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Twitter Goodbye Ca’Fish, we hardly knew ya’!
By Tim
,
1 Comment
I recently had such a incredibly and unbelievably
bad experience trying to have brunch at Ca’Fish, a relatively new and virtually
customerless cafe on Istedgade, that I was inspired to pen the first entry on
my blog in quite some time. If you don't feel like reading an entertaining story, allow me to summerize: DON'T GO THERE!
Out came the owner whom I recognised
immediately, having passed by his cafe several hundred times in the past months
with him sitting in the window. To my astonishment, the owner immediately began
to repeat the same bullshit the waitress has just told me. Then, to my
increasing disbelief, he added in a number of unbelievable excuses to justify his
position.
These included:
Ca’Fish opened a few months ago with a simple
premise: good coffee and good fish. It is the only fish restaurant in the popular
Istedgade cafe quarter of Vesterbro in Copenhagen. A friend who loves trying new restaurants went there and told me it was worth a visit, as the food was affordable and outstanding.
Recently, I came across a 50% off brunch offer
for 2 on Groupon for Ca’Fish, so I bought one, thinking this would be a good
way to check it out one weekend.
This morning, rolling out of bed after an
evening of partying, provided exactly the sort of moment I envisioned for wandering
across the street to use our brunch voucher.
But where are the customers?
Now here’s the thing: Ca’Fish sits largely
empty day in and day out - utterly devoid of customers. I live 50m away and pass
by the place on average between 2-8 times each day. I know for an absolute fact
that there are VERY FEW customers ever visiting the place. The owner and his
family are normally found sitting in a booth in the back corner, chatting together
or looking bored.
Did you ever see the Seinfeld episode where
Jerry starts feeling sorry for the Pakastani restaurant across from his
apartment which never has any customers? Ca’Fish is that kind of place.
Here’s another more important thing worth
noting about Istedgade.
If ya' don't have customers, you really do suck...
Stroll along Istedgade any time of the day or
night, and the numerous cafes more often than not surprisingly chalk full of
people – even at unlikeliest times of the day (weekday mornings, Sunday and
Monday evenings, etc.). In other words, any cafe on Istedgade that isn’t
regularly filled with customers is almost 100% certainly doing something WRONG!
Yes, I’m talking to you Ca’Fish.
Which bring us to today’s experience. We
walked into an absolutely empty restaurant, there was but one other couple in
the place. I repeat: THE RESTAURANT WAS
EMPTY. There were no reservation tags on any tables.
Hello, goodbye!
The waitress arrived and the conversation went
like this:
Me: ”Hi, we purchased your Groupon offer for 2
brunches.” (There are 5 relatively standard brunch options to choose from on
the Ca’Fish menu.)
Waitress: ”Have you reserved a table?”
Me: (looking around the empty restaurant and
laughing in a friendly way) "No, we haven’t."
Waitress: "The Groupon offer is only valid with
a 24 hour advance reservation."
ME: (Staring at her in utter disbelief, and again
looking around the empty restaurant.) ”Are you seriously telling me that you
would rather us leave than allow us to use this offer - even if we didn’t
make a reservation?"
Waitress: ”Do you have the offer with you? I
can show you the terms.”
Me: "That’s not the point. I accept that we failed
to make a 24 hour advance booking, but given that your cafe is absolutely
empty, perhaps you could make an exception for us?" (I truely hadn't noticed the small print in the offer that said this was necessary - it was an honest mistake.)
Waitress: "No, we can’t do that."
Me: (Steam beginning to come out of my ears at
the stupidity of what is transpiring) ”So you are telling me you would rather
have 2 pissed off customers leave your empty restaurant, than to allow us to
use the Groupon voucher” (Note: as a Groupon offer, we had ALREADY PAID FOR OUR
BRUNCH!)
Waitress: ”Would you like me to get the
owner?”
Me: ”Absolutely!”
Customers? We don't want those!
There is no way the owner will allow 2 paying customers
to walk out of his restaurant, I thought to myself. That would be insane!
 |
| "You a bad man Jerry, a bad man!" |
- These are the terms we have agreed with Groupon (implying that somehow, even as the owner, he couldn't do anything about it!)
- We have to be able to plan our food ordering. (Yes, but if were just normal walk-in customers, you would still need to have enough food on hand to serve us, right…)
I wanted to be clear: was he telling me that
he would not be paid by Groupon if he served us without a 24 hour
advance booking. I knew full well he would be paid regardless.
”Well yes, he would still get paid,” came the
reply, ”but those were the terms he agreed with Groupon.”
I decided I would make one last appeal to his common sense (clearly
unncessary at this point, but I simply couldn’t
help myself!).
Small business consulting lessons for moronic idiots
I mentioned that I was a small business
owner myself (100% true – www.SomethingPersonal.dk) and that I also occasionally
ran Groupon offers (also 100% true), so I understood exactly how it worked. Therefore
I understood that the most important thing was to get customers into our shop
and give them great service, in order to increase the likelihood they would
return (I mean, otherwise why bother running a Groupon offer!!???).
But it was to no avail.
I now understood fully that I was dealing with
a hopeless cafe owner who would NEVER succeed in running a popular and
profitable cafe, and that inevitably Ca’Fish would close down for lack of customers and lack of
profits. I almost felt sorry for him.
And so we left the cafe, our stomachs rumbling
with hunger, pondering how it could possibly be that an owner would seriously run
a cafe on the premise that turning-away (and in the process pissing-off)
whatever few potential customers actually turned up, was a smart, long-sighted
strategy for running a business.
A short post-script...
Incidently, after having brunch at another
nearby, bustling cafe with great service, I walked by Ca’Fish, now about 1 hour after this incident had transpired. There was all of 3 tables of people. In other words, the restaurant was still about
80% empty.
What more needs to be said? So long Ca’Fish,
we hardly knew ya’!
Thanks Tim for this entertaining read! I'm eager to see that Seinfeld episode again, to prolong the laugh...