“Please Seat Yourself” a sign which commonly graces the lobbies of casual dining restaurants everywhere. How would such a sign offer the World Class Service so boldly advertised by Kitchen Kettle Village? The answer to your questions, folks, is that is does not. No, the guests at Kitchen Kettle Village deserve the best; to be escorted to a seat, seated with a smile, and served with excellence. Cue the Kling House hostesses.
My name is Jesnessa King, I am 18 years old and have been working for the Village for about a year and a half. What started as an after school/weekend job has turned into six days a week, while I take a year off from graduating high school this past June. I started working in the village at the Jam & Relish Kitchen and only since this past May have I been working at the Kling House.
Working in a restaurant is a far cry from retail. There is a higher demand for attention to guests and the pace is much faster, I always believed that hostesses had it easy; smile and greet people and simply take them a few feet to their table. Oh, what I was missing. The entire tone of the day rests on the hostesses’ attitudes. If they are flustered, the servers are flustered, which makes the guests flustered, which sends head Chef TJ out from the kitchen in a wild fit, scrambling around in an attempt to calm things down. However, if the hostesses are level headed and orderly, the servers get seated in a precise rotation, the tables are cleared immediately, the guests are greeted with a smile and taken to their table without hesitation. While I’ll be the first to admit that the hostess position, at the end of the day, occasionally overwhelms me I love my job. I tell everyone that I love it, and I mean it! There is something uniquely satisfying about giving the first and last impression of every guest’s dining experience.
After experiencing the work of a hostess, I observe more closely the work of a host. I would encourage you to do the same. After all, what kind of Simply World Famous greeting is “Please Seat Yourself” anyway?
