Leading from the front

When the Oxo Tower restaurant and brasserie opened on London's South Bank in September 1996, it was the focus of intense media attention. This was a landmark building, the first Harvey Nichols (HN) restaurant outside the Knightsbridge store and a high-profile operation. The critics were out in force and public scrutiny was fierce - as was competition to get a table.

The launch should have been a runaway success for Dominic Ford, the man behind HN food operations, which then included the store's Fifth Floor Restaurant & Bar and the Foodmarket and Wine Shop. Instead, he had some major problems.

"Oxo was a huge opening and the reaction to it was extraordinary," Ford remembers. "At one point, the reservation desk was receiving 11,000 phone calls a day. It meant people were kept on hold for as long as 20 minutes and the perception was that their calls were being answered by one person. The reality was that we had a team of eight, working 15 hours a day."

Then there was the attitude of the staff. "With all the attention," Ford says, "they became arrogant, even those who had worked with us at the Fifth Floor. It was very strange. What happened was that the reviews weren't particularly good with regard to service."

Five years later, Oxo's service problems had long been solved. The restaurant and brasserie together were bringing in just under £12m in turnover a year, and business was doing well. But Ford had not forgotten those reviews. There was nothing much wrong with the service, although it still received the occasional complaint, but staff turnover was high at 80%, and a drain on finances. Then Ford saw something that made him determined to improve service once and for all.

"I was sitting in reception and saw four people arriving, all excited and enthusiastic about coming here for a meal," he says. "By the time they had got past reception, their smiles had gone and they were looking miserable. I knew we were doing something wrong."

To help deal with the problem, Ford brought in Sian Cox - then head of reservations for the Oxo brasserie - and made her customer services manager. A former history teacher, her passion for the restaurant trade had made her leave education after many years and launch a front of house career in the Fifth Floor restaurant in 1996. With a passion for service, she had been putting forward ideas for improved training and service for some time, and agreed something had to be done.

"I felt that, while we weren't providing poor service, we could provide a much better one," she says. "There had been lots of changes in terms of customer expectations, and service standards across the board were being criticised in the industry. This place has huge amounts of style and it's a fantastic place to eat, but it's not enough. We wanted to react to that."

Cox's new role developed quickly. First, she needed to liaise with staff and customers, to manage both restaurant reception teams and incorporate the reservations telephone team downstairs. Soon, however, she began looking at other styles of service and training that would benefit her staff. It was at this point that a colleague recommended she visit New York restaurateur Danny Meyer to study the style of hospitality at his restaurants, Union Square and Gramercy Tavern.

"There's a style of service in the USA which is very successful," she explains. "For a long time, people thought of it as the ‘have a nice day' variety, but that's not true, it's just very good. People are genuinely prepared to put themselves out, and it's not about being bound by rules and regulations. In the States, you are much less likely to hear, ‘Sorry, we can't do that'."

Meyer's story inspired Cox (see below). According to the critics, his legendary standards of service had slipped following the opening of Gramercy Tavern in 1994. Union Square was dropped from its number-one favourite restaurant position in the Zagat Guide as a result, and that devastated him. He decided to look at his entire operation and brought in business gurus to help. A new set of standards, training and appraisal methods got Union Square back to number one in the Zagat by 1997, where it has remained ever since.

Cox flew over to New York and spent 10 days with Meyer, observing his operation, training and appraisal methods. By the end of her stay, she was inspired. "It was like being converted to a religion," she enthuses. "I really noticed the aura of hospitality in both restaurants, and staff turnover was low because people had chosen to come and work for him."

Cox was first impressed by how Meyer involves his staff in the business. From the first day of their induction week, staff are told about how the business is going, about the restaurant being dropped from the Zagat Guide, and about average spend and covers that week. "It means the staff see the bigger picture and understand what's behind management decisions," Cox says. "It has always been thought in the UK that staff don't need to know how the business is doing, but I think they really appreciate and enjoy being involved."

Meyer and his managers also took time to listen and talk to their staff, much more than their British counterparts. "A large part of Meyer's and his managers' time was spent listening to staff," she explains. "It was very different from the British tradition, where managers often have tunnel vision about what they are doing and what needs to be done, and don't listen."

Cox also admired Meyer's involvement in the local communities around both restaurants, his frequent appraisal system, and his attitude to suppliers - which was simply: "Treat them with the greatest respect."

Buzzing with ideas, once back in London, Cox initiated changes immediately. The first to come into effect was to move the concept of "hospitality" to the head of the list in everything - training manuals, induction talks, communication between staff and managers, and appraisals. Oxo's entire front of house training programme was rewritten as a result. "I realised that hospitality is massively important and those skills are hugely valuable," she explains. "You can have a bad meal, but if the service is great you can still go home and say you had a good evening. If you have a good meal, but the service is indifferent, the evening is lost."

These days, staff are informed how the business is going, given the average spend and number of covers, and told of managerial decisions. Her managers now spend more time talking to staff, listening and discussing their progress. Listening times are built into the training programme, and a "buddy" system between managers and new members of staff has been set up. In addition, staff are taken out to meet suppliers, and kitchen staff get to experience a meal in the restaurant, while front of house staff come in for food and wine tastings. Daily briefings are less formal and shorter.

Handover shifts have been computerised, so a report of each shift can be read on a shared network by any manager. Problems, therefore, can be responded to immediately. Role-play sessions - where Cox plays the "customer from Hell" - are carried out regularly so managers can learn how to deal with real-life situations. "Dealing with high-profile, disgruntled customers can be very intimidating for someone in a new position of authority," Cox says, "so you need make sure they don't personalise it or become defensive. They have to realise that things do go wrong and when they do there is nothing wrong with saying, ‘I'm extremely sorry. How can I make it right?'."

Body language is deemed so important that all staff now attend lessons each week. "Did you know that only 7% of communication is about what you say?" asks Cox. "The rest is about what you do with your body. We do role-plays when we say one thing with words and the other with our body, and it's very valuable. Some people are naturals, while others have to learn it, but it stops people thinking that efficiency and knowledge are all service is about."

It has been a year since Cox returned from New York and, as far as Ford is concerned, it was worth the fare. This year, staff turnover is down to 50% and these days he receives more letters of compliment than complaint. Just as important, though, the Oxo Tower restaurants have a better working environment. He says: "We've got a different environment than we had before. We've managed to develop a different approach with the way managers treat their staff, the way the chef treats his brigade and the way they all treat the suppliers. Now it's a place where people want to work."

As for Cox, her passion for restaurant service remains unabated. She's still working on getting it right but, as far as she is concerned, Oxo Tower will realise its service ambitions. "Today," she says, "going out for a meal can be a lot more expensive than the theatre, so customers don't just want good food, fabulous service and a great view. They want a theatrical element, and staff have to feel they are on stage, all the time, not just flash a smile and make eye contact a few times. It's about the whole experience, and these things take time - but we're getting there."

Oxo Tower Restaurant and Brasserie

Oxo Tower Restaurant
Oxo Tower Wharf, Barge House Street, London SE1 9PH
Tel: 020 7803 3888

Restaurant manager: Jerome Le Bohec
Head chef: Dave Miney
Seats: 210
Covers per day: lunch, 100; dinner, 170
Average spend per head: lunch, £45; dinner, £80
Front of house staff: 23 per shift
Brigade: 14 per shift
Annual turnover, 2001: £5.1m
Projected turnover, 2002: £5.16m

Oxo Tower Brasserie

Brasserie manager: Caroline Dempsey
Head chef: Deon Jansen
Seats: 250
Covers per day: lunch, 160; dinner, 290
Average spend per head: lunch, £32; dinner, £48
Front of house staff: 32
Brigade: 20
Annual turnover, 2001: £6.87m
Projected turnover, 2002: £6.93m

The Danny Meyer story

Restaurateur Danny Meyer opened New York's Union Square Café in 1985 - and it was a critical success from the outset. It won the New York Times‘s three-star rating, is an eight-time winner of Wine Spectator‘s Award of Excellence and has been voted one of New York City's Top 10 restaurants by the Zagat survey seven times. In 1992, Meyer won the national James Beard Award for Excellence in Service and Hospitality.

In 1994, Meyer opened Gramercy Tavern, amid great expectation from the media and critics. But, after six months, it was slammed for its service, and soon after Union Square's service standards were also criticised. In 1995, the Union lost its Top 10 status in the Zagat Guide.

To deal with the crisis, Meyer brought in business gurus to review the situation. Within months, a new system of front of house training, communication between staff and managers, and a set of principles of service were drawn up. Then a full training and appraisal system was put in place.

By 1996, Union Square and Gramercy Tavern were respectively ranked second and seventh by Zagat, and Meyer was the first restaurateur to have two restaurants in the Zagat Top 10.