If you’ve watched any of the cooking and food-based shows all over TV for the last few years, you could be forgiven for thinking that restaurants are quite unforgiving and angry places to work at. Tempers flare in the kitchen, the waiting stuff scurry to-and-fro while the manager watches on, ready to pounce on any mistakes in the high-pressure environment of a dinner service.
Breaking the mold, however, is Hawksmoor Manchester. This popular and high-quality steakhouse appears to be as warm and open-hearted to its staff as it is to its customers, with a costly mix-up by one manager resulting not in a fit of rage and a swift termination, but a “chin up, we all make mistakes.”
Image credits: Jeff Marquis
It happened when a group of three businessmen sat down for a meal and decided to order a bottle of roughly $300 wine to accompany it. Not a cheap option by any means! However, they got far more than what they bargained for and were instead the lucky recipients of a rare and costly bottle of Chateau le Pin Pomerol, a Bordeaux that is “among the top 10 most highly rated Pomerol wines,” according to wine-searcher.com.
Image credits: HawksmoorMCR
Apparently, it was a manager that grabbed the wrong bottle and gave it to the server to pour. Hawksmoor tweeted a picture of the bottles side-by-side in the aftermath, with a slightly tongue-in-cheek show of support for the poor manager, who was understandably mortified by her mistake.
Image credits: HawksmoorMCR
“When they told me about it I thought, ‘Oooh that is an expensive mistake,’” Beckett, the restaurant owner said in an interview with The Washington Post. “At the same time, I thought it’s the same kind of I’m-not-concentrating thing I would do. It’s just an unfortunate human error.”
“The restaurant industry is a place where you can get hammered for making mistakes, and we don’t want to be that place.”
Image credits: LaurasBakery
The incident, while costly in the short term, has actually provided the restaurant with the kind positive exposure that money can’t buy. The good-natured and funny social media posts by the restaurant have since gone viral, with people genuinely impressed by Beckett’s unwavering support for the manager, who he described as an “otherwise brilliant employee.”
Image credits: HawksmoorMCR
Other talking points included the fact that such expensive wine exists in the first place, whether it’s worth it (the customers didn’t even notice the difference in quality?) and the social values of an establishment selling such a luxury item while homelessness remains a problem in the city.
Such questions only gave another opportunity for the restaurant to prove its standing among its staff, customers and the community as a whole.
Image credits: HawksmoorMCR
What do you think? Did the restaurant handle the situation well? Do you notice the difference in the quality of expensive wines? Or is it the rarity you are paying for? Scroll down below to read the rest of the responses, and let us know what you think in the comments!
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