Feeding the Grockles

Holiday makers change trains at Newton Abbott

Notes from our recent trip away, as learned from the breakfast at our hotel in Grocklefest land.

Feed them ...

• yesterday's croissants from the fridge

• one butter pat per couple, and make them ask for more if they want it.

• cheap marmalade and jams. Forget the £120.00 per night they're paying - keep the better pots were for sale for walkins at your coffee shop.

• a tiny pot of coffee to share between 2

• just 3 scraps of ham for the whole breakfast room (and limit your cheese to the "laughing cow" type - the laugh is on your customers paying so much for so little!

And ...

• it's good to put fruit out. Slices of melon with no forks to eat them with ... and your webcam will let you sit in the back and have a good laugh as they struggle.

• remember - if you want to save yourself some work, don't check back with the guests and see if they need anything - unless they're the fussy type, they'll just grin and bare it, thinking it's the South Devon way.

I will be fair - the bread quality was better than we use; I had brown, and Lisa had the white slice that we were given to share ;-)

I keep coming back to it - customer service is so important. Sure - we were grockles ourselves last Thursday and Friday, but that's no excuse for cheap customer service in a not-so-cheap hotel. To some extent I was amused, and I know that we had great fun on the journey and during the all-too-brief stay in Dartmouth.

File under ... Notes to OUR hotel staff and team to read, to ensure that we never give our customers the feeling that they're just another tourist. Actually, our customers are a wide variety of interesting people and we love having them here, so there's little danger of us adjusting them!
(written 2010-08-09, updated 2010-08-20)

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