Rande Gerber Quotes

Don't build a bar for yourself. Build it for your customers. It's all about them: the walls, the finishes, the textures, the food, the beverages, literally everything has to be for them.

You wouldn't have the same art on the walls at every restaurant or the same waiter uniforms. Neither should you have the same service style at every restaurant.

I'm constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don't train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.

You have to think of a restaurant as a series of impressions. But what makes my job so great is there's no one answer that's right for every restaurant.

When you open any kind of food service establishment, you do all this planning, but it's not until you've opened the door and people are inside that you learn what people want you to be to them.

As an outsider to and observer of the restaurant business, one of the things I most admire about it is the risks people are willing to take.

The customer is always right...even when they're wrong.

Grandpa didn't have any idea of customer service. But he wanted to make a living. Eventually, we saw it was not in our best interest to be arguing with customers.

Customer-centricity is unbelievably important.

Oh, the secret of a great club is all in the detail. When I walk into one of my bars, I have to have all my napkins a certain way and all the pourers in the bottles facing a certain way. It drives some people crazy, but I figure if I notice something's off, then other people will notice it, too.

In high school, I interned at my mother's restaurant and learned the small-business ropes. It was really instructive and taught me to switch contexts quickly, as I contributed to everything from managing the reception desk to building their website.

I want 100 percent of customers to like MyPillow and 100 percent of people to be taken care of. If you help someone, they tell two people, they tell 20 people, they tell 200 people, and the money takes care of itself.

Steve Jobs knows how to hold his hand out, to build beautiful products and make people pay for them.

If you go into business school and suggest firing a customer, they'll kick you out of the building. But it's so true in my experience. It allows you to identify the customers you really want to work with.

When our folks focus on exactly what is needed to succeed in the restaurants, they should be able to lead themselves to restaurateur level.

We decided that if we get the culture right, most of the stuff, like building a brand around delivering the very best customer service, will just take care of itself.

Always listen to your customers.

The only real way to differentiate yourself from the competition is through service.

Aside from hospitality and delicious food, our [restaurateurs'] job is to entertain people. Restaurants should make people feel special, excited and fulfilled.

The service at this airport restaurant is so bad I'm starting to panic that I'm a ghost.

Companies should always want to delight their customers.

I have no fans. You know what I got? Customers. And customers are your friends.

When you are making a decision about how best to serve your customers, your own experience is often a better guide than a more sophisticated analysis of the market.

Everything starts with the customer.

If a user is having a problem, it's our problem.