Need Business Advice? Go To Your Children!

During food testing in my brother small restaurant, we brought all the “little humans” :D from my mom’s place. There are 5 of them, my little sister, my little cousin, 3 little nephew. The place is not so big, maybe like 5x10 m2 (Ruko Standard size), furnished with tables, chairs and all stuff needed to open a restaurant. These children are just so full of energy, they can’t sit or stand still. They just want to move and made the situation looked more crowded. After appointed one nephew to be the “boss” to monitor the others since he is the son of the restaurant owner, it lasted only for a while before the “boss” itself got distracted by games in smart phone. Haish…..

We were all there to taste the food and gave feedbacks for improvement. All adults there were busy giving comments and moving here and there. In order to lessen the frustration from too many feedbacks, my brother finally handed out paper and pen to us to write all the feedbacks. Knowing that the children felt restless because they can’t do anything, I gave the papers and pens to them, asked to write all the things that they think will make the restaurant a better place and able to attract more customers. And the surprises start here!. This is the first time in family, there is someone who start restaurant business, these children are rarely eat at big and exclusive restaurant, I bet they never watch Masterchef or any other cooking or restaurant show, their main activities are go to school, join extra language course, go to religious activities, join few drawing or coloring competition, but yet their feedbacks was so amazing for me.

They understand about Standard Operating Procedures, The Importance of customer voice, Branding and Promotion, How mood can affect customer buying behavior, Customer buying behavior. Some of their feedbacks weren’t commented by the adults. The adults focus only to the common things but the children point out so many amazing feedbacks as You can see below:

Standard operating procedures:

·  There should be a table number, bill or receipt, Menu list, Trash bin to keep cleanliness

·  We Should prepare bowl of water to wash hand (Kobokan)

· The waitress and staff should have uniforms, their hair should be tied up to prevent hair loss and fall to the food

· Waitress should be friendly, Every customer that come should be directly greet and ask for their order

· After the customer finish their meal and leave the place, staff should directly clean up the table

Customer Voice:

· Every customer should be given feedback form to find out what are their preferences and our weaknesses

Branding & promotion :

· Put restaurant name in eye catching place

· Create flyer / leaflet to be given to all people passing by or spread around

Design interior & Mood affecting buying behavior:

· Prepare small flower vase in each table

· Wall color should be lighter to increase people mood

· Put bigger painting so people can see

· Cooler air conditioning to make people comfortable

· Music through radio or others thing so people can enjoy        

Customer buying behavior :

· Not all customers will want to have big meal, sometimes they just want to have snack, so please prepare snack like cheese fried banana, cheese corn or salad

· Have drink alternative like bubble tea

These feedbacks amazed me, it sounds like Pro. Sometimes we never thought about discussing adult things with children to find solution because we just think that “they won’t know, they won’t understand, it’s not their time yet, this is too important or too big for them, or any other reason”. But is that really the truth?.

Children are one of the most creative human beings in the world. They don’t put themselves inside restrictions, they have high curiosity and rich in imagination. They able to see things clearly, they are mostly enjoying what they are doing, they are spontaneous, they are risk taker, they have great memory and great absorber. They don’t really care what others opinion (yet). If You ask this question in play group class, “are You creative?”, most of the children will say “yes”. But if You ask this question to adults, the best You probably get is only half of the adults say “yes”. If You let children explore their imagination about one thing, You will amaze of how many things they can found out from one thing. And as the fact show, human is getting smarter in each generation. Today’s children are smarter than ours and older generation when we were in the same age. When we were children, we are smarter than our parents when they were children, so do today’s children are smarter than all of us. Today’s world is changing and the best adaptor is today’s children. Older generation has higher resistant to adapt to Now. Our learning method in school is also different. Today’s kid is encouraged to analyze, older generation is encourage to memorize things in school.

 

With all the children greatness combined to our way of communication with them, I believe they will be a very good business consultant, or the worst case if their solution isn’t the best, I bet we all can enjoy their naïve and lovely reaction and energy that can lighten our burden. Happy Sunday and Enjoy Your time with Your kids or someone’s else kids J !.