The hospitality industry has long had a number of maxims which you may, or may not, agree with. The most famous is this: “The customer is always right”. Now, we all now that is total nonsense. A better, and more accurate, saying could well be: “The customer is always impolite“! Yeah? Lol. That were clever.

Another one is the topic of today’s insightful article: “Service with a missile”. We have to say, this one is a bit confusing. Asides from being a novel by P.G. Wodehouse, how is this supposed to be an effective way of doing business? Most people don’t want their Subway sandwich arriving with, like, a nuclear warhead as a side dish. So, what’s going on here?

Service with a missile

There’s a thing in business called “upselling” which is possibly where this saying came from. After all, what could be more terrifying (but convincing, from a sales perspective) than service with a missile? Not much. Maybe only if your waiter is a snarling werewolf called Barry, or something. But if Barry is also holding a missile then you’re likely to be more afraid of the missile than of the werewolf.

Here’s an example – you provide service with a ballistic missile. Most probably, you’d drive your customers ballistic (with rage) or they’d just be flat out horrified. This can be useful if your food isn’t very good, as the customer would be too preoccupied with other goings on to notice the soup is cold, the bread has mould on it, and the tea is actually coffee with a dead fly bobbing about on it.

Thusly, service with a missile detracts from your failings as an establishment. In this sense it is good, although in the long-term you may want to up your game a bit (such as bringing in Gordon Ramsay). However, also be prepared for poorly worded negative reviews online such as: “thems served me cake with a ****in’ atom bomb and some cream! WTF?!” and other such observations. So long as you’re confident your business can survive a wave of 1/5 reviews, we think service with a missile is a magnificent idea.

Service with a Snarl

Of course, you don’t have to just own a restaurant in order to need to smile at customers. Many customer facing B2Cs also have to take on this daily nightmare. This is why we’re suggesting “service with a snarl” – you can employ the missile concept alongside this one for extra effectiveness. The former is pretty simple – when your staff hand over goods to a customer, they (your staff member) accompanies this with a grotesque snarl/growl/whinny.

Don’t also be put off by “service with bile”, although this is an extreme option which should only be used as a last resort. It’s pretty horrible, really, it’s where you hand over, say, that new car that guy just bought at your local car garage and also include a complimentary jar of arbitrary stomach bile. Hey, it seemed like a good idea after drinking five litres of vitamin A this morning.