did they think we were restaurant critics or something?

April 29, 2013 7:00 AM

I normally only get free stuff at restaurants when they've messed something up, so I am wondering why this restaurant was particularly hospitable to me and my date.

I had dinner at a restaurant in nyc on a weeknight on a date(just the two of us) and we were seated right away, the food came pretty quickly, was good, there were no problems at all.

At the end we had dessert and they brought us a giant fruit platter "on the house" and then a couple of digestifs as well.

I'm not complaining, but the only time a restaurant has done something like that in the past is when they made some kind of blunder and that didn't happen here, to my knowledge anyway. The waitress just brought them to us.

Then when we walked out of the restaurant the hostess came up to me to invite me to their weekly brunch and gave me a brochure and a couple of other bartenders and servers were telling us to have a good night. We weren't the only ones in the restaurant at all and I had picked this place because it was popular on yelp and had great reviews, so I don't think they were desperate for people to like them.

So my date was joking that they thought we were from zagat...did they? Or were they just being nice? Why?

posted by fromageball to Food & Drink (16 answers total)

They may have great reviews but not a lot of customers. I know you say that you weren't the only ones there, but it is still possible they aren't getting a really steady flow of paying customers. I suspect they are looking to drum up additional business, as well as hopefully get some good word-of-mouth advertising done as well.
posted by PuppetMcSockerson at 7:04 AM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Totally possible that the fruit platter on the house was an extra. Given the other invitation, I'd think not.

They may just be going above and beyond to ensure that you return and recommend to others. It's a win-win. You continue to get exceptional service, and the restaurant gets more business.
posted by Giggilituffin at 7:06 AM on April 29, 2013 [5 favorites]

yeah, I've actually had this happen a lot in NYC. They're trying to get a bit of word of mouth business.
posted by sweetkid at 7:09 AM on April 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Best answer: We used to do this every once in a while at the restaurants I waitressed at a few years ago. The owner/manager would often decide to send some free digestifs to random people, to give them a good impression of the restaurant, and feel special and want to come back. Often times, the digestifs would go to a couple or a person eating alone, mostly when the restaurant was quiet, but not always. Sometimes, we'd also give freebies to people that were mistake orders (mistakes that never went to another table)... for example, barmaid misunderstood, poured out two glasses of porto, but the server actually asked for something else. The drinks are already poured, why not give them to another table for free! It's good service and makes people feel good.

They're hoping you'll leave the restaurant and tell all your friends how well you were treated. Free word of mouth advertising :)
posted by ohmy at 7:09 AM on April 29, 2013 [10 favorites]

Perhaps this is how the place became popular on Yelp and got good reviews?
posted by emilyw at 7:10 AM on April 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Agreed with your date: they thought you might be restaurant reviewers. Remember, the majority of reviewers try very hard to be incognito, but sometimes restaurants get (often-poor-quality) photos of those reviewers: maybe, just maybe, you or your date looked like you might match one of those pictures.
posted by easily confused at 7:13 AM on April 29, 2013

"restaurant reviewer" is far less likely than just offering you extra good service in an effort to drum up a bit more business. It happens all the time.
posted by sweetkid at 7:31 AM on April 29, 2013 [4 favorites]

Best answer: A while ago my wife and I plus another couple went out for dinner during "restaurant week" here in Chicago (restaurants have specials to bring in customers in early February). We didn't get any freebies during the meal, but at the chef escorted our meals to the table and spoke with us for a moment, and at the end of our meal the chef came back and offered us a tour of the kitchen, with a special look at the charcuterie locker, which smelled amazing. I don't think we were seen as potential restaurant critics, but as members of a demographic the restaurant was targeting for repeat business and word of mouth potential.
posted by borkencode at 7:49 AM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Also, at this point Yelp reviews written by regular people are more powerful than restaurant critic reviews, so it doesn't even really pay for them to keep eagle eyes ready for the "critics" instead of doing their best to satisfy and please the hoi polloi.
posted by sweetkid at 7:55 AM on April 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Depending on the type of restaurant it was, it could be cultural. Greek restaurants (in Greece) almost always bring free fruit or dessert. So it could be something like that.
posted by mrfuga0 at 7:59 AM on April 29, 2013

I was going to say, our neighborhood Greek place showers us with yummy stuff, fruit platters being one, cheesy feta bites, a dessert, you name it.

It started long before we were regulars there, but continues to this day.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 8:36 AM on April 29, 2013

My family's worked in restaurants for years. Often times it's simply because you're the demographic they'd like to come back, or most likely it's a quiet night and they have a dessert or platter they have to use up or throw out at the end of service so why not give it to a customer.

I know a restaurant manager that had a great sense of when people where out for a special occasion and he will often times send a special dessert or drink to make their night more special. A lot of people in the hospitality industry actually like being hospitable.

If you want to repay the favour, leave a good review on yelp or spread the word amongst your friends.
posted by wwax at 8:43 AM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Another possibility is that they suspected you were an internal reviewer if the place was corporate. I forget the name of the outfit, but they send in anonymous reviewers to corporate-type restaurants and write up a review. If anything goes wrong people could easily lose jobs over the review. Corporate restaurant managers are horrified by these people, but they tend to get at least a heads up that one might be coming, so everyone is supposed to be on their A-game as well as notify managers that a table is a suspected reviewer. Depending on your behavior, you might have fit the profile for a reviewer.
posted by efalk at 10:06 AM on April 29, 2013

I'm signed up with a secret shopping service and periodically do internal reviews of a local restaurant chain. It's not fancy, I basically get comped a free lunch or dinner in exchange for 15 minutes of writeup.

Doing the writeup means I need to have detailed notes: What were the names/descriptions of the servers? How long did it take for the food to arrive? How many people in the dining room? When did I leave? What specials were mentioned? etc, etc, etc.

What used to be the hardest part of the job was taking notes without giving yourself away. But smartphones have changed that. I can be marking times with the stopwatch and jotting down names/observations and I look like another schmoe checking Twitter 10 times during the meal.

So, long story short, were you checking your phones a lot during the meal? Maybe they thought you were taking notes.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:15 AM on April 29, 2013

So my date was joking that they thought we were from zagat...did they?

I think you missed your date's joke. You were from Zagat, which crowd-sources its reviews to the dining public. Here are the instructions for submitting your review.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:30 PM on April 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

I've reviewed restaurants. Buttering you up at the end of the meal is not going to work if the whole meal was sub-par. If they suspect you're a reviewer, the restaurant will make sure that you get the choicest cut of whatever you order and that your service from start to finish is perfect. Extra free stuff is going to be showing off the best of their menu, like a complimentary app of something that they're most proud of.

An aperitif or extra dessert is usually either turning a mistake into a kindness, or a hospitable act to garner good word-of-mouth. It's a really, really common example of the latter. I thought I was so special the first time I got an aperitif on the house at a restaurant I frequented, until I overheard enough to realize that it was extended to pretty much everyone who wasn't a jerk.
posted by desuetude at 10:50 PM on April 29, 2013