Magician techniques can improve restaurant recommendations

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 1:10:45

   So when I was a kid, like every kid, you get a box, a magic box that has like the rope that with the little peanut in it that like holds, yeah, the hidden coin thing, the roller that does the dollar bills on it. And there's somewhere exists a video of me that my mom put me in a little tuxedo and I did the show for like the relatives and everything went wrong. That's why, you know, it's so great. But of course I'm like doing the tricks and I'm like, oh, don't worry about that thing, right?

2. 1:11:14

   And I'm like five or whatever, right? And so like almost everyone, that sense of wonder and awe and all that is something that as you build out experiences for people, magic is a wonderful thing to study, but it's also a wonderful thing to study in everything else, marketing, sales, and all of that, because you know for sure that I can't change a $10 bill into a $100 bill, right? You know that. Everyone knows that.

3. 1:11:42

   And then when you do it, if you do it really well, it will appear as though you did it, even though intellectually you have to suspend your disbelief. And so how do magicians do that? Well, you know that they control your attention. and where they stand where they look at you where they look you know not at you all those things are cues that are incredibly practiced they know exactly when they're working and when they're not and as you're building out experiences for people in restaurants anywhere else if you read the books on restaurants i just hate them i don't like them at all but if you read a book on written by a magician to say the effect they always start with the effect the effect is that the bill will become a hundred dollar bill okay that's the effect and then they go through the method the method is well

4. 1:12:41

   you've already got the hundred and you're gonna fold it like this then there's beyond the method the craft of like of what you're doing so the presentation the president yeah yeah if you read 150 year old books on magic from anywhere in the world they have all of these wonderful things like well if you want to gain people's trust you don't sit across from them or stand across from them you will stand next to them so if i present this to you and i'm standing here and i just go this is the best water in the world you know whatever like you're gonna be going like a guy's selling me water if i go around the other side and stand next to you so we're both looking at it first of all i could be doing a lot of different things there i could be signaling someone hey bring more water he's a little low i can be doing all sorts of stuff in a restaurant

5. 1:13:29

   you know your attention can't be on the water and behind me at the same time right so i kind of own that space back there so in in reading these things and thinking about alinea it wasn't just the callbacks and it wasn't just hey we need to make a dish that transmogrifies into something else or whatever we're going to start doing service in a way where we are on the side of the diner we're going to present some weird stuff we're going to present a dish that look that's hanging at the end of a skewer that makes you uncomfortable because you know you're supposed to kind of right do that and one of the things that we kind of realized was if you if you're going to have people eat something that looks like glass you should put it on a plate and if you're going to have something at the end of a skewer that's bobbing around it looks like you have to give it

6. 1:14:21

   head you probably should make it taste like cherry pie you can't like challenge people in two directions but the way that you describe that should also not be adversarial it should be like you're on the same team. hey, and the waiter comes around to the side, they look at it with you, and they go, look what he's putting out today. Now, he might have been putting it out for three months. Right, right, right.

7. 1:14:45

   But, you know, it's like, and that was a very staid thing. You have to be on the team, not team restaurant, team customer, team diner. Right. And with that story with the wine, you know, this one table of six, like we did wine pairings mostly, this one table of six wanted to buy all the wrong wine okay so big red wines don't really go with our food you're probably not going to sell mariesling if you're some and you just go like oh you're they're gonna buy a thousand dollar bottle of the wrong wine well you want to sell the thousand dollar bottle but where we're at we're like well you probably shouldn't get that that's not really appropriate for the food you don't want to say that don't embarrass the person you don't want to say that and so you know i'm looking and i'm looking at their shoes and the wife's wearing

8. 1:15:32

   brand new lebatons how do you know they're brand new well the red is absolutely perfect those things cost about 1200 bucks and that guy over there's got a watch that's a 55 000 watch that guy who's actually ordering the stuff is aspirational because he doesn't have any of that so he's either the really rich guy because the really rich guys don't do any of that shit or he's trying to impress these people and it felt like that so rather than say to them you probably shouldn't get that i walk over i'm like hey i'm nick i love wine i'm the owner of the place what did you order and i go what would you drink on tuesday with a pizza now i know he's probably not gonna answer honestly right right i go all that goes really well with the pizza i said you know like we've got a couple like you know you could probably get two or three

9. 1:16:24

   bottles for what you ordered but they'll pair wonderfully just like that that super tuscan with that pizza you'll get like a better value and i didn't make it about him i didn't cut down the spend at all right and then the waiter was like that's amazing like how did you do that i'm like she's wearing labboutins that guy's got a 55 000 like you have to know what you're looking at right and that's what magicians do all the time they they they look at their environment they assess their environment and then they put themselves into that environment in a way that accomplishes the effect and so i got really into reading that stuff the theme here of going okay i see an effect