Bouchon Las Vegas, Part 2

For those of you who missed the first chapter of my road trip restaurant saga, Xav and I took the kids to Bouchon Las Vegas and had an exceedingly mediocre dinner for which we paid a fortune. That story is here.

After I wrote that post, Debbie encouraged me to tell the Keller people my story and provided a link for me to do so. I immediately received a great response from their PR person who wrote:

"Thank you so much for your email and comments! While I was extremely disappointed to hear that you had a negative dining experience at Bouchon, I truly appreciate your taking the time to let us know about it. I am very sorry about this unfortunate incident; it is definitely atypical and uncharacteristic of the level of cuisine and service that we pride ourselves in providing our guests.

I am forwarding your email to Chef Keller, as well as our managers at Bouchon, in order for them to discuss this matter with you directly. Please let me know if there is anything I can do in the meantime."

Honestly, for me this could have been the end of it. Her note was nice, professional and made me feel listened to. End of story. Except that the Bouchon general manager also sent me an email:

"I am the General Manager of Bouchon, Las Vegas and I would like to respond about your recent visit in the form of a written letter. 

If you will allow me to do so, may I have your address please?  I appreciate your time and attention that you have given us.

Sincerely,"

(I'm not including names in this post)

Wow. A real letter? Like on paper and with a stamp? How quaint. But maybe it could be nice. I wrote him back to say it was completely unnecessary to write me (and BTW, my preference is for email) but gave him my address. I kept my expectations low. 

This weekend I received the letter:

"Dear Mrs. Carbonnet,

I truly appreciate the time you took to write of your dining experience at Bouchon Las Vegas.  I am sorry that you were disappointed with your experience at Bouchon. We pride ourselves with providing excellent cuisine, as well as service, and I apologize that we did not succeed that evening you dined with us in Las Vegas.

Please accept our apologies and find enclosed a dinner voucher for your next visit with us here in Las Vegas. Please do not hesitate to contact me personally at (phone number deleted) so I can assist you in making reservations.

Sincerely,"

And true to his word he included a voucher in the letter, undoubtedly the reason he wanted my physical address. Care to guess the amount? Let me save you the suspense:  $50

 

I'll wait here a minute for you to stop laughing too.

 

The thing is, I was never looking for money. Furthermore I told both him and the PR person that I wasn't looking for money. In truth, I wasn't even looking for a dialog.

 

But now of course I'm offended. Instead of listening to me, addressing my concerns and letting it go with some personal correspondence, they tried to buy my good will for $50. Fifty dollars to eat in a restaurant where the cheapest bottle of wine is $100. Where a bowl of olives costs $6.50. A place where I have already spent $300. And to top it off, the voucher is embossed to prevent forgery and comes with a number of caveats - cannot be used for New Year's Eve, nor for gratuity, only at Bouchon Las Vegas, etc. The whole thing felt quite formulaic, to say the least.

 

I only stayed mad for a little while. As a marketing person I figure this guy probably deals with extortionists all the time - people looking for whatever freebies they can get. And perhaps he's become jaded and didn't believe me when I said I didn't want money.

I sent the voucher back.  

Comments

[Steve Betz]

Wow -- and here throughout your story, I was like -- hey, that was pretty responsive. Next time you want to have two glasses of wine and split a salad I guess you would have been covered. $50 isn't nearly enough to get over the negative feelings. $100 --- maybe, $200 sure.

[kitty]

[this is good]

[Patty]

I would have sent it back too. I'm curious about what you wrote with the returned "chump change".

[karen]

I didn't put anything in the actual envelope with the voucher, but I did send an email to him and the nice PR person this morning so they know to expect it:
Dear Mr.,

Thank you for your letter. I am returning the voucher you sent
viapost,and I want totell you how disappointed I am with your
response.

As I have written before, to you and Ms. (PR person),I am not a
disgruntled customer looking for compensation. If I were, the $50 you
sent would only serve to offend meas it does not even begin to address
the fact that my family and I traveled eight hours by car in order to
spend $300 at your restaurant. If I were looking for money, Icould
onlyfind your fifty dollar response offensive.

So that we are clear: please do not send me another voucher. I am
not interested in your money. I was simply following the advice of a
friend who assured me that you and the Keller organization would want
to know about my miserable experience. Now that you are aware, I
consider this matter closed.

Very sincerely,

[Debbie]

Wow. Yeah - I was prepared for an over-the-top aplogetic response story. Wow. I just can't get over it. $50 probably doesn't even represent what their take-home profit was for your meal. No, you're right. They could've left you feeling very validated for your feedback, but instead they cheapened it. Too bad!

[Mark]

Thing is, what are they going to say here? Their choices are: 1) Occasionally we serve a lousy meal and oops you got one.2) Our food sucks, pretty much alwaysA specific apology would require that they fess up to one of these, and they can't, really. If they go with (1), then they will have extortionists after them, big time. If they go with (2), well, they can't. So they have to adopt the attitude that our food is always great, and you got a great meal, and you just weren't happy for some reason, so here's 50 bucks. Not really satisfactory, but it ain't nothin'.

[Barry]

[this is good] You got all the class in the family. I would have sent it back with a Wendy's coupon.

[Deborah]

Sheesh - they could have given you a free dinner for 2... but $50?Not sure if money is ever the issue. When I had problems with our favorite place in Palo Alto - I let them know and they sent me $100 voucher which was more than enough to cover dinner there. So we took them up on it and had another horrid meal. We took quite a while off from the place and now they seem to care about their food and service again. I think I would have been happier with them if they had taken my input and fixed the problems at the time...I'm sure you sending back the voucher will give them the message you originally intended.

[Paul]

Stories like this make me mad. Not so much because of your experience (although you know I care). They make me mad because they were so close to having the perfect response and then blew it. Such a waste on their part of a great opportunity.For the future, when you get pissed at people and they send you free stuff and you want to make a point by not accepting it, go ahead and send it over to me. I'll be sufficiently indignant and also take the free things off your hands. It's what friends are for.

[miz_ginevra]

I'm betting (ha!) that the manager has a cap on the $ value he can send out as gift certificates to the underwhelmed. Once you were there in-house and saw you weren't a jerk, he'd have been able to comp you with free drinks, olives, dessert, etc - "pay attention to table 12" sort of stuff. This is all in the hopes of: filling the books, getting another chance to impress you, and still making some money in the end. I've never eaten there, but do have the cookbook: the skirt steak and gougeres recipes are both divine.

[karen]

I disagree with the idea that fessing up brings out more extortionists, but even if it did, the price of treating everyone like a potential extortionist is too high for me. I don't own a restaurant but I do own a retail store and the best way we've foundto deal with customers is to treat them with respect and honesty. As long as you do that, even or especially when there are real problems,they trust you. If you lie to them or treat them like they arecreatingproblems, they will often feel diminished and disrespected - a very effective way to kill customer loyalty.
Bouchon, as Paul noted, was very close to getting it right. And while I am in favor of having executives face their own music, this guy would have done better to let his PR person take care of it.

[karen]

that is a riot.
now if only I'd had a wendy's coupon...

[karen]

dinner for two would have sent a more positive message, i agree. i still wouldn't have accepted it - if nothing else, I'm not driving to Vegas for a do-over, but i would not have felt offended (nor felt compelled to write this post).

[karen]

i too, am disappointed. they were very close to fixing the whole thing and then blammo.

note to self: if you ever become an extortionist be sure to send the free stuff to Paul. (don't hold your breath)

[karen]

if this guy wasa store manager i would agree that he is probably capped in terms of what he can offer, but as the general manager he should have loads of power. He's The Man (at least in Vegas).
I'm not surprised that the Bouchon cookbook is great, after all it'sfilled with Keller's killer recipes. I bet they're even betterwhen he's the onecooking them. ;-)

[Melissa]

wow! i'm really surprised by how much the difference in customer service and feedback is there compared to here. If it were me, the gesture that the manager even sent a $50 voucher would be good enough. Although i would've kept the voucher :pHere they'll probably just read the mail with the feedback and decide it's junk =/

[karen]

it might be the difference between "here and there" or it might just be the difference between you and me. ;-)
I am a bit older than you and when I wasyounger I was a great deal more forgiving about how i expected to be treated and what kind of value i got for my dollar.
these days, knowing that customer loyalty is one of the most important things to build in business, i expect others to take it seriously too - especially restaurants. customer loyalty is, if you'll excuse the pun, the bread and butter of restaurants, and to squander a customer's good will by avoiding being genuine, ortrying to save a couple of bucks seems short sighted to me.

[AshbyChick]

It's frustrating that they obviously didn't even make an attempt to understand your emails/letters since you mentioned several times that you weren't looking for money. I think you did the right thing by sending it back. Too bad they won't learn a lesson from this. At least you blogged about it so we can all benefit from your experience. I know I certainly won't eat there next time I'm in Vegas!

[miz_ginevra]

I think you're right - the manager should be empowered with the choice to give you a free meal. in my experience (although I have NEVER worked a house as la-di-da as Bouchon) it was that once they got you back in the door that they could hook you up with all sorts of tasty deliciousness. But that would depend on your willingness to go back there, and frankly, even if I could afford it I won't go now. I bet it felt really, really good to mail that back to him.

[Yvette Ivy]

Rock On!
I am so impressed that you took a stand and mailed the silly voucher back. It's a crying shame that you won't be there to see the look on the manager's face when he opens it up! I agree with you whole-heartedly about customer loyalty having everything to do with treating them with respect and courtesy. I, for one, will forgive just about anything if you admit your mistake and make a genuine effort to make it right. I bow to your integrity!

[Cathy]

So 50 bucks is roughly a dollar for every one of your friends who's read your account and will explicitly not visit Bouchon and drop $300 the next time they are trapped in Vegas. That's $15,000 in lost business. Ouch.

[karen]

At least you blogged about it so we can all benefit from your experience.
Forewarned is forearmed, I always say. ;-)

[karen]

I bet it felt really, really good to mail that back to him.
It did. But I would feel even better if I thoughtthe gesture made himthink for a minute or two about why I did it.

[karen]

Your comment inspired me to run a google blog search on "bouchon las vegas" guess which post comes up first? (I was surprised too)

[Patty]

The power of Vox's SEO strikes again!