One of the most interesting things for a restaurant critic is to have a pleasant experience and then suddenly something unexpected happens. After traveling the US and Canada for about 5 years, I noticed that the service at some of the more respected chain restaurants was pretty uneven.

Which means that not only was quality control on one extreme or the other or customer service hot or cold, but consistency varied quite a bit from store to store or outlet to outlet. Sometimes the service was fantastic, sometimes boring and on rare occasions awful. Let me tell you some theories I developed after taking Restaurant News, Franchising Times and C-Store News for years, while traveling and seeing it all for myself.

The theories of retail food and the realities of what’s going on are light years away from Ray Kroc’s tagline for his first stores. First of all, one of the biggest problems is the lack of training for employees, local store management, and secret shopper programs as a whole. Another problem is with employees who don’t care or just don’t realize what they’re doing.

One of my recent experiences to be discussed along the topic of; Restaurant Critics’ Worst Case Scenario occurred at a Mexican Food Chain. The semi-fast food place was at closing time on a slow weeknight. Assuming that was the reason I was ahead of the shop cleaning.

An employee walked over to the trash area, a short distance from where we were sitting, and started pumping ammonia cleaner into the trash can area and had the open trash can between us and her, which was pretty smelly. She then doused the trash can with the toxic fumes and left them there to soak. Or by time of permanence to help in the cleaning.

Then they proceeded to spray the area or soak the inside of the box where the dumpster goes. This was getting pretty hard to breathe. Then seeing that the trash can had the dry cleaner in it, he put in more to loosen it up and then wiped it down with a rag, then hung the rag on the back of the seat closest to us.

Should I continue? This is just a problem we have, people just don’t get it. I certainly hope this article was of interest and thought provoking. The goal is simple; to help you in your quest to be the best in 2007. Thank you for reading my many articles on various topics that interest you.