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Originally Posted by
jrr2ok
I recently re-entered the hospitality world after a 20+ year foray into more white collar work. My previous restaurant experience includes stints with some of the names/concepts regarded favorably on this thread.
No one like Bayless is going to bring a high end concept here because the talent pool is far too shallow. There's not enough quality prep and line cooks because anyone with the least bit of talent and passion gets promoted into a management role before they're ready. The dearth of talent is even worse for front of house management. So-called "managers" are trained to focus on the top (sales) and bottom (profit) lines without understanding the consistency of execution and hospitality that makes restaurants great. That execution and hospitality, ironically, gets reflected in all those numbers between the top and bottom lines on a P&L statement. So most of the people here who would do that work here can't (because they don't know how), and those who could do that work here don't (either because they move to higher paying markets with more visibility, or they opt into easier concepts that don't require as much work and oversight).
The bad or inconsistent service people receive in OKC isn't from bad servers per se; it's from poorly trained and unsupervised staff. That's a management issue. I will promise you that the best FOH staffs in town are the ones where there is a managerial presence on the floor most of the time, and a culture of accountability and pride. I can count that list on two hands easily, and likely on one.
EDIT/ADDENDUM: To tie this back to the original thread, I've spoken to both people who worked/are working at Perle Mesta and customers who have dined there. It has been, to be diplomatic, described in terms synonymous with "inconsistent", "without standards", "directionless", "unsupervised", "clueless", and perhaps most importantly, "not good".
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