Sometimes guest service starts to feel like muscle memory. You smile, you greet, you move on. This dangerous slip into autopilot can lead to inauthentic connections—and guests WILL notice.
To combat this, a Maitre D’ taught me a trick early in my career. He pulled five pennies from his pocket and said: “Put these in your left pocket, and every time you make a meaningful connection with a guest, move a coin to the right pocket (or back pocket if you prefer). The goal is for all five coins to be in a different pocket before the night ends.”
Simply touching a table to check in on their night (“How is everything?”) didn’t qualify as a meaningful connection. There had to be genuine conversation and a sense that you’d formed a relationship with the guest.
Here’s why it works: At 5pm when service starts, you have energy. By 8:30pm after dozens of tables, it’s harder to bring that same presence to your last guests of the night. That’s when the coins matter most. Reaching into your pocket and feeling one penny left becomes a challenge: *Can I make one more real connection before I leave?*
This same principle can be applied to endless objectives.
Maybe you’re a leader who wants to do a better job of recognizing the team? Every compliment is a coin.
Maybe your goal is to sign up guests for tomorrow’s sunrise yoga class? Every registration is a coin.
This gamification can be a fun method to reach your daily goals and prevents us from slipping into autopilot mode. Physical objects keep us honest—you can’t pretend you’ve made five connections when you still have five coins in your left pocket.
I should note that unfortunately the penny is being phased out, so you may need to resort to a more expensive coin—apologies in advance for the extra weight!
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