We all know that arriving at a restaurant five minutes before closing and expecting service is not a good plan.  How about arriving at a fast-service restaurant almost an hour before closing?

In most cases you’d be fine unless you wanted to eat at ‘Pick Up Stix” in Carslbad, California.  On a recent visit, I walked up to their door a full 50 minutes before closing to find every chair in the restaurant (inside & out) picked up for the evening and the cashier closing out his drawer.

What happened? My guess is one of two things…  Either the manager really wanted to go home and took advantage of a slow night to get a head start. Or, the manager was thinking about his payroll budget and thought he was doing something good for the team.

Either way, his choice effectively closed the restaurant because other than take out, the place was totally inhospitable to customers.  The staff obviously didn’t want to serve anyone else that night – and my guess is they got their wish.

One fundamental discipline when you’re serving the public is that you never open late and you never close early.  And when you are open, you need to be ready to thrill customers every minute.

If you absolutely must get a head start on closing, do it in ways the customer can’t see.  In the case of this restaurant, they could have cleaned the kitchen and restrooms.  If you need to vacuum, how about doing the back half and leave the front half for after closing?

If you are consistently slow in your late hours, then offically change your hours to close an hour earlier – that would be better than staying open and sending a bad vibe.

Store hours are a service commitment.  Honor them!

Marc Bluestone