We’ve returned from Las Vegas after attending the 2026 Bar & Restaurant Expo, at which Doug Radkey hosted an impactful education session.
Interestingly enough, his session addressed the top eight reasons for the failure rate in hospitality.
On our second evening we had a memorable restaurant experience. Unfortunately, it isn’t memorable because it was so amazing.
There’s something particularly frustrating (if not infuriating) about receiving bad service from a restaurant as a hospitality professional attending an industry trade show event at the host hotel.
Things go wrong, standards slip, and teams need to recover; perfection is an illusion. We’ve all been there, on the service side and the guest side. And we’ve all experienced smooth recoveries on both sides.
Having to recover due to a service drift isn’t the end of the world. In fact, I firmly believe recovery opportunities are valuable coaching moments that can improve the overall operation.
However, when multiple issues arise and zero recovery ever takes place, that’s a problem. There’s just something, as I’ve said, that really makes service failure stand out when one has just left a hospitality industry event during which one has connected with operators, educators, and consultants, walked a few hundred feet down a casino corridor, chosen a restaurant, and received poor service.
The irony of experiencing this hours after presenting a session on the failure rate in hospitality was not lost on us.
Again, these are learning opportunities. So, I’m going to break down the service failure through three lenses.
All I wanted was a salad. Not this salad (I never got to see it), but one similar.
Let’s take a look at what went sideways from the guest perspective, coaching opportunity perspective, and strategist perspective.
The Service Failure
Everything started off well. The host stand was helmed by friendly employees. Servers looked like they were on their game.
The restaurant wasn’t slammed but it wasn’t dead; there were several tables available, and most seats at the bar were empty. Great—we asked to sit at the bar, taking a corner seat on the opposite side of the service well.
From that seat, the server stations, corridor to the kitchen, main dining room area, and service bar were in view.
We ordered a cocktail and a beer from the bartender, placed our food orders…and that was the final interaction we had with the bar team until we were ready to pay our bill.
It may seem a bit odd, but as much as I wanted the quesabirria I had ordered, I was really looking forward to the Caesar salad. After a couple of days on the Strip, a morning and afternoon at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and a couple of hours at the Welcome Kickoff Party, something light and refreshing seemed like a great idea.
Unfortunately, that salad never came. Neither did the bartender after serving the single rounds of drinks we managed to order. There was no check-back on the drinks, nor any of the dishes that were dropped off by runners. In fact, the empty glasses were never removed, and the empty plates just sat in front of us, stacking up. And no, the bar wasn’t slammed; we were two of the half-dozen or so guests seated there.
The bartender seemed far more interested in preparing the bar for a close that was about two hours away. Worse, the manager on duty, often posted up at the service well, corrected none of the failure they could clearly see. They were busy expoing drinks, glancing at our empty glasses and plates, and not engaging with us or the bar team. [Note: Busy doesn’t indicate that you’re getting anything done or being efficient. In fact, it can indicate the opposite.]
The Guest Perspective
When a guest receives poor service, they’re not focusing solely on an item they didn’t receive. That’s a huge part of it, of course, but not the whole story.
Their frustration often goes beyond “I didn’t get one of my items.”
Depending on the person, they’ll likely feel a range of emotions and internalize what can be perceived as a personal slight.
Have they done something to start their visit on the wrong foot? Do they look like they don’t belong, somehow? Does the staff not like them for some reason?
Failing to deliver one item, refusing to check back with a guest, and ignoring their attempts to get your attention can easily make a guest feel alienated, irrelevant, and insignificant.
Hospitality is about making everyone feel welcome, relevant, and valued; the focus is on providing serving others. The concept of hospitality is betrayed when we do or say anything that tells a guest they don’t matter, or that they’re not “good enough” to get great service.
I felt none of that, but I’m also in hospitality; I don’t take it personally. I was busy attempting to discover the root cause of the failure and waiting for a recovery that wouldn’t come, beyond the salad that never appeared being taken off the bill at the end of our meal (after I was finally able to address it).
Guests who don’t work in hospitality, on the other hand, may take entirely avoidable service failures personally, leave feeling very much the opposite of welcome, and encourage others to never visit the offending restaurant.
The Coach Perspective
When a person in a leadership role notices standards slipping, the knee-jerk reaction is often to intervene immediately and solve the problem for their team. That’s entirely understandable, particularly when that leader plans to address the drift from standards at the next pre-shift meeting (and follows through on that plan).
That said, some service issues provide an excellent opportunity for leaders to develop a powerful and valuable skill: coaching.
Just as there are differences between strategists, consultants, and coaches, there are notable differences between managing and coaching.
Managers use direct, one-way communication; they tell the people who report to them what to do. When it comes to standards drifting, they tend to solve the problem for the team. (Good and great managers also take responsibility for the drift.)
Coaches use two-way communication to guide an individual to find the solution on their own. In that way, they develop people, empower them, and are often excellent mentors.
Ideally, a hospitality team’s leaders are managers and coaches, knowing when to leverage the strengths of both roles.
Had the MoD at the restaurant noticed our empty glasses, which we had slid across to the edge of the bar next to our empty plates, he may have pulled the bartender aside for a moment. In a coaching role, he could have asked a simple question: “What’s going on with Seats 1 and 2?” or “What do you see at 1 and 2?”
Either question would have told the bartender the MoD had spotted an issue and expects them to figure out what it is. That would also have told the bartender they need to reset and focus on guest service. Such a simple coaching move can help build a sharper, more engaged team.
Coaching redirects work for every role in the house, and they’re more powerful than many operators and their leaders may realize.
The Strategist Perspective
I’m more disappointed in the failure of the MoD to intervene than I am the bartender. And the fact that the bartender working service well didn’t intervene while the MoD was expoing drinks tells me a lot about the restaurant’s culture.
The service well bartender absolutely noticed our empty glasses and plates, and turned away when eye contact was made. If they saw me try to get their attention, they felt comfortable ignoring me by stepping to the other side of the bar, breaking sight line via the center back bar.
I’m not going to snap my fingers or raise my voice to get a bartender or server’s attention; the former is horrific, and the latter isn’t a pleasant guest experience. If my direct “excuse me” is ignored a few times, I’m going to enter assessment mode, settle in, and observe how the team works, with a focus on the venue’s leadership.
The service bartender also didn’t feel the need to say something to their peer who was supposed to be serving guests, or felt uncomfortable doing so. And the bartender who had (barely) served us was clearly quite comfortable ignoring two guests in front of the MoD, who could also see that we were not having a great experience.
Instead, when not rushing to the back of house, that bartender busied themselves with cleaning and straightening behind the bar. Interestingly, none of that busy work involved our section of the bar.
As the person in a leadership position, I place the responsibility for service failure entirely on the MoD. If they were the GM, the restaurant is flying a flock of red flags. If the issue is this one manager, the rot still runs deep; the team has learned that standards can drift when that manager is running the show.
Going deeper, that means the damage is done. If standards drift when one manager is on, poor habits don’t just disappear when a different manager is overseeing the restaurant. Instead, some team members (at least two that I can think of at this restaurant) learn how to hide their bad habits depending on which manager is working their shift. The culture needs to be addressed, starting with considering and reflecting on values, deciding on the non-negotiables, documenting SOPs clearly, and training on them, starting with the leadership team.
This restaurant team has likely learned that standards where they work are negotiable, which means they’re not standards at all. If they’re not standards, they’re just recommendations. And if what’s expected isn’t enforced as a true standard, the operation isn’t run by systems, it’s plagued by inconsistencies.
None of that leads to success.
Image: Raphael Nogueira via Unsplash
Related Reading
- The Public Has Spoken: How Guests View Bars and Restaurants
- The Most Expensive Phrase in Hospitality
- Three Lies Hospitality Operators Need to Stop Telling Themselves
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