Restaurants and the Illusion of Easy

February 18, 2010

Running a restaurant is incredibly demanding and stressful, but good restaurants have mastered the trick of making it look easy.

Managing the supply of food and drink is a logistical nightmare.

Consistent food-safety measures are a real challenge in a busy kitchen with a several exhausted cooks trying to feed a packed house.

Owners often work Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday morning–for months on end.

But as consumers, we don’t want to think about these things. We don’t care about them. We just get irritated at the dirty glass and the long waits and the unpleasant staff.

“Waiter, I’ll have the blissful ignorance.”

So to even survive, restaurants have to balance all these things well enough to be tolerable while not letting on to their customers how hard it is to do.

The Trick

The best restaurants make it look like the only work they’ve done all day is serving you.

The places that pull that off are the ones that win big. Because everyone likes a magic trick as long as it’s not obvious how it’s done.

BONUS

Check out this incredible behind the scenes video. It just goes to show you how effective illusion can be.

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