I run a restaurant, and we always do this!
My restaurant is towards the cheap and cheerful end of the restaurant scale, and we're often chock-a-block full. I know that when I'm a customer, the "is everything alright with your meal" question can be annoying, intrusive or downright uncomfortable, but it is important! It gives customers a chance to order more drinks, ask for more bread, make any comments good or bad on the food etc. The whole point of my job is to provide good food and good service, and asking customers is a good way to check if you're doing things right!

It's hard to give every table your full attention when we're full - I'm sure you've all experienced the annoying task of trying to catch a busy waiter's eye, but we ALWAYS make sure each table is asked at some point if everything is OK, because sometimes it isn't!

It is unfortunately also true that customers will complain that something was wrong with their meal when it comes to paying the bill, which is very frustrating, cos they were given the chance to pipe up during their meal! We basically have a policy that if a customer has a problem with the food/service, they decide how it's put right, whether it's a replacement meal, free drinks, a discount or a free meal! In the long run it more than pays off to have your customers leaving happy and feeling like they had good service than wringing an extra few quid out of them quibbling over their problem. If the problem's resolved to their satisfaction there's much more chance they'll come back again!

Oh dear, I seem to have waffled off on a tangent...
(Tum-ti-tum, Fri 28 May 2010, 20:11, 2 replies)

^ Good answer.
Mystery solved!
(danniekavanagh did nothing constructive on, Fri 28 May 2010, 20:15, closed)

Agreed
good answer, makes sense.
(Moominator missing the good stuff cos' the swear filter is on, Sat 29 May 2010, 8:01, closed)