To some extent the kind of service that customers get is determined by their choice of restaurant. If you don’t want singing waiters, don’t go at Macaroni Grill; if you don’t want a motherly waiter to call you “honey,” don’t go to Barksdale.
There are, however, standards that apply to every sort of restaurant, and those standards are set by the manager, whose responsibility it is to establish a tone and teach (or at least advise) waiters how to convey it.
“The tone of the restaurant is set by the owner or manager,” said Dr. Carol Silkes, assistant professor in the Kemmons Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management at the University of Memphis.