I Worked In A Michelin Star Restaurant For A Day and Learned One Critical Thing
We both are boutique, we both care about our craft, and we're both obsessed with our customers... but they do it 100x better
I just spent a full day (over 15 hours) with a Michelin Star chef in his restaurant to learn the ins and outs of high end customer service and I learned A TON of things that we can share with our boutique gym clients. The day was magical is so many ways, and I’m eager to share that with you all!
The one thing I took away? While we say we are customer obsessed in fitness, we can’t hold a candle to how a restaurant does it… but we can surely learn from them and close the gap!
The second most amazing thing I learned? How to make dill infused oil ;)
The Backstory
Earlier this year, I was at our venture partner’s office for a CEO gathering. One segment of this, we were all discussing customer obsession - something very near to my heart.
I told the CEOs that I was a fan of “surprise and delight”. Pay attention to the details of your customers and take moments to surprise them with the gift of attention. This mindset creates moments like this one, where I sent a small gift personally to a PushPress client for their 5th anniversary.
As we went around the table talking about our experiences, a VC partner there told us how he had recently done a “day in the life” experience. This allowed him to spend a full day with Michelin Star chef David Yoshimura as he and his team prepared a full dinner course for their evening guests.
Immediately I asked him for details. Ironically he surprised and delighted me, by gifting the experience to me. Something I will pay forward, without a doubt.
There were at least 20 people working 15+ hours to prepare and serve a meal for a grand total of 18 people that night. 🤯
The Experience
In a nutshell, the experience looks like this:
Meet the chef at the local farmers market (9:30am) to shop for materials for the nights 12 courses.
Spend the day (11am - 3:30pm) preparing the night’s meal.
Attend 2 meetings (back of house meeting, all team meeting)
Enjoy a “family meal” at 3:30 - which the chefs cook with love for the entire team.
Setup for service (4pm - 5pm)
Doors open 5pm
Dish and serve first seated guest (5pm - 6pm)
I was gifted the full experience, which means it came with a reservation at their very popular sister bar (Bar Iris) at 6pm for my wife and myself and then a full dinner experience at 7pm.
In short, I spent from 9:30am until about midnight with this team - both as a chef and a customer - and I learned A LOT. My intention was to inspect everything I could to learn about how our client - boutique gyms - could benefit from any learnings.
My Learnings
Boutique is Boutique. Restaurant or gym, this is the same business under the hood. It’s about the craft. It’s about the experience. It’s about the results. It’s NOT about churning mass people through the doors or cutting corners.
The is a Business Built Around the Love of the Game. I could see plain as day, every chef, every front of house staff… every person in this restaurant were there for the passion. Similar to gyms, this meant more to everyone there than just making as much money as possible.
Craft and Detail Orientation. Similar to boutique gyms, there’s an insane about of craft and detail that’s put into the process. Like some gyms, there was a clear line of specialization in the business: The pastry chef, the cold chef, the saucier, the frier and the sauté chef each showed me in detail the precision they approached their line of work with. In the front of the house, each person meticulously studied each wine, the chefs note, asked detailed questions about the substitutions and how they might change the flavor profile, so they could explain to the guests.
Systems, systems, systems. A well run kitchen and front of house are dictated by well defined and followed systems. I think gyms have a lot to learn in this category. When chef said we would be fully prepped by 3:30 everyone understood it meant not a minute late. It was amazing to watch a whole kitchen break off into insane amount of organized chaos and witness the amount of prep that was done in a short amount of time. I noticed they even prepped their prep work, meaning when it was time to do a particular job, the chef pulled a set of trays that had knives and waste baskets meticulously pre-arranged at some point before which allowed him to get straight into the work.
They Designed the Whole Business around Operational Efficiency. This restaurant, known as a tasting restaurant was designed from the top down the streamline the customer experience. Every customer got the same 12 dishes, which meant every person who walked in the door kicked off a business flow in the kitchen that was highly designed and predictable. One chef was responsible for certain dishes and the order of dish delivery could be easily defined by the number of guests and the time they walked in the door. This process allowed the front of the house to easily manage the tables and guests and clearly dictate the timing of delivery of food to table.
Their Level of Customer Attention Puts Gyms To Shame. This will warrant it’s own post, and was the primary reason I personally wanted to come see what a day in the life of this restaurant was like. However, if you’ve seen The Bear - the level of detail and love they put into their customers did not disappoint. At the Front of the House meeting, we went over every guest coming in that night. We discussed all known information we had on each guest.
Were they left handed? Set the table accordingly.
Did they prefer still water last time? Don’t ask, but remind they of their previous preference and the liberty you took.
Why were they coming in? Anything we can mention?
Where were they from? What did they do? Are there any commonalities they have with anyone on staff?
The list is infinite and the amount of action they could take based on that information was equally infinite.
I think this might be the lowest hanging fruit where gyms can improve, as it requires the least amount of work relative to the amount of value it can provide. This starts with a mindset shift of being obsessed with the outcomes of your clients, and then realizing all of the places you can bake in the customer attention to your business processes. I will definitely write a long piece about this soon.
They Were Great At Selling Upsell / Value Opportunities. This part I noticed as a customer. Woven into the experience were high value upsell opportunities that turned this experience from a great one to an exceptional one (at a cost!). Wine pairings, optional Wagyu beef supplementation, sake pairing, a bar cart - all of these were some optional additions they had ready to make your experience everything you want it to be. I - for one - would never have thought “I need to add some wagyu to my 12 courses” but once they asked I felt like “I’m going all out, why not go ALL OUT” and took the upsell. (It was the right choice, the wagyu was amazing!)
Conclusion
In the end, I got exactly what I came looking for and a TON more.
Everything in the restaurant started with human passion, turned into process, which finally fed itself into a computer system of record. The software behind the restaurant enabled them to record and retain key pieces of customer information which leads to top of class customer service.
My biggest take aways were how similar the overall concept of boutique fitness and fine dining are, and how far behind fitness is in terms of the attention to customer detail and systems.
This - in the end - is a great thing! Seeing first hand where we can improve and then being able to ask questions to understand how they thought about things has opened my eyes and mind to where boutique fitness can grow - and how we can support that!