Entrepreneur: Empowerment

Returned to Bangkok recently for a week and visited all my favorite restaurants. One of my favorite is Zen – a chain of Japanese Restaurant that is extremely popular with local Thais and even Japanese. Food is delicious, reasonable price combined with excellent service. I would normally order a set meal that comes with plain rice. And I will normally request the Waitress to replace the plain rice to garlic fried rice. As usual – the Waitress will smile, acknowledged my request and politely inform me that there will be an extra charge of Baht 20.

I recalled an incidence (around 2005) at a Japanese restaurant that was newly opened at Plaza OUG, Kuala Lumpur. We went to eat in the restaurant out of novelty & curiosity. I ordered a set dinner that came with a raw egg. Not fancying eating raw egg – I requested for fried egg instead. The Waiter excused herself and approached the Manager. She returned and told me that I can have the option of raw egg or no raw egg in the set dinner – but the price shall remain the same. I finished my dinner but left the raw egg intact. And I said to myself – this is the first and last visit. Six (6) months later – I returned to Plaza OUG and the Japanese Restaurant was no longer operating.

The lesson here is that - Customer is KING and Zen empowered its staff to respond positively to Customer’s need. The Japanese Restaurant at Plaza OUG should have agreed to Customer’s request for additional service at an additional price. Such excellent entrepreneurship is the razor blade cuts that separate Zen from baby boys like those so-called Japanese Restaurant “wanna-be” entrepreneur at Plaza OUG.