Recently in customer service Category

The secret to running a successful restaurant is to understand what customers want - or do not want - and the Good Food Guide has identified diners' ultimate pet hates.

Here's the top 10:

Restaurants being unclear about their charges. There's nothing worse than finding out that basket of bread you gobbled down wasn't for free.

Over-attentive waiting staff. Good service is the most important thing next to the food but there are limits and waiters frequently topping up wine glasses or interrupting conversations can really ruin a meal.

Asking diners to add a tip when a service charge has already been added. A big no no - nobody likes to be charged twice.

 You sometimes hear managers talking about their staff as if they're criminals - 'all that pilfering that goes on, nothing I can do about it'. Hands in the till, they're all at it, apparently.

Well, now guests can be served by real-life criminals - convicted juveniles at the Neudeck jail in Munich.

The £11.5m conversion of the prison building into a four-star hotel will involve the recruitment of "teenagers and young people who have only otherwise known violence, crime, drugs and a lack of orientation", according to Hildegard Denninger of one of the project's sponsors, Biss magazine.

In echoes of a certain person's restaurant training project, 15 youngsters will be trained by full-time staff. Some of those involved in running the programme will include social workers.

Our advice? Probably best not order a Bloody Mary.

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Charlton House chief executive Robyn Jones has got in touch with Kitchen Rat to share an amusing tale of customer service that went a little too far.

"On arriving at the Vineyard at Stockcross (the two Michelin-starred restaurant in Berkshire) last Friday for a dinner with friends, we were welcomed by the front of house manager wishing to relieve us of our warm winter coats," Jones recalls. So far so good.

"I handed over my shawl whereby he just stood and waited for me to pass over my next layer." Here's where standards begin to drop.

"I was in fact wearing a 'coat dress' with very little underneath!" Jones adds. "I declined the gentleman's kind offer but did wonder whether the Friday night entertainment had failed to show?!"

Vineyard MD Andrew McKenzie has admitted the operation's business model will have to be more flexible to cope with the recession, but we're not sure naked customers is the way forward.