While recently on a rather active holiday with family and friends we visited a pub for a well deserved pint.

Our lunch was already cooking, but after a strenuous morning we fancied a quick pint of beer. While we drank someone suggested a bowl of chips and it was quickly determined that between the six of us, three bowls of chips would be quite nice yet not spoil lunch, we were after all on quite an active holiday!

So off I went to the bar where for the first time in my life they refused to serve me! Yes, I could have another beer, but no, I couldn’t have any chips! “But you have chips on the menu don’t you?” I asked, “Yes but you can only order them with a meal” the bar lady replied. “But our meal is already in the oven, we’d just like some chips please”, “No, not unless you buy a full meal”.

Now I can understand refusing to serve bar meals (chips) if you’ve got a good quality restaurant and you are very busy, but we were six of their eight customers! The other two customers wanted chips too, but with a sandwich. They were allowed to order their chips, so obviously the cook was in the building and he was going to be cooking chips – I’m sure he could have cooked five portions and not just two.

Returning to our table I explained the story. My friends could not believe it, there was more than one astounded gasp of “They don’t serve chips?” To put the icing on the cake when the waitress brought out the sandwich and chips for the other couple and heard one of us joke to the couple “they wouldn’t give us chips” she replied “Well if yore too tight arsed to buy a meal”.

It amazed me that any pub or restaurant could be run like this. You’ve got the overheads of three staff and the building to pay for with only eight customers, yet you refuse to sell what must be the most profitable item you offer.

Not only that but with no chips on offer we did not buy the second round – and we did not get chance to get thirsty from the salt and vinegar on the chips to even consider a third round of drinks. Finally as insulted and disappointed customers who happened to be sitting in the beer garden at the front of the pub we told everyone who considered entering the pub how bad it was, needless to say they all decided to go on to the next one.

The fast food restaurant chain McDonalds has made many, many franchisees (and Ray Kroc of course) very rich on the basis of “do you want fries with that?” That’s because McDonalds understands what their high profit margin sales are and the value of upselling them to their customers.

In this case the customer service had suffered as the business had failed its staff. Firstly staff should be encouraged to understand the business, what the key profit centres are and how to upsell them. Had staff truly understood the business and been encouraged to follow some basic customer service mantras then the pub would have made more sales and gained more customers, instead they lost business and almost certainly made a loss that lunchtime.

So as a business owner, ask yourself, if your employees (and that includes you) understood your business better could you increase your profitability and as a side effect offer better customer service at the same time?

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