Generally, Mother’s Day is the biggest day of the year in resataurants. Of course, in Lowell, there are ever-present and pleasant anomolies such as Winterfest and Folk Festival that challenge Mother’s Day for top honors. But COMBINED between both ‘Stones…HANDS DOWN!
This year, for the 1st time ever, we served over 1,000 in the same day. Both restaurants did nearly 400 brunches, and Moonstones just recorded a record breaking week after 4 years–then broke the new record one week later! Great stuff.
And, of course, how does that happen? Managers and chefs and a staff of nearly 100 bust their ass! Yesterday morning I walked into Moonstones at 7am with fresh bagels for the staff (Bagel Alley, Nashua…the very best bagels north of Brooklyn, south of heaven!) and there was sous-chef Tiffani Natisnky blasting WBCN (or was it WAAF?) getting the place set up by herself. As humble as Tiffani is, when I asked “You alone?” She said, yes, “but all those guys worked late.” Though a statement of fact, truth is, you don’t need a whole lot more than Tiffani to get the thing staged. She rocks.
Over at Cobblestones half an hour later, the staff was “business as usual”, setting up for our 19th consecutive Mother’s Day Brunch. That’s right…next year…#20. (No wonder I felt so old last night…after spending half the time as the staff, doing 10% as much!!)
All and all, it was a great day with hundreds of thrilled customers and only a few “temporarily misplaced reservations” and disappointed guests–one who did not accept the “Too busy for menu changes” policy that was put in place . This policy was to serve the greater good of the whole–as when you are serving hundreds of guests, the “picky eaters” tend to mess things up for the rest. When I tried to explain this to Mr. “all I can eat is poached eggs”, that we didn’t even have poaching liquid simmering, he replied “If I have to, I will go back there and show the chefs how to do poached eggs.” For his own safety–the chef’s tolerance level was tested on this day–I discouraged his trip to the kitchen and told him we would figure something out.
We did. 🙂
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