Hospitality & Customer Service

Co-hosts Stephenie Medina and Chef Adam discuss corporate dining, culinary services and food related topics. Episode 1 explores why hospitality is the most important aspect of our job and how great service and great food go hand-in-hand.

Episode 1 Podcast Transcription

Hello and welcome to our first episode of our new podcast Stirring the Pot, I am your co-host today Stephenie Medina I’m Communications Manager for Flagship Culinary Services and I’m Adam Weiner I’m the Director of Culinary Training and Development for Flagship Culinary Services and we’re here today and hopefully many days moving forward to keep the conversation going have some special guests perhaps about food corporate dining culinary services and everything in that realm.

Hospitality is Our Favorite Subject

Wonderful, so today I want to start talking about hospitality because to be honest hospitality is my favorite subject so let’s start with that first. This is true, yes we’ve been talking a lot about hospitality lately. Everything we do at Flagship Culinary Services relates to hospitality that’s why we’re here, that’s what we do and our job is to provide great service great food to everybody that comes walking in that door and our goal which we achieve is to give them better food and better service than what they could get if they went out for breakfast lunch or dinner around the campuses where they work.

Great yes and and how okay so there’s two folds right to this from from what I’ve been learning for me on this topic it is not only just food its service correct. If food and service have to go hand in hand if the food is really great and the front of the house is snarky for want of a better word to everybody who walks in the food won’t taste good. Got it yeah I mean I think, I think we can all remember a dining experience we’ve had that maybe wasn’t so great and versus one that was exceptional and and you know places will definitely be going back, so. It’s, it’s hand in hand you’ve got to give great food you’ve got to give great service to every single person, every single meal that you do. Yeah, I
like that alright okay.

Shifting Gears and Jumping on Tables

So this is shifting gears a little bit but I was walking in here to do this and somebody brought this to my attention that you’re doing something crazy in our new hire orientation about jumping on a table and something about how that relates to hospitality and I can’t quite put the two and two together.

I was afraid you’re gonna bring that up so a couple months ago I started talking and all the, the new hire orientations and I’m talking about hospitality and what I have everybody do is pull out their cell phone so I asked them to look up for me what the international symbol for hospitality is. And in fact why don’t you pause your cell phone or pause this, this podcast and look at your cell phone and look that up. Alright I’m looking. And what do you get? Pineapple!

Pineapple, International Symbol for Hospitality

The international symbol for hospitality for several hundred years has been the pineapple. And, so what I do is to show everybody how how I really believe in hospitality is I wear my pineapple socks to the new hire orientation. So well the first time I did this we were doing a video conference with the San Francisco office as well and they complained they couldn’t see my socks. So I literally lay down on one of the tables and waved my leg back and forth in front of the camera, and that’s become kind of an urban legend and now when I go on to speak to the group and somebody will say to me are you really going to jump on a table and wave your leg around? And the answer is yes because hospitality is that important. We’ve got to remember at everything we do and my pineapple socks is a great way for me to remember, that everything is about hospitality. Yes, that, that’s one way to definitely do hospitality from your head to your toes so commitment I like it.

The Hospitality Roadshow

Okay so, are you doing anything outside of a new orientation to promote hospitality and your passion behind it and it’s important here. Well we’re dealing going to do a hospitality roadshow so starting at the end of February and hopefully completing by the end of July I’m going to go to all of our sites and talk with everybody individually about the importance of hospitality. We’re going to hit up everybody so they know that it’s really quite important what we do. We’re going to do some practice examples and we’re just going to take a moment to appreciate how great we are what we do. We really do an amazing job of it. We’re going to give some appreciation for that and we’re going to just do a little practice and review and make hospitality our focus and everything.

I like that, and a roadshow so I’m picturing is it a Winnebago is it a convertible what what what kind of Roadshow are we talking. I’m talking with Guy Fieri to see if they’ll let me borrow his red is red Camaro and let’s see what we can do let’s get that done I’d be really fun to drive around the country in that.

Summarizing Hospitality in One Phrase

Yes, okay cool all right well let’s let’s wrap things up today with one final question I have for you and that would if you had to summarize hospitality in one phrase or a few words how would you do that. Well what I teach people is that the way to to give the best service the way to make the best food is to think about that you’re providing that service and that food to your grandparents and I want people to be able to say grandmother grandfather I made this dish for you and I’m proud of it. Grandmother grandfather welcome to my dining room I’m so proud of the service I could give you today and that’s what everybody should strive for would they be willing to give it to their grandparents and say I’m proud of it.

Okay I like that I didn’t know where you’re going with that at first but nice ending um yeah that definitely is is a good perspective and and food for thought. All right well I think that wraps up episode 1 so thank you everyone for listening and we hope you will tune in again for four more Stirring the Pot with myself and and chef Adam. Bye-bye!