Staff training, careful hiring, and mystery shoppers have been the most essential investment that Nancy Batista-Caswell has made.
These were essential, she says, to the success of her year-old restaurant, Ceia Kitchen + Bar, in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
We’re in a suburban commuter area so we made sure we didn’t just focus on food,” she says. “We wanted to provide an experience and not just focus on dining.”
And the payoff has been good for the 60-seat boutique restaurant serving European food. Sales are 10 percent higher than Batista-Caswell anticipated and she ended her first year last month with sales of $1.1 million.
Batista-Caswell brought in a local etiquette trainer, Jodi Smith, before she even opened her restaurant to make sure her staff members were up to par.
“She understood my philosophy. She knew I wanted a genuine approach and knew I wanted people to feel that they were dining in my home—with fine dining skills in a casual dining setting.”
Smith set about training the staff on everything from how to read diners’ body language in order to know how much server interaction they want and to how to know if they’ve finished eating; to napkin folding, proper silverware placement, and how to diffuse conflicts.
Along with etiquette classes, all employees are regularly trained during their time at Ceia.
“We teach employees that they are the face of the restaurant. Everyone works full time for the sake of consistency. So they know what’s going on, they know what we may be out of, and so on. So they’re more invested [in the restaurant],” Batista-Caswell says.
She also tries to do things that pique employees’ interest. She lets them teach in-house wine classes, for example, or runs competitions to see who can sell the most bottles of wine.
“I try to replace the motto that everyone is replaceable. I want people to feel that they’re part of our family and that they are not replaceable.”
