Gratitude #56: Being a regular
I make a habit of not being too uppity when trying out a new cafe. In fact, I’ll deliberately make less effort with the staff in my first visit to a cafe than I normally would in order to seem like I’m not too eager to make a good impression. The answers are short and banter minimal because staff members get sick of customers trying to be too funny to them all the time. So the play here is to be memorable in your sheer blandness.
But some time will pass and a rapport will start to form between you and certain members of the team and life at the cafe starts to improve gradually. Being a ‘regular’ at a cafe requires playing the long game. I’ve found the ultimate foundation for a quality cafe reputation is a month or two of aloofness with a smattering of low-key wisecracks, and when an organic opening appears for you to be a legend you’ve got to take it.
I’ll briefly mention the fairly rare situation of someone being genuinely hilarious from day one. This usually can’t be premeditated because if you go in there with a couple of your go-to ordering zingers and bill-settling lols the staff will make you from a mile away. If you manage, however, to pull an audible and improvise your way to some genuine staff ROFLs you’ve saved yourself a couple of months.
The main lesson a cafe owner can take from my over-analysing is to turn customers into regulars earlier by hiring generally affable staff members, or failing that you should instruct your staff to give customers a chance to be funny. It could be something as small as asking the customer what they’re up to for the rest of the day or how their weekend was. If a customer has a book in her hands the easiest way to generate some banter is by actually asking what she’s reading. Asking something other than “Cheque, Savings or Credit?” means customers can be themselves for 10 seconds. What with the Internet and the Tinders and The Face Books they’d be crazy not to want a conversation with a sexy real human like yourself.
