Hurst exults: 'We're glad you're here!'

Nation's Restaurant News, Oct 22, 1990 by Milford Prewitt

Hurst exults: `We're glad you're here'

Mike Hurst drew attention to himself the old-fashioned way. He disrobed in public.

At the outset of his speech at MUFSO, the president of the National Restaurant Association took off his tie, suit coat, suspenders and shirt.

But he stopped at his T-shirt, which bore the slogan, "We're glad you're here." The disrobing was a crafty way to wake up a morning audience with a highly energetic address that pushed the importance of service and humans over profits and costs.

"The national priority of our business should be customer focus," Hurst said. "We have to stop learning to process people and instead learn to serve them. Hospitality is the gift of friendship, and it has to begin with the people we hire.

"We have to manage for people, not profit. We have to manage, not from the back door, but from the front door."

Hurst, who also owns and manages the 15th Street Fisheries restaurant in Fort Lauderdale when he is not fulfilling speaking engagements for the NRA, fused anecdotes with witticisms to recount his success in the restaurant business.

One simple way Hurst invests in good service is during the interview process when he asks job applicants for servers' positions to describe the funniest incident that happened to them. The intent of the exercise is not to embarrass, Hurst explained, but to gauge their expression, mannerisms and liveliness in the telling of the event.

"If they can't think of anything, that ends the interview," he said. "I'm looking for expressiveness because when the time comes for them to describe a new item on the menu, I want feeling and credibility because that is where the gift of friendship begins.

"You can't train or teach a person that kind of thing, but you can certainly line it up."

Hurst amusingly warned restaurateurs not to depend on the bean counters and accountants who measure success by traffic counts, low employee turnover and low food costs.

"I think [employee] turnover is an obscene measurement of management competency," Hurst said. "If you want to stop turnover, just hire people no one else will hire. You can be sure they will always show up if for no other reason than for a free meal."

In regard to the bean counters' obsession with low food cost, Hurst said he has the perfect answer for reaching zero food cost.

"Just leave the door closed," he said. "It's those customers who're causing the problem anyway. People make profits, not systems."

PHOTO : Mike Hurst stresses, `The national priority of our business should be customer focus. We have to stop learning to process people and instead learn to serve them.'