The Spy Who Grubbed Me
Mystery shopper Marc Kravitz keeps Philly's servers on point.
Kris Chau |
For most of us, recognizing categorically horrible restaurant service is as easy as identifying sunburn — you know it when you see it. For Marc Kravitz's purposes, however, it's the details that truly matter — he's a mystery shopper.
Establishments hire covert diners from his Philly-based company, I-Spy (ispy4u.net), to critique their restaurants according to an exhaustive battery of criteria that considers everything from telephone manner and eye contact to the process used to crumb a table. Blindly feared by servers the same way your gram fears The Reckoning, Kravitz absorbs everything he sees, hears, tastes and sometimes even smells, all in the context of the two pillars of the service industry: that guests are being treated right, and that staffers are taking the proper steps to maximize the amount of money said guests end up dropping during their visit.
Kravitz, a former food columnist for City Paper and Philadelphia Style who started off by providing industry friends with gratis reports, founded I-Spy in 2002. Today, his clients include Starr Restaurant Organization, Garces Restaurant Group and Tria. Feedback from Kravitz and his team of around 20 Philly-based "shoppers" helps restaurateurs shape and maintain service standards. (Most I-Spy shoppers, Kravitz says, are full-time professionals with a good memory and a penchant for writing — lawyers, academics, etc.)
Between his two Center City locations, Tria owner Jon Myerow brings in I-Spy shoppers eight times a year. Melissa Scully, director of restaurant operations for chef Jose Garces, says she'll have I-Spy visit a new restaurant as many as four times in its first three months of business. Though these discreet dinner guests do pay attention to the quality of the food — a rundown of ordered dishes is accompanied by abbreviated judgments (G for "good," VG for "very good," EX for "excellent") — what I-Spy's shoppers do is in no way similar to a traditional restaurant review. Reports feature a meticulous server rating out of 100, a chart mapping the server's compliance with protocol and a subjective summary of the experience as a whole. Restaurants use the feedback to shape training, tweak approach, and, in extreme cases, ax the incompetent, indifferent or inept.
I wanted to see how it worked. So I met Kravitz at a Rittenhouse-area restaurant, the name of which we won't divulge here.
Kravitz (who’ll remain undescribed for the purposes of this article) and I step in and are warmly greeted by a well-coiffed gentleman standing behind the bar. (We later learn that he’s the owner.) He takes our jackets and lays them on a chair adjacent to our table, seats us and immediately gets menus and a wine list into our hands.
Another server pops by to ask for our water preference — sparkling, still or iced. A good way to do it, Kravitz explains: Start with the most expensive option and then work your way down to the complimentary. This ups the probability they'll order the good stuff. Both gentlemen make it clear that they would love to answer any questions, and promise to return promptly for a drink order.
Pretty flawless so far, right?
Not quite. While the owner dutifully polishes stemware behind the bar, Kravitz softly points out that the wine glass resting in front of him is dirty.
Details.
Wine recommendations from the owner are confident and knowledgeable, but there’s some sort of strange miscommunication surrounding an offer to share a single glass with each other. (We politely decline.) Our menu questions ("We're trying to decide between the calamari and the tuna tartare ... ") are met with funny, rhapsodic responses that don’t come off obnoxious. The food is excellent, but no one comes by our table to ask us if everything is kosher until after we've cleaned our plates — at this point, it's completely irrelevant, Kravitz explains. (The industry standard? Return to see if food is satisfactory no more than 2 minutes after it hits the table.)
After we finish our last savory course, dessert menus materialize without us even asking. We end up tacking on a chocolate mousse, a dessert wine and a bit of scotch. Total addition to our promptly delivered bill: $36.50. Kravitz digs. Major points in the maximizing-the-check department.
Though the servers weren't flawless, they impressed Kravitz with their genuine gratitude. "They seemed like they were really putting their heart into it," he would later tell me. "These guys were passionate."
Kravitz has no shortage of quality assurance horror stories. There's the time a bartender rang up multiple rounds of free drinks for his eight friends while Kravitz sat in the middle, watching. The time another barkeep ordered food for herself and told Kravitz to pretend it was his so she wouldn't get in trouble with her manager. Kravitz will call clients immediately if he witnesses such incidents.
Sure, it's his duty to record the facts as he sees them — but does he ever feel empathy for the people whose jobs he's anonymously dissecting, crappy service or not?
"I have never worked in the restaurant industry, and that’s strictly how I go about my company," says Kravitz. "You look at any given time at a restaurant — who's eating there? ... Ninety-nine percent of the people are laymen, not 'in the business.' This is done through the eyes of the guest."
Also In This Week's Food Section
Over a dreamland
there's the sound
of a delicate
sadness, and over
the way there's
a light that
invites you to
discover the sun.
Francesco Sinibaldi
Alas, this is not a perfect world. It is a world where diners in expensive Center City restaurants are routinely abused and ignored by selfish, bullying servers.
As we all know, restaurant servers truly live the Life of Riley: job security, lavish perks, healthy romantic lives and dental care we poor, pathetic diners can only envy.
You think they’d at least be grateful for their lives of undeserved privilege, right? Far from it! Instead they condemn us to HALF-EMPTY water glasses, half-hearted table crumbing, and MINUTES spent looking for them while they no doubt cackle in some back room, planning to salve their consciences later on with boozy revelry!
And how do we respond? How do we defend ourselves? With silence! As is well known, Center City restaurant goers are amongst the most timid and conciliatory in the world.
Only now, after so many years of abuse and humiliation, we finally have a hero, an advocate. Thank god for Marc Kravitz!
Cloaked as a mere ordinary patron, with only his ragtag band of shoppers and a bunch of wealthy restaurant owners to aid him, (oh, and apparently the City Paper too), Kravitz daily risks life and limb to protect us all from the scourge of sub-par table service. And he does it the way that only someone who has never in his life had to wait tables can. Thank you Marc Kravitz. And thank you City Paper! If only your article had contained a photograph of our fearless leader. Oh well, I’m sure we’ll find one soon enough!
This article is a joke; its content sheds light on a pitiful and embarrassing aspect of life in our "great restaurant city."
As we're busy delving into the mysterious and exciting world of secret shoppers, sorta-critics and short-tempered day-job fantasy foodies, let's take a short break to make something clear: the server, "good" or "bad," isn't paid* by the establishment. That's right. You, the diner, are being guilted into doing so after the services in question have been rendered. You, a rational actor, could very well walk right out after paying the total as stated on your bill. Hey, why wouldn't you?
Oh, but you wouldn't. That would be wrong.... but not as wrong as entrusting the reputation of one's business to hard-working people whom one doesn't pay.
You see, tipping amounts to little more than a good nickel-and-diming for the diner on the way out the door, not to mention an insult to the server. What a way to end a meal! And yet, it happens everywhere all the time.
If restaurant owners are concerned enough with service to hire "strangers" (which there are none of in Philadelphia; Juliet Wayne makes a great point of that upthread) to monitor it, why not provide a living wage for the people who do the work? Just roll it into the price. No one cares. Look closely at the menu and the room; maybe it's already there!
Servers are the eyes, ears and hands of the restaurant. I don't understand why operators are so unconcerned with their businesses' reputations that they would shirk the responsibility of paying the people who interact directly with their sources of revenue properly.
The greats are already doing it. Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter, to name a few. Smaller restaurants all over the country are beginning to follow suit.
It comes down to this. Expectation without incentive = bad business. If that's how you roll, you shouldn't need a secret shopper to figure out that you're doing something wrong.
Only when this direct contradiction to the restaurant business' claim on "hospitality" is remedied can we begin to have an honest conversation about service.
*For the uninitiated, servers receive an hourly wage of $2.83, which, in an establishment the caliber of the organizations mentioned in the original article, is enough to cover the local, state and federal taxes on their reported tips. I am happy to discuss the issue of tipping and taxes further; to do so in this context would distract.
Do some servers suck? Of course. Are some great? yes. Financially, some barely make it by. Others can work four nights a week and easily pull between 800-1000 cash a week. But here is the bottom line: Servers, as in all other professions in the world, are not always perfect.
People have unbelievable expectations when it comes to restaurants. Service is expected to always be perfect (which of course is impossible, because everyone wants something different). Some tables want to hear a 20 minute spiel on every dish we offer. Some want to talk business and want unobtrusiveness. It's impossible to please everyone.
Just think about yourself. Are you always 100% at your job? Has a doctor ever been short with you? Has the contractor ever been late to his job? Has a cop ever been an ass to you? What I'm saying is to not be so pretentious about it. Seek out places that have consistent good service. But don't expect anywhere to be perfect, every time.
( including a Master's ) and is a director for a company herself
( so you know she can read and follow directions ), worked for him briefly, and he not only gave her ambiguous and contradictory instructions for the procedure ( which I read myself ), he was extremely condescending, and openly rude when she asked for clarification. He also seems to be lacking in basic common sense; he often holds training sessions in loud sports bars where you can't hear anything said by someone sitting 2 seats away. After she withdrew from the 'job' ( the term barely applies; she was technically a contractor ) via a brief, polite e-mail, he continued to be childish and rude, insulting her even after the fact. It's obvious why this man can't work in an environment where face-to-face interaction with other adults is important. Given the low net pay for this type of work, his kind of unprofessional ignorance isn't worth it.