The Sequel

Friends of Branded!

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great week.

There’s always a first and I’ve been told you never forget your first time, so I want to acknowledge a first for the Hospitality Headline and specifically the Top of the Fold.

This week’s Top of the Fold is a sequel to last week’s article, An Inconvenient Truth, b/c I don’t believe any previous article I’ve authored has elicited as much feedback, responses or comments. Who knew writing about restaurants need to create a culture where guests sharing feedback is welcomed as opposed to punished would set the new high bar of reactions.

The overarching theme of the comments that came back to me was from operators and tied to guest behavior, the unrealistic expectations that are too often held or let’s skip the politeness, the entitlement that can come from our guests and how that can lead to rudeness and poor behavior being directed to our staff (I actually think I framed guests acting like #ssholes in an overall polite way, don’t you think?).

Noted, heard, respect.

There’s no question that there’s a great deal expected of our staff in order for them to meet or ideally exceed the expectations of our guests and it wasn’t remotely my intention to suggest that I was telling operators to turn themselves into in-real-life suggestion boxes, which can of course can quickly result in our staff becoming in-real-life punching bags. That’s not what the recommendation of creating a culture that welcomes and embraces feedback was meant to suggest.

Let’s kick this week off and bust a most famous saying, “the customer is always right.”

Survey says?

This most famous business mantra is often attributed to retailers Marshall Field (Marshall Field & Co in Chicago) and his protégé, Harry Gordon Selfidge (the founder of Selfridges in London) who defined revolutionary retail techniques including employees need to prioritize customer satisfaction by always putting the customer first. This philosophy emphasizes listening to customers, showing empathy, and taking responsibility for a positive customer experience. Who had Mr. Field and Mr. Selfridge on their Bingo card this week? Anyone?

All of this is true and important, but I’m a student of The Mitch Rosen ‘School of Restaurant Management’ and his take on this business mantra which is that the customer is NOT always right, but we, as hospitality operators, will do every possible to try to make it right for our guests.

This more modern and honest meaning of the phrase recognizes that our employees should not be expected to accept unreasonable or abusive behavior. We want our teams to strive to understand the customer’s perspective and to find a satisfactory solution to the extent it’s possible to do so, but that there are limits. While our guests may not fully understand where the line gets drawn, prioritizing the guest experience is a goal and we want to make the guest feel heard and valued, but not at the expense of our staff.

For any guest that has ever uttered the phrase “the customer is always right” as part of their argument or held that point view in the back of their mind when they took an action that crossed the line into the no-fly-zone of disrespectful or even abusive behavior towards a member of the restaurant staff (or any retailer), let make it crystal clear, you’re wrong and we can work on your exit from the restaurant and I hope you take this as a teachable moment.

It’s been over two decades since I watched Mr. Rosen try to address and defuse a situation at one of our restaurants where he was the GM. As the issue escalated and a specific guest didn’t just cross the line, but leapt over it in Mike Powell style (the world-record holder since 1991 with a jump of 29 feet, 4.5 inches for those keeping score at home) into the redzone. The guest and his party were asked to leave and escorted out of the restaurant. When Mitch returned, he stopped to tell me and wanted me to fully understand, “The guest is NOT always right.”

In an effort to make this sequel Top of the Fold tactical, for the benefit of both operators and guests, I want to offer an operator-focused framework that can help distinguish honest, actionable feedback from the noise that comes from entitled or hard-to-please guests.

Let’s take as a truth or at least a goal that operators want real-time, candid feedback (that was the key objective of last week’s article). For this week, it’s imperative that we recognize that not all feedback is created equal.

Some guests are trying to be helpful, while others may be looking for a fight, a discount, or maybe even a performance. The key is knowing the difference and being able to identify what’s coming at you quickly, consistently, and without letting emotions get in the way. Some guests offer thoughtful, constructive insights that help restaurants get better tomorrow. Others? They deliver vague negativity, performative complaints, or unreasonable demands that drain teams and derail service.

In today’s hospitality environment, where margins are thin, expectations are high, and the pace of service moves faster than ever, operators need a way to quickly distinguish between honest feedback and the entitled noise that too often masquerades as it. Before any of the readers who are primarily professional guests feel this might be about judging them, that’s NOT the case. This is about operators need to understand the signals that separate helpful from harmful comments and the need to empower teams to respond with clarity and confidence.

For guests, you can take this as a guide on how to engage and offer feedback in a way that’s helpful and hopefully how to avoid being the problem (as opposed to the far more desirable role which is being part of the solution).

I received several articles in response to last week’s Top of the Fold (and I appreciated all of them). For the benefit of guests, here’s one article I particularly liked by Maggie Hennessy, How to Get Your Server’s Attention Without Being a Jerk.

· Honest feedback is specific, while entitlement is vague. That’s one of the biggest distinctions and tells. Actionable and honest feedback points to fixable issue and gives the operator something to work with. Entitled feedback is vague and often sounds like a broad indictment. Vague complaints reveal frustration, not insights.

· Honest feedback shows awareness on the part of the guest (and we appreciate that), while entitlement shows self-centeredness. Honest guests recognize the restaurant is a living, breathing operation with variables. Entitled guests behave as if the universe revolves around their table. Guest awareness signals partnership, while entitlement signals ego. Honest feedback comes with a calm tone, while entitlement comes with a performance. It’s tone that reveals intention.

· Honest feedback invites conversation, while entitled feedback demands concessions. One seeks clarity. The other seeks leverage. Honest feedback appears once, while entitled complaints repeat. A guest giving honest feedback shares it, then moves on. An entitled guest often revisits the same issue multiple times and looks for additional things to complain about. Repetition is a telltale sign of a guest seeking advantage, not improvement.

· Honest feedback improves the operation, while entitlement distracts from it. The best filter for operators is whether the comment will help deliver a better experience tomorrow. If the answer is yes, that’s feedback, that’s truth, and no matter how blunt, that’s valuable. If the comments create chaos without clarity, that’s just static and it’s an operational drag.

The leadership that’s imperative is to help train teams to identify the difference. The goal, of course, isn’t to dismiss tough guests or diminish their experiences, but to help operators instantly recognize what kind of feedback they’re receiving so they can respond appropriately.

Operators, friends, honest feedback deserves appreciation, while entitled demands deserve boundaries. When teams understand the difference, they become more confident, more effective, and far less rattled by the emotional volatility that can walk through the door.

My overarching point of with this week and last week’s Top of the Fold is to emphasize that restaurants thrive when truth flows freely, but only when they know how to separate signal from noise. Operators don’t need to fear feedback, but they do need to recognize the difference.

That’s how winning is done!

It takes a village.

🍽️ Forbes just dropped its annual list of the coolest restaurants for 2026 and we’re already trying to score reservations.

🍸 New data shows Gen Z is changing how (and what) they drink. Operators absolutely need to pay attention to the shift.

👔 Esquire lays out the 16 rules every man should know before dining out—from how to treat the staff to when it’s okay to send something back.

🚗 Inside the rise of DoorDash’s $85 billion empire and how it won the delivery wars.

🔐 Private dining clubs are quietly reshaping American dining culture, from exclusivity to experience-driven hospitality.

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Don’t just scroll—click! Congratulate everyone on making the B List and send some LinkedIn love their way.