Hospitality: keeping an eye on the help

Lori Jean Wist is a spy!

Not as in CIA-type spy, but a spy just the same. She and her company, Farmingdale-based GuestService Solutions, are paid by owners of restaurants, bars, nightclubs and other food and entertainment venues to keep an eye on the help to make sure they are serving guests properly, displaying the proper attitude and keeping honest.

"We got in totally anonymously," said Wist, who in the past ran catering businesses and worked as a chef. "We experience what an everyday customer would experience."

Wist started her company two years ago with just a few dollars for business cards, office supplies and a website, guestsvcsolutions.com. Now, Wist says, the business is "taking off" as restaurants, bars and clubs fight to win customers in a tight market.

Wist has 20 part-time "operatives" she sends out to the venues for stays of three or four hours. At a bar, she said, they will order a drink and watch to see if the bartender is attentive to customers, offers a second drink and gives correct change. At a restaurant the operatives will order a meal and see if the waiter is friendly, attentive and offers desert and coffee.

"Then we write a detailed report" and hand it to the owner. "Many times they [the owners] are pleased," she said. "Sometimes they are disappointed." Wist notes on her website that, according to studies, one unhappy customer will tell eight to 10 other people of their "bad experience."

Jay Grossman, owner of the upscale restaurants Four, in Melville, and Two, in Lake Success, hired Wist on two different occasions.

"My vision [for the restaurants] is dependent on the execution of others," Grossman said. "Sometimes they cut corners or take shortcuts. That doesn't make for a great guest experience."

Grossman said that through one of Wist's reports he was "upset to find that sometimes second drinks weren't being offered to guests and, on one occasion, desert wasn't offered."

Said Wist: "We find [owners] need to hear the good and the bad."