Simple Way to Lose Customers

One dumb move and you’ve lost a future customer for good

Yeah, now that you mention it I guess I have heard something buzzing in the background about The Holidays. The lines stretching down the block from every City MD location tipped me off that most people were revving up to do some serious Celebrating. But, me, I pay very little attention to what “most people” are doing especially this time of year.

All of which explains why last Thursday — aka Thanksgiving — AleXander and I were wandering the Village and indulging in a couple of slices of The Best Pizza in New York City, Joe’s (argue if you want, but it’s the truth).

One of the pleasures of the city is the way it empties out on holidays, but even by those standards, the city was close to comatose last Thursday. However, another big plus about a city the size of New York is that even when there’s a pandemic on and half the city has fled to Grandma’s and the other half is dozing in front of some dumb football game (is that still a thing? I can’t keep track), you can count on some places being open for business. Places like Joe’s.

We don’t get down to the Village or really anyplace that requires time on public transportation very often these days. Too many ignoramuses without masks and who needs the aggravation?

But there we were, enjoying our pizza in Father Demo Square, watching the lazy, old world wander by. It was very enjoyable, too enjoyable to just turn around and head home, so we decided to walk south as far as we felt like walking and then take the subway home.

Not that far into the walk, I realized I was going to need a bathroom (we’re getting to the point of this whole thing soon, I promise). Abandoning Sixth Ave, we plunged into the maze south of Houston with the express mission to find a bathroom. If you’ve ever been to New York or if you live here, you already know that calling this a mission is accurate. In London, you can pay to use nice clean public bathrooms, and even in Venice, I was able to put a coin into the box and go warm up in a church and use their restroom. Not in New York, bub.

That’s seldom been an issue, however, for a polite older lady such as myself. Generally, whoever’s manning the door of any cafes, bistros, or even fancy restaurants is ok letting us polite older types use their facilities.

Curiously, that wasn’t the case Thursday evening. I was genuinely surprised when first one and then another host sadly shook their head. Restrooms are for customers only. I get it that we’re in an unusual situation here these days and all, but I can tell you this: I will not ever bother stopping in either of these places to dine in the future. Call me spiteful (with reason), but making your restrooms available — within reason — to people who aren’t currently customers is simply good business sense.

Walk-in Traffic and its kissing cousin, Word of Mouth, are the lifeblood of small businesses in a city like New York, especially Manhattan, where people actually walk. When you have the astute business sense to allow people simply walking by to use your establishment’s facilities, you’re welcoming a potential future customer. That person who was previously just walking past your place now is seeing the decor, the lighting, the food, the friendly — or not — staff. Your restaurant is making an impression and some of those people will be back to spend money and maybe tell their friends about the place.

The person you refuse — that would be me — is guaranteed to walk past your place and never put a dollar into your register. And me, being spiteful and all, will certainly let friends know to avoid your sad, loser restaurant.

The lovely host at San Carlo Osteria Piemonte — a markedly more upscale place than the others that refused me — was gracious and welcomed me to use their girl-clean restroom. We keep a joint account where we squirrel away funds for fancy dinners we enjoy having every month or so and now we know where we’ll be making our next reservations. Everything about San Carlo made a positive impression from the smiling host to the cleanliness and beautiful decor. I expect we’ll have a really fabulous meal there.

We’ll let you know.

© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved.