People
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Tomas Herd
Service Is a Performance
On the choreography of a full room, and why our staff rehearse like a cast.
The room as a stage
A full dining room is choreography. Forty people, six staff, one pass, and a window of about three hours in which everything either flows or collapses. We treat it the way a theatre treats a run.
Rehearsal
Every Tuesday at four the floor team walks the service without guests. Where the trays land, who covers the corner table, which two people must never cross at the pass. It feels absurd for the first twenty minutes and then it feels obvious.
Guests never see any of it, which is the point. The only evidence is that nothing goes wrong.