I support local business when ever possible. The following is my experience with a local restaurant in Regina SK. called the Hickory Grill. It wasn’t good, actually it was terrible. Hopefully by writing this I can point out a few things and potentially help other small businesses from making similar mistakes.
The first time my wife and I visited the Hickory Grill was shortly after it opened. We were the only ones in the restaurant, we waited at least 10 minutes to be seated and another 20 minutes for our server to take our drink order. Between being told that the diner menu wasn’t available yet (3:45pm) and our server not getting around to the drink order because vacuuming was more important, after about an hour we walked out and enjoyed a fabulous meal at The Keg. Our second attempt was quite a few months later, I arranged for a babysitter and took my wife on a date, dinner and a movie. We thought we would give Hickory another shot seeing as though we didn’t even get to try the food the first time around. Unfortunately this experience was almost as bad, the food was mediocre at best AND poor service had us rushing out to make our show on time. We swore to never go back.
Fast forward a few months >>> Enter the Hickory Grill on the social media scene in #YQR. @HickoryGrill starts following local people on twitter and they put up a Facebook page, being a guy who loves local business and social media, I take note and watch to see how they engage. To my surprise they do a great job, here is the conversation that got me on twitter one Friday afternoon – it was brilliant engagement.
@kiltedbroker – “Packing it in, going home, spending time with my wife tonite #goodbyeworld”
@HickoryGrill – “have a lovely weekend!” ~ at this point I was planning on taking my family out for Thai food, but thought, alright… super nice of them!
@kiltedbroker – “Thanks, if we stop in for supper, I am the guy in a kilt!” ~ not really sure if I wanted to give them another shot, but was being polite
@HickoryGrill – “ha! Hard to miss. We’ll keep an eye out 
” ~ now I am thinking wow, that is super cool, yep heading there for supper, no doubts, can’t wait to meet this person, they are excellent on twitter!
My family and I arrive at the Hickory Grill around 5pm on a Friday afternoon (just hoping to get a table without too long a wait) however we get a parking spot right out front and are seated immediately as there was no one else in the restaurant. < Not sure if I was expecting the hostess to be the person behind the handle, but I was expecting a mention or something – remembering the “we’ll keep an eye out”> After we are seated, I think, no problem, maybe the twitter handle is run by the bartender or the manager, maybe they just haven’t seen me yet. I have the following conversation with what seems to be the only server in the restaurant as she takes our drink orders:
@kiltedbroker – “Hey, are you the person that manages the Hickory Twitter handle?”
Non-Twitter Server – “Ummmm… twitter… ummm…” ~ very puzzled look
@kiltedbroker – “Ya, the Hickory has a twitter account and I was talking with them earlier, that is the reason we are here tonite”
Non-Twitter Server – “Oh ya, that person doesn’t work here, she is with a company or something, I don’t know who she is…”
@kiltedbroker – “Thanks for letting me know…” ~ Now I feel 100% ripped off – You have to be kidding… The only reason I am here is to meet the person behind the twitter handle – #rage
Pretty sure at this point there was no way we were going to have a good experience… the food was destined to taste awful and the service was going to suck simply BECAUSE I WAS LIED TO. Well, the food was indeed lame and the service was pretty lousy as well. You have to ask yourself “Why is a high-end steakhouse vacant at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon?”
Now – what business principles can we take away from all this? As it pertains to social media and business… here are a couple things I have come up with:
If you engage people socially to promote your business, you have to expect that they are going to tell people about their experience. You better be confident in your product, because its coming… the good or the bad.
Also, it is dangerous to hire an independent third party to handle your social media – I’m not saying it can’t be done well, just that it is very dangerous. Social media should be an accurate representation of who you are, people do business with people they like… put yourself out there and if people like you, they will do business with you. By hiring someone to create a persona for you, you are cheating the process and you aren’t being authentic. Looking at my experience, the girl who runs the @HickoryGrill twitter handle actually couldn’t have done a better job, after 2 previous terrible experiences she had me giving them one more chance, what more could the Hickory want? Imagine what kind of experience I would have had if the person at the front was actually “watching for me” and greeted me as the Kilted Broker, this would be a completely different story. The Hickory Grill had a chance to be awesome and they didn’t even know it, unfortunately they failed miserably.
