When we first opened our doors as innkeepers in June of 2000 there were some things we expected, and a lot we didn't. We expected, correctly, that our guests would mostly carry cell phones, so we did not put phones in the rooms. We expected, correctly, that a lot of our guests would come from the New York City area. We did not expect the fact that we named our rooms after neighborhoods in Brooklyn would actually make people decide to book with us. That was a happy surprise. And we did not expect that we would wind up answering the same four questions every single day.
And what are the questions?
1) How old is the house/what year was it built? (Around 135 years/1871.)
2) Was it an inn before you bought it or did you renovate? (Yes*)
3) Has it always been your dream to own a Bed & Breakfast? (No, it was a way to live in a place we love but where the major industry is tourism & hospitality. That is not to say we don't like what we're doing, we just didn't have that romantic dreamy thing going for years and years; we knew it was going to be a lot of hard work.)
4) What are the winters like? (Peaceful.)
There are other questions that come up a lot, but these are the ones nearly every single guest asks us. Not that we mind answering them, we enjoy chatting with our guests, but sometimes it's hard not to smile when these questions do crop up.
* The woman from whom we purchased the house did run what we call a "loose interpretation" of a B&B, which is to say she rented rooms and prepared breakfast for her guests, but all the rooms shared just one bathroom. We did the renovation that gave every room its own bathroom and generally brought the place up to modern standards... and codes.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Lima Beans
All new ventures come with a learning curve. Over the years we've been in business we've tweaked many of the things we do to make them work better. Sometimes it's to make them work better for us, other times it's for our guests. Actually, that's for us as well, since anything that makes our guests happier is good for us and the business.
One of the things that has evolved and changed over the years is our check-in speech. We've added or deleted certain things when it's become clear that guests weren't understanding what we were asking or telling them. Part of the procedure when checking in new guests is to tell them what time breakfast is, then find out what they drink in the morning (coffee, tea or decaf coffee) so we know what and how much to prepare. We also at this point ask about dietary restrictions. What we're trying to find out is whether our guests have specific food allergies or are vegetarians, we're actually not that interested in what foods our guests don't like to eat or if they're on the diet du jour. We serve breakfast as a buffet so if there's something a guest doesn't like or isn't supposed to eat it's easy enough to avoid.
Over the years we tried phrasing the question a number of different ways because guests were giving us answers that made it clear they didn't understand the question correctly. The number one answer I seemed to get when I asked the question the wrong way was "I don't like lima beans". My husband seemed to get "I don't like raw shellfish". Okay, folks... we're not serving lima beans and raw shellfish for breakfast. We want to know if something we might actually use in a breakfast dish is going to make you sick or kill you!
We have finally settled on "Do you have any dietary restrictions that might affect breakfast?" as the phrasing that most often gets us the answers we are looking for. I'm grateful to add that the vast majority of our guests don't have any serious dietary issues. The few that do, we've been able to handle easily. Vegetarian? No problem as long as you eat cheese & eggs. Nut allergies? We use nuts only rarely and we cook & bake from scratch so we know what's in things. Wheat gluten issues? We have a very good friend with Celiac disease, so we understand that, too.
Of course it would be lovely if guests could let us know about issues like this in advance of their stay, and a few do. But as long as we know before we actually start cooking we can deal with almost anything. That's been part of the learning curve as well. We rarely stress out about dietary restrictions because we've been doing this long enough to know how to adapt our dishes when necessary.
One of the things that has evolved and changed over the years is our check-in speech. We've added or deleted certain things when it's become clear that guests weren't understanding what we were asking or telling them. Part of the procedure when checking in new guests is to tell them what time breakfast is, then find out what they drink in the morning (coffee, tea or decaf coffee) so we know what and how much to prepare. We also at this point ask about dietary restrictions. What we're trying to find out is whether our guests have specific food allergies or are vegetarians, we're actually not that interested in what foods our guests don't like to eat or if they're on the diet du jour. We serve breakfast as a buffet so if there's something a guest doesn't like or isn't supposed to eat it's easy enough to avoid.
Over the years we tried phrasing the question a number of different ways because guests were giving us answers that made it clear they didn't understand the question correctly. The number one answer I seemed to get when I asked the question the wrong way was "I don't like lima beans". My husband seemed to get "I don't like raw shellfish". Okay, folks... we're not serving lima beans and raw shellfish for breakfast. We want to know if something we might actually use in a breakfast dish is going to make you sick or kill you!
We have finally settled on "Do you have any dietary restrictions that might affect breakfast?" as the phrasing that most often gets us the answers we are looking for. I'm grateful to add that the vast majority of our guests don't have any serious dietary issues. The few that do, we've been able to handle easily. Vegetarian? No problem as long as you eat cheese & eggs. Nut allergies? We use nuts only rarely and we cook & bake from scratch so we know what's in things. Wheat gluten issues? We have a very good friend with Celiac disease, so we understand that, too.
Of course it would be lovely if guests could let us know about issues like this in advance of their stay, and a few do. But as long as we know before we actually start cooking we can deal with almost anything. That's been part of the learning curve as well. We rarely stress out about dietary restrictions because we've been doing this long enough to know how to adapt our dishes when necessary.
Monday, June 4, 2007
The Kindness of Strangers
I regularly communicate with a number of other innkeepers from around the country. A story from this B&B in Pennsylvania was so wonderful I wanted to share it here (with permission from the other innkeeper, of course).
We have guests on their honeymoon this weekend. Groom is over from Iraq for a few days to attend the wedding before he goes back (Army...patrols the streets). Two different rooms came to me privately after breakfast this morning asking to put a night for the honeymoon couple on their bill. Honestly, I still tear up thinking about the generosity of our guests. The honeymooners were stunned! I will, of course, be writing to each of the guests to tell them how surprised and grateful the honeymooners were at these "random acts of kindness."
We have guests on their honeymoon this weekend. Groom is over from Iraq for a few days to attend the wedding before he goes back (Army...patrols the streets). Two different rooms came to me privately after breakfast this morning asking to put a night for the honeymoon couple on their bill. Honestly, I still tear up thinking about the generosity of our guests. The honeymooners were stunned! I will, of course, be writing to each of the guests to tell them how surprised and grateful the honeymooners were at these "random acts of kindness."
Friday, June 1, 2007
Help!
The first year we were in business I did all the housekeeping myself. My husband pitched in a lot with the laundry and prepped breakfast with me almost every morning, but housekeeping was pretty much mine alone. In some ways it was necessary. I learned a lot about what cleaning products worked best, the most efficient way to clean our showers (and which soaps I dreaded finding in them), how to fold sheets in such a way as to minimize the number of trips I had to make around a bed when I put the sheets on alone and so forth. This was all to the good, but it was a very long summer.
Since then I've tried to get help at least a few days a week with cleaning during the busy season. Some years I've had pretty good luck with consistent help but most years it's a moving target and I find I have to hire and train three, four or even five kids over the course of a summer. Some have only ended up working for a week or two.
Last year I had two local highschool kids working for me. One of them is unable to continue this summer because her family is moving right after school gets out at the end of this month but I thought the other would be with me all summer and perhaps for the next couple of years until she graduated. She's a great worker and pleasant to be around and I was planning to train her to do a lot more, even to make her my assistant. Alas, it is not to be. On Wednesday she failed to show up for work and despite my pleas to call and discuss the problem and her future employment with me she has maintained radio silence. Her mom says she's embarrassed, but she (the mom) understands that two days is long enough to wait and that I'm done.
I'm sorry about loosing her; she's had some difficulties at home over the past month but until this week has been very reliable about showing up for work. An apology and a plan for getting here in the future was all that was required but I guess at sixteen embarrassment is still considered a terminal illness. I'm also sorry that I now have to start from scratch finding help and training them. This is going to be a busier than usual June and now it's going to be that much more difficult.
Since then I've tried to get help at least a few days a week with cleaning during the busy season. Some years I've had pretty good luck with consistent help but most years it's a moving target and I find I have to hire and train three, four or even five kids over the course of a summer. Some have only ended up working for a week or two.
Last year I had two local highschool kids working for me. One of them is unable to continue this summer because her family is moving right after school gets out at the end of this month but I thought the other would be with me all summer and perhaps for the next couple of years until she graduated. She's a great worker and pleasant to be around and I was planning to train her to do a lot more, even to make her my assistant. Alas, it is not to be. On Wednesday she failed to show up for work and despite my pleas to call and discuss the problem and her future employment with me she has maintained radio silence. Her mom says she's embarrassed, but she (the mom) understands that two days is long enough to wait and that I'm done.
I'm sorry about loosing her; she's had some difficulties at home over the past month but until this week has been very reliable about showing up for work. An apology and a plan for getting here in the future was all that was required but I guess at sixteen embarrassment is still considered a terminal illness. I'm also sorry that I now have to start from scratch finding help and training them. This is going to be a busier than usual June and now it's going to be that much more difficult.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Interruptions, the Catch-22 of innkeeping
Between the phone and the doorbell, my day is one of interruptions. This is both bad and good. While they can make it difficult to get anything done, a lot of those interruptions mean reservations.
Such is the life of an innkeeper. I suppose many other types of business owners have this same problem, people who have shops, restaurants, galleries, any business that deals with the general public rather than select clients. We spend a lot of time, energy and money making our place of business look attractive and welcoming, both physically and with our web presence. I suppose we should not be surprised when people want to come in and look around or call to ask questions. In fact, we both need and want them to do so. It just makes it difficult at times to get through some of the non-guest tasks that need to be done.
Such is the life of an innkeeper. I suppose many other types of business owners have this same problem, people who have shops, restaurants, galleries, any business that deals with the general public rather than select clients. We spend a lot of time, energy and money making our place of business look attractive and welcoming, both physically and with our web presence. I suppose we should not be surprised when people want to come in and look around or call to ask questions. In fact, we both need and want them to do so. It just makes it difficult at times to get through some of the non-guest tasks that need to be done.
New Website
We've just completed a major website redesign. This one was a complete overhaul; we basically have a completely new site. Our old site was done by someone local and I think he did a nice job, he was lovely to work with and he has a good sense of design, but the internet world has changed substantially and a good lodging website must be optimized to come up on the first page of a search. Our new designers are a continent away so I've never met them, but they specialize in lodging sites and are much more tech-savvy than our local designer.
I guess there was something about the old site that really appealed to some people; we got compliments on it all the time. Unfortunately it wasn't doing anything for us as far as search engine rankings. I'm really hoping the new site speaks to people as much. If anyone is reading this, please go to our site at http://www.stonelioncapecod.com/ and let me know what you think.
I guess there was something about the old site that really appealed to some people; we got compliments on it all the time. Unfortunately it wasn't doing anything for us as far as search engine rankings. I'm really hoping the new site speaks to people as much. If anyone is reading this, please go to our site at http://www.stonelioncapecod.com/ and let me know what you think.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Surprises
The first surprise came yesterday. The high school gal who cleans for me was helping me in the garden. We were cleaning the skeletonized remains of last year's petunias out of a raised planter bed when she said "Hey, there's some sort of animal nest over here!" I looked and there was indeed a tangle of dry stems and sticks. Thinking it was a bird's nest that had blown out of a tree, I picked it up. It was much looser than a bird nest and I noticed it had a lot of grey fuzz woven into the structure. I poked around some more and found a hole and as I peered into it a little brown bunny head popped out of it! It popped back down and I saw more little brown bodies in there. I called my helper over and she fearlessly reached in and grabbed one - it was about the size of my fist. Another made a break for it and then I grabbed one. She grabbed two more and the last one also got away from us.
Rabbits are really not my favorite animals. They do tremendous damage to my garden every year and I can't seem to get rid of them. Left to me, the fate of these six little bunnies would have been... um... bleak? Lucky for them, my young employee offered to take them home. We found a 5 gallon bucket, easily caught the remaining two they are now bunking with her gunnea pig. I'll try to get a picture later in the week.
Surprise number two came this afternoon. I had come inside to change the laundry and the doorbell rang. I was expecting one couple to check in so I grabbed the clipboard with their information and headed for the door. There stood the man I worked for the last 4.5 years I lived in New York and his new fiancee. Honestly, I never really expected to see him again. Not that we didn't part on good terms, but I just never thought he'd make the drive this far out onto the Cape. Turns out his fiancee has some ties to Wellfleet so I may well see him again, but this kinda threw me.
Lucky for me I have had seven years of dealing with all sorts of people at my door. I just put on my best Innkeeper smile and recovered my composure pretty well. We had a nice visit, then they left to get some lunch and head into P-town. They did not ask for a room.
Rabbits are really not my favorite animals. They do tremendous damage to my garden every year and I can't seem to get rid of them. Left to me, the fate of these six little bunnies would have been... um... bleak? Lucky for them, my young employee offered to take them home. We found a 5 gallon bucket, easily caught the remaining two they are now bunking with her gunnea pig. I'll try to get a picture later in the week.
Surprise number two came this afternoon. I had come inside to change the laundry and the doorbell rang. I was expecting one couple to check in so I grabbed the clipboard with their information and headed for the door. There stood the man I worked for the last 4.5 years I lived in New York and his new fiancee. Honestly, I never really expected to see him again. Not that we didn't part on good terms, but I just never thought he'd make the drive this far out onto the Cape. Turns out his fiancee has some ties to Wellfleet so I may well see him again, but this kinda threw me.
Lucky for me I have had seven years of dealing with all sorts of people at my door. I just put on my best Innkeeper smile and recovered my composure pretty well. We had a nice visit, then they left to get some lunch and head into P-town. They did not ask for a room.
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