Is the Service in French Restaurants As Good as In the U.S.?

Vertical Garden on Front of Store

Yesterday, I ended up sitting with two Parisian women at a cafe.  When they had difficulty getting the waiter to respond to their need for the check, one of them inquired of me what I thought about service in French restaurants. It was clear from her tone she expected me to be critical and given my experience at this restaurant so far – I had been at the table at least 20 minutes and my order had not yet been taken – I could have easily dumped on the service.  

I had come to the area to look at a vertical garden at the Musee du Quai Branly. For those not aware of vertical gardens, they are exactly what it sounds like – gardens that grow on a vertical surface rather than a horizontal one.  This might at first seem similar to ivy growing on the side of your house, but is different in that it is actually planted all on the vertical surface.  In other words it is not plants growing up from the ground, it is plants that are planted on a vertical surface.  Relatively few vertical gardens exist but one of the pioneers in vertical gardens is from Paris so there are more here than other places.  I’ve included a couple of pictures so you can get the idea.  If you’d like more, go to this link. http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/ecology/15-living-walls-vertical-gardens-sky-farms/1202

Back to the restaurant, after a day at the museum of modern art and walking around looking for  photographing vertical gardens, I decided it was time for a diet coke.  It was 3:15pm and I hadn’t had anything to drink since 10:10am.  It was definitely time for a break and a drink. 

Vertical Garden on Wall at Museum

The Musee du Quai Branly had an outdoor café that allowed you to view their lovely garden so I went to get a table and discovered a line.  After waiting in line patiently, I told the hostess in French that I preferred a table outside, but the first one available would be good.  She looked outside and saw some people living and went running out.  She cleared a table and put three menus on it.  When I was explaining I was alone, she told me then I couldn’t sit there.  I am not sure if I could sit somewhere else or if she was saying I couldn’t sit anywhere.  I was trying to explain in French that I was fine with others joining me.  (This is the problem with my French.  I can get out what I want but when there are complications it is difficult for me to respond quickly.)  In any case a woman from a table nearby overheard the conversation and explained in English that I could sit with them, adding that they would be leaving soon. I rapidly took this option.  So this is how I happened to have a French woman I didn’t know ask for my evaluation of French service.

I told her, and I believe it is true, that we have a very different concept of customer service in the U.S.  In the U.S. we believe that the customer should get what they want as long as they are willing to pay for it. We say the customer is always right. A fast food restaurant chain even had an advertising campaign claiming that you could have it your way.  It should be noted that despite this widely held belief about customer service we often fail miserably in delivering great customer service.

Back to France, the first difference is quite simply they do not believe the customer is always right.  In their view, it is a relationship between two people – a customer and a server – and no one is assumed to be correct. Each person is believed to have needs and obligations. The server is offering a product and the customer either wants it or he or she doesn’t.  This sounds like they don’t care, but I believe they care just as much about giving good service.  The difference is who defines good service and the balance of rights between the customer and the server.

In France, the person offering the service wants to offer a good product, including service, and strives to do the best they can.  A French restaurant owner would say I only offer four choices because that is all I can prepare freshly and well 0in one evening.  It is widely believed that a French person would prefer the best possible meal, even if that means they can’t have the item they personally would have chosen that night.  Similarly, the customer is not given a lot of choices in how it is prepared – it is prepared the best way.  You see this in some fine restaurants in the U.S., you can’t have your meat well done because the chef believes cooking it so much ruins it, for example. 

Back to my seating, the hostess’ job was not to make me, one individual customer, happy but to offer good service overall and that meant seating the most possible people in a good location.  Giving a single person a prime outdoor seat would not accomplish this goal.  

I also observed the focus on serving the most the best rather than one particular customer at the outdoor café in Sancerre.  The servers were friendly and eager to make you happy.  One server learned quickly I would want a diet coke and he would give the order to the bartender when I arrived, before he even waited on our table.  That didn’t always mean I got it quickly.  In order to serve all efficiently, when a server came outside he or she did all there was to do outside before they went back inside. I mean they took orders, delivered checks and took dirty dishes with them when they returned inside.  Thus, if they took your order at the beginning of the loop around the restaurant it could be a while before your order was even given to the kitchen.  For the French this was normal, they simply chatted or if alone watched the people and enjoyed the weather.

Need a Picture of Eiffel Tower if in Paris

This brings me to another underlying difference in how we approach things and that is the French don’t rush the same way we do.  When they go to a restaurant, they have time to enjoy it and the company they are with.  If you go to a restaurant in a hurry, it is perceived as your problem not theirs.  If you didn’t have at least an hour for lunch, you politely told the server, that you were in a hurry today, why and you needed to be back at school at x time.  They would then tell you if that would work or not. If it would work, they told you which selections you could get in that window.  They wanted to help you, but it was definitely you who were asking a favor because you were in a hurry.

In Sancerre, where as I’ve already described, I had phenomenal service at all kinds of places they expected that when you came to a restaurant or a store you had time to do what you came to do.  One day at the butcher’s, I waited while he finished a call with a company he was ordering from.  It was more than five minutes – I’d guess 10.  To him this seemed normal, to me not so much.  When he finished, he was happy to see me and devoted his time to me while the next person waited. Again, he assumed that when I came to the store I had time to do so.

In a book I was reading, they made this same observation about parking. If someone double parks you in and you’re upset when they come back, their response is what are you in a hurry?  The implication being that if you’re in a hurry, you haven’t managed your life very well.  I am not saying the French don’t have a lot to do, I am saying they value organizing your life so you can enjoy what you are doing.  If you are so busy, you can’t enjoy a coffee with your friends or a friendly conversation with the butcher you are not living so well. There is much to appreciate in this attitude.

While in France, I have done much better at just enjoying what I’m doing rather than planning so much that I have to rush off to do the next thing.  I can honestly say I enjoyed making omelets for breakfast in France.  In the U.S., I would never enjoy this as taking time to cook my breakfast would take away from other things I’d have to do.  Generally, when I went to a restaurant in France I was okay if it took a long time.  I understood that I was only one person in the restaurant and it was not a problem if the server did not immediately address my needs.  The real question is will I be able to keep this perspective when I return to the U.S., which by the way is in only two days.