It is interesting to see how a buffet concept works. Especially in a restaurant that set their place for a buffet just for some occasion. 2 days ago, me and my wife went to a buffet in IKEA. We hoped to have the dishes that we like to be served in the buffet such as Swedish meatball, pasta and chicken wings. If you love salmon dishes, you would have enjoyed it very much because it was served a lot. They are not stingy in providing the best of the food. As for the meatball and chicken wings, I don’t think it’s the usual meatball that we ate but it’s still good. And instead of chicken wings, we had winglets. Different than usual, but we love it too.

As I was waiting in the queue to the buffet line, I was thinking of what we can apply in the real life. I hope what I saw is not too far fetched or out of imagination. I will share what i thought we can do in the perspective of the producer (the one who provide the service or product) Here are my top 4 take of what we can learn from the service provider:

1. Know what the customer wants and provide it fast.
In a buffet, it is easy to know what is the favorite dishes and see when is the right time to top up. They did a great job in maintaining the food so that we didn’t wait long for the food when it almost finished. The waiters are really attentive in every dishes so that they can quickly refill or restock the food.

It made me thinking that if you want to provide something, no matter service or product, first thing to do is to bring your product to be serve. It might be harder to gauge what works for service provider, but keep watching on what works and provide or enhance on that. I believe that the audience or the consumer know what they want. Our job as the producer is to answer what they need.

2. Plan the floor plan.
If you are a visual person, I’m sure it is easier to be able to see the space provided so that you can plan better on what to do. IKEA did really good job in this area. I only realize that their restaurant is big but not big enough. They really able to maximize the place so that people can enjoy the food without feeling cramp. The seating arrangement was just nice. It means that you don’t have much space to move, but you still able to move enough so that you don’t feel crammed. Although at the beginning, it takes longer time for us to get the food because everyone was scheduled at the same time and they only have 2 buffet line. It took us for about 20-30 minutes to get the food. It is good in a sense that the flow was clear. we don’t need to guess on what to do, it was situated so that we know what to do next.

In virtual world, it’s not easy to make such arrangement. But if you have physical space, you might want to consider on what works best for the audience or customer. Of course, you still need to make some profit out of your service, but if it has sacrifice the comfort of your customer, it might hurt on your business. As for me who just try to think on a virtual service, I want to think on how to plan better on what to write. At the moment, I still don’t have much clear direction on what to write next. By doing this small planning, I think, it will help me to plan better on what to write next and to prepare the content efficiently. The practical thing that I learned is on how to set the expectation and on how to arrange your “platform” so that people know what to do. It doesn’t matter whether you have physical or virtual space, but by preparing what you can will help people to familiar quickly on what you have to offer.

3. It is an art to know when and how much to serve
I got a chance to look at the employee who were really reactive. at the 1st point, you see how they are really focus and try to serve better. but they took the same assertiveness towards the end of the buffet also. Although this is really good because they showed that they really want to serve the best, but at the end, I think they provide with too much food for us to take. I’m sure that even the intention was good, too much left over might cause more headache than what they have expect. But I’m not sure what their strategy was. I’m just thinking as a customer who just thinking to have just enough no more or less to reduce food wastages.

But I really wish I can do that in what I’m doing. Knowing when to provide a blog content is an art. There are a lot more blog today than ever. I don’t know what’s the best time to post my content so that you can read my content. I hope with the time that i take to provide this blog suits your timing and I’m really greatful for your time reading my post. Knowing when to post is one thing and how much to serve is another thing. There’s no hard rule on how much you want to serve. That’s why it’s an art. My point of view might be only true for me and it might not work for you. What I want you and me to remember is that, whatever you have decided now, it’s not permanent. it’s okay to do differently. The important thing is to inform your customer first. So that they are not surprised by the changes.

4. Know the limit
We stayed until the closing time. Remember at the beginning that they are really attentive in serving the food? They did it really good, but I don’t think they notice on the time. Even after I notice that less people are going back to the buffet table, they still prepare the food with the same amount like the beginning even there’s no one new people and people has almost had their fill. I felt that it was wasteful to see those food laying on the serving plates. I’m not sure how’s the usual practice in here, but I assumed it was similar with my experience working part time in the college’s dormitory. We threw all left over to the food processor at closing time. And knowing that in some other part of the world have a hard time to find something to eat, it just break my heart.

In blogging or service world, it is really good to be able to provide more to the people. In the buffet I feel greatful to be able to see on how much is enough. There are some service provider that send a lot of information and/or offers to you many times in a day. I know that I subscribe to those service (especially those deals offer), but having too many information sent to my inbox is too much. I will mark it as spam. It might be similar to your case also. Your audiences are the important factor. They are a good indicator on what works or not works. No matter how good your service is, if you provide too much, it might be considered not useful for others. Again, there’s no fix rule on what to serve or how much to serve, the idea is to know what you can and can’t offer. So at in this point, there might be 2 things that we can do.
a. Learn new things so that you can provide with different solution, or
b. Fine tune what we provide so that it can be more helpful for others.

Those are the 4 things that I learn from the “provider” side. On the next blog, I’ll let you know what did I learn on the consumer side. I hope it will a great experience for you too as it is for me.

If you are a service/product provider, what other things that we can do to provide better things?