I've worked in the food service biz (restaurants) and I've been a 'regular' at a few places, most memorable was Shaw's Truckstop in East Lansing, MI. Man Shaws breakfast was outstanding. A bike shop tradition. We'd meet at Shaws pretty much every Saturday before the shop opened. Yeah. We ate food instead of going for a saturday morning ride. God damn good fucking breakfast too. The best hashbrowns, really good sausage patties. And a bottomless cup of pretty decent coffee.
And they knew who we were. not really our names, we all paid cash. Everyone paid cash. it was packed. Always packed, and nearly always with the same people.
You got to the point of saying hey to those around, that was the best part of being a regular. Familiarity. The gals who owned the place knew what we were going to order but always asked, sometimes we changed it up but they always asked, never told us what we were getting. They way it should be.
My grandfather was a regular at a restaurant i worked at one summer. It was where he ate on Wednesday night IIRC and sometimes Sunday night. Everyone knew him. But i have no idea if he had to order, if he ordered the same thing every time. He had a handful of other restaurants he dined at. He didn't like cooking dinner for himself much. So he ate out. And in a small town, with no big chain corporate restaurants, well, you became a regular. Part of how it works. But i'm sure he would be not so happy to have a computer tracking his habits. If the staff knew his birthday and remembered it or wrote it down, that's something nice, if he was being tracked by a computer? well i really don't know how he would feel about it.
I love the ending of the piece linked above:
Sure, but quantifying loyalty?
"I hear you," said Ron Blum, a professor at the Hospitality College of Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I. "Every restaurant wants regulars, but staff can get too comfortable. You're just saying, ‘Hey, I deserve as much attention as anyone. … I'm not to be taken for granted.'"
Exactly.
"We have a mailman named Pete who comes by three days a week for lunch," said Travis McMaster, manager of Poogan's Porch restaurant in Charleston, S.C. "He always orders the same thing, but we tell him the special anyway. He doesn't need a menu, but we give him one. I don't like when restaurants suggest a sense of obligation from customers. I don't want ours to feel pressured. No, I do hear what you're saying."
Thank you.
But this understanding of boundaries, of where familiarity ends and marketing begins, is not just a Southern hospitality thing. I think. Alan Dell is co-owner of Katz's Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He said, "New Yorkers will be quick to tell you if you assume too much." He said regulars are cataloged "in my brain only." That said, "Katz's has been here 120 years. So we have regulars. I think all this about feeling smothered is your mind. Who cares what they expect? In the mood for the same thing? Order it already!"
That's what Shaws was like. It was a tradition. And man i could go for my 'usual' right now, two eggs over medium, hashbrowns, sausage patty, wheat toast and coffee.
When's lunch.
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