We went for dinner with friends last night and I’m perhaps a touch, ummm, let’s say ‘bleary’ this beautiful sunny morning. Bleary and just a titch cranky.

The bleary part is likely obvious (a little wine, perhaps?), the cranky? Well, the cranky bit starts with our server, whom I’ll call Joe. And for the purposes of this story, let’s agree to use the term ‘server’ rather loosely.

From the moment he popped over to our table, Joe exuded attitude – the ‘You’re so extremely fortunate to be graced with my witty presence and to be allowed into this divine establishment…’ kind of attitude.

He blatantly ignored our table while hanging about gossiping with his colleagues, poured our red wine into a used decanter (ummm, could you grab a clean one buddy?), fawned over the two men at the table while referring to the women as ‘Miss’ in a dismissively patronizing way, and he didn’t bother with basic service like cleaning the table between courses.

That last bit is when it got really interesting. My friend had enough of Joe by the time he plopped the dessert menus onto a rather dirty table … the shared-plate dining trend isn’t conducive to pristine white table cloths after a few courses. She politely called him out, picking up the menus and asking for the table to be cleaned. His response?

“Would I come to your place of work and tell you how to do your job?”

I gasped! And then stared.

He wasn’t done.

“The title is ‘server’ not ‘servant’ …” I couldn’t listen to his rant any longer. I was gobsmacked. We all were.

So today I’m cranky. We dropped a fair chunk of hard-earned after-tax dollars to enjoy a night out with friends. The four of us left with a good story to tell, but a bad taste in our mouths. The icky-awful-bad taste that results from a broken promise. In this case, Joe had broken the restaurant’s brand promise.

A brand promise is carefully cultivated and then articulated to connect with potential customers. This restaurant has it all – from the funky name, to the carefully styled colour palette, strong logo and visuals, edgy and comfortable interior. It promises fun, unpretentiously down-to-earth good food.

It promised exactly what we wanted – casual comfort with fabulous things to eat.

And it didn’t deliver.

When it comes to branding, too often business owners get caught up in colours, visuals, logos and language. Owners demand hip and trendy. They promise the world and forget to back up the promise with real life service and quality products.

I’ve had this conversation a few times lately as I’m finding it harder and harder to hand over money for poor quality service or products.

Living the brand promise seems to be a blind spot for business owners.

We’ve all heard it before but branding is so much more than a logo. Yet businesses don’t want to do the hard work to ensure their team and their products live up to that hip logo or articulated brand promise. They forget to create and implement common-sense process and set employee expectations and standards. And when this happens, business owners lose revenue and reputation.

Listen to your clients, screen for the right kind of staff, hold staff in-service training and, most importantly, lead by example. Model the right behaviours.

I’m pretty sure my experience last night would have been different if the restaurant had worried more about the client experience and less about hip design.

With gratitude,