TRADTIONAL CATERING BELOW STANDARDS (PAGE 29)

Service providers, in traditional catering sector in the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolitan Area, seriously lack the expertise required when it comes to customer care.
At the moment, there is a complete paradigm shift in the food people consume. Many in the corporate as well as the informal sector find their way to various fufu, banku and tilapia joints as well as other traditional food joints where palatable Ghanaian dishes are served.
However, the shift to the traditional dishes is not receiving the corresponding service delivery from the service providers in the sector.
At the premises of some of these service providers, the soup is so diluted while others use activators used by hairdressers, which have the colour of liquid soap, for their customers to wash their hands. They also do not provide neat napkins. One can pour up to a handful of the liquid soap to wash his/her hands but it would not foam. These are some of the tactics some of these traditional caterers adopt to cut cost.
In some instances, a customer visits these food joints and would have to wait for more than 10 to 15 minutes before he or she is attended to.
At some of the restaurants, customers have to buy water after they have been served.
When this reporter went to eat banku and fried fish at a joint and drew the attention of the proprietor to the fact that the fish he had been served had gone bad she did not take kindly to the complaint until she came to taste the fish, and apologised.
At some joints a customer has to argue with waiters for adding a bottle of mineral water to his bill, because to him he is entitled to water, which the restaurant did not provide.
A customer told the Daily Graphic it was the duty of the restaurant to provide its customers with water. If the customer asks for mineral water then they are justified in adding the cost to the bill.
Another problem is that when a customer finishes eating, he will have to beg the waiters to come for their money, and it takes time for them to return the change, if there is the need.
When the old currency was in use customers did not give a waiter five thousand cedis as a tip, but now waiters are ripping their customers off with the polite words “please we don’t have change” after making the customer wait for many minutes.
The Principal officer at the regional office of the Ghana Tourist Board, Mr Michael Kpimgbi, described the situation as unfortunate and attributed the problem to lack of training for the waiters.
He said with the recent news of the oil find in the Western Region those in the hospitality industry should rather brace themselves up for big business, which could only materialise if the service providers put their houses in order.
“Those who take the satisfaction of the customer to heart sometimes come to us to design training for them, and as I am speaking to you some just left while others just employ anybody looking for job to serve without training,” he said.