Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Doom and Gloom in Restaurants

RESPONSE TO PETER MONRO’S ARTICLE WITHIN SUNDAY THE 1ST OF MARCH TITLED ‘AS CRISIS BITES, DINERS SWAP CAFÉ FOR COCOON.

Some people depend on creating controversy and/or doom and gloom. This makes articles such as Mr. Monro’s dangerous because there is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy and using emotive phrases like, ‘dining out is “splurging” or when referring to having a snack at a café, “to be out there flaunting our success” is inflammatory, wrong and inculcates the prophecy.
The quotes from Bernard Salt of KPMG are particularly awry. The way the article is written suggests he thinks that going out to a café or restaurant is seen as a retreat from core values and that we should be at home, sewing, knitting and preserving fruit.
Indeed, dining out with a friend or a bunch of friends does not signify you have lost your core values and if I have a choice between sewing, knitting and preserving fruit to enjoying dining out then I am sorry, but the knitted scarf will have to wait.
The whole point is that people should not create stories based on dodgy / misrepresented statistics or biased and/or ill informed opinion. I trust KPMG have no hospitality clients.
We own one of these horrible restaurant places wherein people purportedly lose their core values, fail in their fruit preserving duties and flaunt their success by having the audacity to enjoy a meal with a special friend. We offer a retreat for people where they can enter another world for a short time and be pampered and looked after whilst dining on smells, tastes and textures they would not normally get at home. Hopefully they leave happy, contented and have enjoyed an all too brief respite from their normal lives.
We think this is a good thing and so do our clients as we still enjoy a better than 90% occupancy.

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