todd never admitted he was stealing. He never apologized for stealing or helping himself, however you want to soft sell your bad behavior. Todd never offered to pay for what he had taken. He never apologized for setting a poor example for his people. Even after this, he never helped us put a stop to the stealing by fixing the security cameras or coming in late at night to check up on his people or hiring an adult to work late every night. He also never stopped his people from trash talking us to the customers as they vented their anger that we called the police on their friend.

The sad part is an apology wouldn’t fix it anyway. He was already leading by example. All his people saw him help himself and assumed it was ok to take whatever they wanted. The damage was done. People notice what you do. They rarely notice when you stop doing it.

World’s Greatest Dad

As we discussed earlier in this blog, with the exception of Brian (I love Brian for being such a good and honest man in such a dishonest environment), most of the men working for the rink stole from us. Some of them stole everyday. These people were our landlords and had access to a key to our restaurant. Theft escalated when we got our liquor license and had alcohol onsite. We locked as many cabinets as we could, but in my heart I just couldn’t believe we had to protect ourselves against so many people. Doesn’t anyone have morals anymore? We put in one camera and caught someone right away, but the picture was below the neck. So Todd, the perpetrator’s boss, said there was no way to identify the person and consequently did nothing. That’s when we found out the security cameras in the rink were not working and there were no plans to fix them. However, I feel they could have identified the guy if they wanted. I was there until 11:45pm. When I left, the rink was empty except for employees and all the doors entering the rink were locked. The timestamp on the picture was around 12:15am. There were few rink employees on the clock, 1 or 2 that I saw, and only one was wearing coveralls. The picture obviously showed someone in coveralls. Even if that’s not enough to write him up, it’s surely enough to let him know this is a zero tolerance offense and must stop immediately – scare him straight. Todd did nothing. Pierre did nothing.

We put in another camera. Again, we caught someone immediately. I recognized him but didn’t know his name. He had his hand on the beer tap so Todd couldn’t say he was just in the restaurant to get ice. Todd said he wasn’t sure who it was. Really? Todd doesn’t recognize his own employees??? We called the police and filed a report. Todd tried to talk us out of it, saying he would like to take care of it himself. I guess he thought I was stupid enough to believe he would take action after doing nothing in the past. One thing I do know, Todd identified the picture for the police. The kid, Will, was 18 or 19 and steeling beer. He worked in ops, which means he most likely had a master key to all the rinks in the DFW area. Since we filed a police report, Todd had to fire Will. I don’t know if Will got to keep his key. Pierre still had his master key after quitting his job with the local hockey team that owned all the rinks.

Will contacted me several times. He was crying and asking me not to press charges. Then he proceeded to lie to me and say he only took 1 beer. In one weekend, we had multiple pictures of him taking beer and Snapple. So I pressed charges. I was tired of all the lying and stealing. Of course it just made the other employees hate me more and work harder to see us fail – but that’s another story.

A week or so later, a man came to the counter and said he was Will’s dad. I braced myself. I thought he was there to chew me out for pressing charges against his son. I was so wrong. He had to pay Will’s fine so he didn’t feel Will was punished and wanted to know if I would let Will come work for me for 20 hours to make up for stealing. And I should give Will the worst jobs possible. I was shocked. I didn’t really want Will around, but I loved his dad for caring and agreed. What a wonderful dad! And I gave Will the grossest, ickiest jobs possible. After 10 hours he lied and said he couldn’t come back because of school so I called his dad. Will finished out his 20 hours.

Todd chewed me out for making him fire Will for stealing and then hiring Will to work in the restaurant. You can see our landlords lived in rumorville. They were always reacting without checking the facts. Just like we did not sell liquor without a license, we did not hire Will to work for us. Since Todd stole from us too, it probably never occurred to him the kid’s dad would want Will punished for stealing. I was so glad when Will’s 20 hours were up and he was gone. Sadly, this didn’t stop the stealing.

Every Penny Counts

Kyle the Bartender was a Godsend. His experience brought us many timesaving and moneysaving procedures. One of our best decisions was changing our pricing system. When we opened, we set prices and let the POS system calculate the sales tax and total sale. Making change was time consuming and sometimes challenging for the teenagers we hired, leading to long lines at the counter.

Kyle’s idea was to round off prices to the nearest quarter. So, I sat down and calculated every item’s price plus tax and then rounded to the nearest quarter. We changed the POS system to handle the new pricing. It was amazing how much time we saved when we didn’t have to count pennies.

One glitch. Hunt Brothers was great about providing signs, flyers, and handouts. However, most of their preprinted materials had their suggested retail prices on them. Hunt Brothers doesn’t require that you charge their prices, but they won’t print your signs with different prices. So I trained our employees to give change to anyone who complained that our prices didn’t match the signs. I think there was only one item that we charged 9 cents more than the sign price. I highly recommend this pricing system, especially in an arena environment.

Cease and Desist

Fall is the busy season for hockey. We were anxiously awaiting our liquor license. The paperwork was done and turned in. Waiting for approval is hard, especially when the rink is busy. So we decided to give away beer. Two beer limit, but most people just asked for one. Some of the regular customers were really good about tipping well, even when they didn’t have a beer. But I got the impression they were tipping more than usual – maybe I was imagining it, but that’s how it felt. There were many families who really appreciated our effort in trying to take care of them and they rewarded us for it.

The next thing I knew, I got a Cease and Desist letter from our landlord. The letter stated that they heard we were selling beer without a license which is illegal. They never asked us if the rumors were true or if we had received our license, they just had their lawyers send us a letter. I couldn’t see where any good would come from fighting it, so I immediately packed up all the beer and took it home. Then I sent them an email saying I had complied but that I wished they had talked to us before believing some rumor and taking such drastic action. Later, we found out we had a liquor license during that time. We never received our approval letter; a wine salesman showed us our license on the website. Either way, we weren’t breaking the law and some very lucky customers got free beer.

The question here is, what happened to our liquor license letter? Did it get lost in the mail? Was it sent to our rink address and the rink employees thought it was junk mail? I don’t know. I do know we had to pay a penalty for not reporting liquor sales during the time we didn’t know we had a license. You have to file a report even if your sales are zero. This incident, along with previous encounters with our landlord, made me feel like our landlord would do anything possible to hinder our success.

Liquor License

Getting a liquor license is very precise and time consuming. TABC is great about guiding you through the process. You have to get just the right signatures in just the right order and everything has to be notarized. I took far too long to complete this process. I’m not making any excuses. Yes, it’s hard to run a business, work the counter, do your partner’s job, and work on a liquor license, but I should have made it a higher priority. Oh, and I sold my house, bought a new house, and moved all during the same period.

You may wonder why I was still building the business after all the crap I’ve told you about so far. Well, the liquor license was that one ray of hope that the business would make a complete turn around for the better and all the torture I had endured so far would just melt away. Pierre, Todd, and Kyle all said it would make a difference and I believed them. During this process, I learned that Todd had lied about helping us set up pizza and beer in the locker rooms for the adult league. Once we got the liquor license it became a violation to have liquor on the premises outside of our space. We would have to change the liquor license to cover the entire building and Todd said he would never agree to that.

The liquor license did double our business almost immediately, but it didn’t turn the world around. Sadly, things continued to get worse. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you all about it as the saga continues. One thing I want to say here, I couldn’t have done any of this without Kyle. He is a hard worker and honest person. Even though Kyle no longer speaks to me, I will always be grateful to have worked with him.

Financial Harassment

Like I mentioned earlier, rent was due on the first of the month and our contract gave very specific instructions about mailing the checks to Damon. Not only did we do that, we set up automatic payments from our bank account to ensure the rent would be paid on time every month.

I guess when you have a lot of money, managing the money doesn’t seem very important. I have never worked with any company or organization that was as bad at managing money as the local hockey team. Or maybe it was just harassment. I don’t know, but I sure got tired of proving we had paid our rent.

The first week in May 2015, Todd came to me and said he needed to collect all the rent since we had opened. I was taken aback because we had paid all of the rent, so I asked why. He said I had not paid any rent since we signed the contract and he needed that money. If you remember, I also told you earlier that Todd had told me to pay the rent according to the contract and not give the checks to him. I guess he forgot, and assumed we hadn’t paid because he had not seen the checks. I explained that we had auto-payments to Damon as the contract specified and we had paid all the rent – February was paid when we signed the contract (Todd should have know that as he was there), March was a free month according to the contract, and April and May had been auto-paid. He was glad we paid and went on his way. Seems like he would have a way to know about payments – a report, communication with accounting, or something.

In October or November, they accused us of not paying September rent. In January, corporate accused us of not paying December 2015; and then November 2015. Each time, I sent copies of our bank statement showing the money had been sent in plenty of time and the screen showing the checks had been cashed. Turns out, the missing payments were months before and each time we sent a check accounting would apply it to a previous month making it look like we paid late all the time. If they had just told us the same month a check was late, we could have stopped payment and resent right away. I have no idea what happened to our checks – lost in the mail, lost in Damon’s department, lost in accounting, thrown away to sabotage our business. At this point, we had been accused of not paying our rent 7 months out of the first 11 months in business. Their accounting couldn’t tell us when things had gone awry, so I had to go back through all the payments to find the checks that had not been cashed and replace them. I think it turned out to be July, October, and November. Accounting appreciated my work and repaid us by having a team lunch at our cafe in March 2016. Accounting has the nicest people in the organization.

Around the first week of January 2016, Todd came to me and said we had paid the wrong amount for our January rent. He suggested that if I checked my contract, I would know the rent went up and I should have paid the 2016 amount. I had to remind him the contract stated the rent increase began each FEBRUARY and I had already changed the auto payment to the new amount for next month.

In September 2016, Todd informed me there was another missing rent check and wanted proof of payment February through September. I reminded him we had already provided proof of February payment when we were researching November and December payments. How can you run a business when you’re constantly researching paperwork to prove you pay your rent? So this time, I took my time doing the research. It’s ridiculous that a company as big as a national hockey team can have this much trouble managing money. And why is it they don’t know when things went awry??? Seems to me all they have to do is look for the first month the rent was credited after the late-date. And why don’t they contact you that month so you can take care of it right away??? We were in our busy season and I did my research only when there was spare time, so I took several months to get back to them. Turns out, the March 2016 check had been lost. Meanwhile, Todd asked me to start handing our checks to him instead of following the instructions in the contract. I did, but I got a receipt from the person I handed the check to, as Todd wasn’t always there. I wanted proof we paid on time so no one could accidentally lose the check and say we didn’t pay or hold the check until after the grace period to make it look like we paid late. These people obviously cannot be trusted with money. But we knew that, because these are some of the same people that stole from us.

Backup Marketing

Marketing is definitely not my thing, so I had been relying on Pierre. It became obvious that he was not stepping up and we needed a backup plan. My first attempt at marketing was to purchase Hunt Brothers’ mass mailing of coupons. I don’t think 1 person came in with a coupon. So that didn’t work.

My next attempt was the RTUI grocery store cash register receipts. I used to like the coupons on the receipts so I thought that might work for us. I asked the salesman for recommendations from local restaurants, but all he gave me were nail salons and 1 restaurant in Houston, which is not nearby. It was an expensive disaster. I finally posted a bad rating on their facebook page and someone called to help me. A director came out for an evaluation. Turns out the receipt coupons only work if you’re in the same strip center as the grocery store or very close by. We were in a relatively undeveloped area so the grocery stores were 2-7 miles away. The director told me the salesman knew this and should never have sold us a plan. Did they give me any money back? NO! And I asked several times. They did extend our service several months and worked with me to design different coupons. With over a year of printing coupons, we got 2, possibly 3, coupons redeemed. It was very disheartening and I felt truly cheated by that salesman.

Kyle and some of the other employees passed out flyers near the baseball diamonds and soccer fields. When we finally got our sign, it was hung on the side of the building facing the baseball diamonds. I think that helped a little. I still don’t understand why Pierre wasn’t actively working the baseball market – after all, we had climate controlled restrooms and beer. Kyle and I set up all sorts of social media pages and events. Pierre still did nothing. Half the time he didn’t even respond to our events or invite his friends.

My biggest mistake here, aside from partnering with Pierre, was RTUI. Never do business with RTUI, unless you’re a nail salon next to a grocery store.

Hockey Camps

You’d think hockey camps would bring good money to the cafe, but even the camps had limited participation. When the local hockey team held camps in our facility, we had good business from the kids once the parents found we had a good lunch deal – 1/4 pizza, chips or fruit, cookie, and squirt top water bottle for $5.25. However, the coaches from corporate didn’t eat with us at all. These are our landlords in the building for a week and didn’t buy lunch from us even one time – in fact, Tuesday they brought in pizza from an outside restaurant. So Friday afternoon, I went over and had words with them about patronizing their tenants and setting an example for the students to patronize us as well. There was one independent hockey coach, Ryan, who approached us as soon as we opened to let us know he would recommend us in all his hockey camp emails. It was so refreshing to have at least one person who believed in supporting us and appreciated that we were there.

Every summer there was some sort of hockey ministry camp. The first time we met them, they brought us their coolers to be filled with ice. Once filled, we took the coolers out to where the camp counselors were standing. I asked the woman if there was anything we could do to get their business sometime that week. She explained they had already set up all the lunches to be brought in and they told the kids not to bring money so there would be no business for us. Then she asked if we would add water to some of the coolers. We didn’t have a faucet tall enough to get the coolers under to fill, so I suggested they talk to the front desk to see if the building had a faucet or hose to fill the coolers. When the ministry’s lunch came in the next day, she wanted to borrow a large knife. We only had one in our sanitized kitchen so we couldn’t lend it – often people forget to return items and who knows what they did with it when they had it. Having a safe kitchen was our first priority. The third day, she asked for large buffet spoons for their lunch. We didn’t have any of these because we sell pizza; we have no need for buffet serving utensils. That’s when she totally chewed me out for not helping them when they needed it. These people are supposed to be mentoring children with Christianly advise. Some of the counselors would take naps on our couch in the bar. Other times, they would set up their Bible study in front of the cafe. A huge lobby with plenty of space to set up chairs without blocking someone’s business and they set up in front of the cafe, blocking the entire counter. I don’t think these people are qualified to call themselves Christian counselors – I certainly wouldn’t want them influencing my children. I did make some money off the kids, which I think made her even more angry with me. I baked fresh cookies at lunch time each day and fresh popcorn in the afternoon. Those kids who were told not to bring money, suddenly had enough to buy cookies and popcorn. I guess I’m just evil.

Once again this boils down to ‘no outside food or drink’. It’s a must-have rule in an environment like this. Just like retail stores make deals that their competitor can’t be in the same strip center, you have to make deals in favor of your restaurant. You can always compromise outside food on a case by case basis, because no one can eat pizza for lunch 5 days in a row, but at least you have the power to deal. And where was Pierre in all of this? Why didn’t he talk to the ministry people and make a deal for the next year? He’s marketing, he should be taking care of this. And why isn’t he talking to corporate? He used to work with these guys and probably has all their emails. It is unacceptable for corporate to decide not to patronize their tenants.