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Clearwater restaurant server accused of stealing credit card numbers

RestaurantNews — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:18:43 +0000

A server at the Tuscano Grille restaurant on McMullen Booth Road is accused of using credit card numbers from customers to buy merchandise from discount and grocery stores.

Mircea C. Ciornei, 31, of 3804 Olde Lanark Drive in Land O’Lakes, was arrested Wednesday and charged with four counts of identity theft, three counts of forgery of a credit card, scheme to defraud and criminal use of personal identification.

According to Clearwater police, Ciornei was taking credit card numbers from restaurant patrons and re-encoding them onto gift cards at stores including Target, Publix, Sweetbay Supermarket and Burlington Coat Factory.

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Servers taking a hit during the recession

RestaurantNews — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 23:29:35 +0000

When you watch Redd Gerry wait tables at Milo’s City Cafe, she’s a blur of motion, hustling plates loaded with crab cakes Benedict and corned beef hash to regular customers she knows well enough to address as “baby” or “hon.”

On a regular weekday, Gerry might serve 50-60 customers breakfast and lunch. During weekend brunch, it’s often twice that number. If Gerry does her job right, when all those diners leave the popular Northeast Portland restaurant, they’ve left her nice tips that make up the bulk of her income.

“Tip money is pretty much all the money we make as servers,” Gerry says. “A good paycheck for a server is maybe $150 because taxes from our sales more or less cancel out the hourly money we make. The money that we make from tips is what we rely on to live on.”

Like most waiters, Gerry is seeing fewer tips these days, not because her service isn’t up to snuff or because diners are being stingy when it come to the percentage of gratuity they leave. Diners aren’t ordering as much, and smaller checks means smaller tips.

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How to drive your waiter crazy

RestaurantNews — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 02:52:36 +0000

Many people wouldn’t last a day in a server’s non-slip shoes.

Refilling glasses, balancing trays and clearing dirty plates with a smile can be taxing. But the prospect of a 15 percent to 20 percent tip at the end of the meal is the reason waiters work so hard.

So after a customer repeatedly dined without leaving a good tip at KanPai Japanese Steak & Seafood House in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the restaurant decided to take action recently.

It is certainly not customary for servers to complain to diners if they’re unhappy about their tip, but restaurant manager Michael Lam said this was a unique situation.

“In the restaurant business, of course you have people not tipping or not tipping good,” Lam said. “You can’t just tell them, ‘don’t come.’ … But [this particular customer] made a lot of trouble. [Her party] asked for a lot of things and was never satisfied.”

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‘Counter Culture’ – stories of waitressing

RestaurantNews — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:32:46 +0000

If you’ve ever been to Al’s Good Food Cafe in Bernal Heights, then chances are you’ve met “Mama.”

Jean Joseph has been serving coffee and eggs there for nearly four decades – the last three alongside her sister, Joanne – and the two are as effervescent today as when they first began waitressing in 1947.

“She just turned 79,” Jean says of her sister, pointing toward a cluster of balloons in the corner. “Those were for her birthday party.”

And Jean?

“I’ll be 81 in April,” she says with a smile. “Customers are what keep me and her young.”

Still working, still greeting, still handing out Andes mints after all these years – Jean Joseph can’t imagine doing anything but waitressing.

She’s one of the dozen Bay Area women profiled in “Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress,” a book that examines the dying breed of career waitresses.

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The Waiter: Plate Expectations

RestaurantNews — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:08:09 +0000

Cetin Odabasi sweeps an arm around the glitzy dining room in which we stand. “OK, so this is the table number, and this is the layout,” he announces. “This is very important,” he adds, “because whatever you’ve got to take to a table, this means you know where to go.” He speaks quickly, in a strong Turkish accent, still charged with energy after a hectic service for which the Oven restaurant was nearly full. Not bad, it must be said, for a midweek lunchtime in post-recession Darlington.

“So: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10!” Merrily, he sings off the numbers and his finger darts from tablecloth to tablecloth. I nod, understanding perhaps a tenuous 70% of what he has been telling me, and feeling every bit the frightened novice I have told him to imagine that I am. Timidly, I venture a question: what happens if you push two tables together?

“Well,” Odabasi begins patiently, “I have six tables here, but normally it’s five, which has made our life a little bit hard today. So you have to add on one more here. And with the new till system we cannot create 5a and 5b. So this is always table five. And if you have table three here, for example: one, two, three, but table four is missing because those two tables have been joined together.” I nod again, fraudulently. Though I had expected to write an article about how many people underestimate the complexity of being a waiter, I didn’t realise that I was one of them.

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Customers want to go where everybody knows their name

RestaurantNews — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:06:32 +0000

Have you ever been in a restaurant or bar where the server was not customer friendly? It takes more than the ability to mix a good drink or the ability to carry a tray of food to work in this industry. It takes charisma. This job relies on your personality. You need to be the provider of good fun, good cheer, and a pleasant place to come. Customers come back to your establishment over and over because of you.

So here are a few tips to keep them coming:

You are the first impression. Customers may come in occasionally or daily. They will always notice the cleanliness of your place and how you come across. Remember, as the first impression, you are paid by the management to exude good cheer.

Remember the show “Cheers”? If Sam had been a grump all the time, instead of enjoying the people around the bar, it would have never been successful. Yes, Sam was going through all kinds of trials and tribulations. But Sam was fun, the place was neat, and everyone, the regulars and the new visitors enjoyed themselves. Become a Sam.

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