Have you ever been out to eat and had no choice but to try to eat your soup with a fork? Worse, the soup came with nothing at all? Perhaps you’ve had an entire dessert by way of butter knife. Ice cream has never been more embarrassed. It’s a frustrating experience that can be traced back to a simple concept – Table marking.
In a sense, it’s as simple as it gets. You can’t eat soup without a spoon, snails demand a specific (and tiny!) fork, and there’s no cutting a chop with your bread knife.
It’s X marks the spot, except in this case, said knife / spoon / giant twirly straw marks the spot where corresponding dishes will land.
When a guest orders the chowder, the server delivers a soup spoon before New England’s finest arrives, allowing for seamless delivery minus the cringe-worthy “who has the soup?” auction, as well as providing the proper utensil for said soup to be enjoyed hot and at the ready. The system extends to steak-knife required dishes – steaks, chops, chicken, even a wedge salad, the occasional, very fancy, (and tiny!) shrimp fork, and also desserts.
There’s nothing more satisfying than spending an hour or two being taken care of by someone who pays attention to the details, and few things more frustrating than paying for the privilege of letting your meal get cold because silverware is nowhere to be found. True hospitality calls for seamless anticipation of a guest’s needs. Yet, marking a table is not inherent, and sadly, not even commonplace. I’ll be honest, I spent the first 6 months of my service career missing the connection between steak and steak knife. Dining is for eating, sure, but it’s also a special chance to be taken care of, and for the server, to be the shepherd of someone’s meal. Something as simple as a side plate for mussels can make or break the experience.
Committing to anticipation and empathetic service – i.e. “if I ordered a steak, what would I need?” – and adopting a very sincere desire for guests to enjoy their meal should do the trick.