Chain Leader

Lane Cardwell

Fork Fetish
April 9, 2008

I begin every restaurant meal with a ceremonial weighing of the fork. I pick up the fork, bounce it a couple of times in my hand, and wait for a reaction. Normally (90% of the time), I have no reaction. The fork is average in weight with what other restaurants use. 5% of the time, the fork is what I would consider to be a "school cafeteria" fork. One that is so light and flimsy that it almost begs to be bent or flattened, and often is by 10 year old customers. I live for the other 5% of the forks that I pick up. A fork that is so heavy that it cannot be ignored. A restaurant with a heavy fork has made a conscious decision to compete at a tactile level at a cost that makes most purchasing agents shudder.

I haven't always been this way. I used to be a normal customer, using whatever utensils the restaurant put in front of me without paying them any attention. After all, forks on a restaurant table are as common as door knobs on doors. Then one day I picked up a new fork that Houston's had begun using in its restaurants. Or I should say, tried to pick up. It was heavy. It made a statement. I noticed its weight all of the way through the meal. And so began my fork fetish, a routine examination at the start of every meal for an insight into the soul of the restaurant.

I believe that a restaurant that has chosen to spend the money required to pay extra for a heavier fork is probably doing other things beyond the norm also. I believe that the opposite is true. A restaurant that will not spend the average to buy an average weight fork, using "school cafeteria" cutlery, is probably cutting corners in many other areas that may not be as visible.

I had dinner recently in a new Houston Galleria location of a small, nationally known prime steakhouse. The moment of truth at the table: picking up the fork. It was above average in weight, but not "heavy". Perhaps they had chosen their heavy, oversized steak knife as their place to compete. Granted, it was a substantial knife, but not the fork. By comparison, the fork at Phil Romano's Nick & Sam's Steakhouse was so heavy that it received comments from everyone at the table (fetish or no fetish).

It was while I was working for a national chain that I began noticing that we were using school weight forks and knives. They had started off as just about average, but over time I noticed that they were becoming increasingly lighter. It was the result of the purchasing department's version of Two-Card Monty. "Do you notice any difference between this fork, and this fork?" "No." "Well, this fork will save us $.01 per share if we go with it." "I like that new fork." And so it goes, a spiraling down in weight of the fork in an effort to keep capturing that $.01 per share.

I began an internal campaign to challenge this thinking. Before even a month had passed I was called into a meeting with our CFO, and some visiting investment bankers. After the pleasantries were exchanged, one of the bankers reached into his briefcase and pulled out a collection of knives and forks, laying them on the table. "I have been collecting these from various casual dining chains", he said. Immediately, I spotted ours. They were cheap, bent, lightweight and flimsy. I assured the banker that we were looking at the situation, but I still remember like it was yesterday the embarrassment that I felt having a banker trying to teach a restaurateur how to run a proper restaurant, and being right.

Some other time, let's ponder where all the spoons have gone? 

Posted by Lane Cardwell on April 9, 2008 | Comments (5)