The Mystery Shopping Restaurant Bind Part I (Anecdote/Ask The Coach)

Hi All--

This time we have a story from a "Guest Coach"--Ellen In Ohio, who was kind enough to share her story from a recent restaurant shop with all of us. Enjoy!

I had signed up to do a restaurant shop at a national restaurant chain (not fast food). I don't really like to do restaurant shops because they don't usually pay a fee, only reimbursement. But when the scheduler called me, he sounded so desperate, so I thought I'd schedule a fun lunch out for a friend who works near the location and myself. I got the assignment and planned to meet my friend at the restaurant. The shop guidelines stated that you have to have two adults in your party, and must order 2 entrees.

I got to the restaurant and my friend wasn't there yet, so I got a table and waited for her. She called me on my cell phone and told me that she had a HUGE proposal due that afternoon and that she was frantically trying to get it finished. She was definitely going to be late and maybe not even make it at all.

So, my problem was what to do about the shop? I couldn't just grab someone who was aimlessly walking around the restaurant and ask them to join me for lunch!

Thinking quickly, I told the server that my friend was running late. I asked him if I could go ahead and order for both of us, and asked him to hold her salad entree in the kitchen until she arrived. Unfortunately, since my friend never showed up, I asked him if he'd make her salad "to go". I took the salad to her at her office and helped her get her proposal together while she ate the salad. Then, I got her comments on the food quality so I could use them in my report.

My next dilemma was how to handle the report.

Note From Coach Melanie:

Ellen wrote to me to ask me my thoughts on what she should do about the report. She was leaning towards coming clean with the scheduler about what happened. Here's what I told her:

You have two choices as I see it. Honesty, which is almost always the best policy. Technically you did follow guidelines as you had two people involved and two entrees ordered, so it should work unless the mystery shopping company is quite hard-nosed. I think you did everything possible under the circumstances and did a great job of thinking on your feet.

Two, you could tell a white lie and act like the person was there the whole time and fill in all the information you gathered between the restaurant and her later comments on the shop report as if she actually ate lunch at the restaurant with you. I would recommend number one.

Next post--I'll tell you what Ellen actually did and how it all turned out!

Have a great day and happy shopping!

Taking the mystery out of professional mystery shopping--Melanie Jordan http://www.mysteryshoppercoach.com

Copyright 2005 Melanie R. Jordan E-Publishing