Thinking Small
Last night my wife and I went to a birthday dinner at one of the nicest St. Thomas?restaurants. We really happen to like this restaurant. There were 8 of us in total. The food was fantastic. The service was white glove.
One of the members of our party brought a birthday cake and the waiters all got together and sang happy birthday to our friend. It was really nice. We all had a great time.
Then the bill came and I happened to look at it. The restaurant charged us a $40 cake cutting fee ($5/person). Two things were wrong with this, first I didn’t have any cake. Second, we should have been told before said cake was cut.
Now this is not Manhattan, this is laid back, ultra casual St. Thomas. And we’re not tourists, everyone in our party?is a local. Sure, the restaurant will argue that they don’t get to sell you dessert. That’s thinking small. Because here’s what happened after we saw the charge on the bill…
8 people now criticized the restaurant. Words like cheap, pompass and jerks were thrown around. This all after we had a great meal and service. What a way to end.
Ultimately one of us (another restaurant owner) asked the manager to remove the charge and they did. But not before the damage was done.
So think twice before you nickel and dime good customers because thinking small can loose more than a couple of bucks.
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December 8th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
I think you are unfair on this one. Cake cutting fees are like corking fees: Common and an unpleasant surprise if you do not ask ahead of time. The person putting this event together should have called ahead and asked about fees before they decided on that particular venue.
Dr. Wright
The Wright Place TV Show
http://www.wrightplacetv.com
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December 8th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Okay, so let’s say they called ahead and were told that there would be a fee of $5/person. And since there are only a handful of restaurants on St. Thomas that would charge for this we all decided to eat somewhere else that night to avoid the $40 fee. The bill was $800. Is it worth it to charge for the “cake cutting” fee on an island that’s incredibly casual?
Why is it the customers responsibility to call ahead? Couldn’t they have told us that there would be a fee when we gave them the cake?
I know one thing. I’m not sweating a $1000 deal when a contract is worth $100,000. But that’s me.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Totally agree with first comment. Someone should have called to ask. They may have made a deal that point, if the customer balked at the price. It was an unfair surprise to whip the cake out, in my opinion. Their response was actually generous and a good business gesture.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I understand why a business would want to discourage outside desserts. After all, that’s their business: serving food they prepare. Diners are asking the wait staff to take time to do something that doesn’t earn the restaurant any money. That seems a little unfair. But does $5 per person to serve a cake seem reasonable? That’s an incredible mark up.
How big of a problem is this? I mean, how many people bring in birthday cakes? Maybe if the restaurant offered a birthday cake service, it wouldn’t have this problem.
The restaurant definitely created a problem for itself.
December 24th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
This was a spectacular failure on the part of the diners. The dinner was good, the service was excellent. The bill reflected a superior experience. To create a disturbance and then elevate it to this level over $40 is inexcusable. Someone among this party of eight should have simply and quietly said “I’ll take care of this”. And if another in the party responded “No! Its the principal!”, the offer should have been firmly restated “No – I said I’ll take care of this”.
End of discussion. It was $40. It was a failure on the part of the patrons to let $40 jeapordize an otherwise pleasant and memorable experience.
December 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Failure on the customer huh? that’s an interesting approach.
December 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I’m with the Kahuna on this one.
First off, St Thomas is way too small to think that how you treat one individual customer won’t come back to have an effect on your entire island-wide reputation. Secondly anytime anybody charges any money for anything, it should be understood up-front before the transaction is half-completed.
That is just simple courtesy.
December 26th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
The fee should have been disclosed ahead of time, without any inquiry on your behalf. it also should have only been charged for the people who actually had the cake.
A few years ago, I brought a couple of my famous peanut butter-brownie chunk cheesecakes to a very large party at a bar/restaurant It was at the request of a friend who was celebrating her 5 years cancer free.
When I asked the bar if there was a problem with bringing in the cheesecakes they didn’t even blink and said ‘of course you can’ We spent several thousand over two nights, and everyone loved the venue and the way the staff treated us.
Had they said there’d be a fee, we’d probably have been fine with that as well, had it been presented as a surprise, they’d have caught hell.