{"id":16583,"date":"2025-03-04T14:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T14:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/restaurantsbrighton.co.uk\/jobs\/?p=16583"},"modified":"2025-04-10T09:02:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T08:02:01","slug":"serving-everyone-the-role-of-restaurants-in-embracing-diversity-and-inclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restaurantsbrighton.co.uk\/jobs\/blog\/serving-everyone-the-role-of-restaurants-in-embracing-diversity-and-inclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Serving Everyone: The Role of Restaurants in Embracing Diversity and Inclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: This article was written and provided by Mo Kanjilal, Watch This Sp_ce<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Restaurants serve more than just food – they provide an experience that can either help people feel welcomed or not. The menu served includes the customer experience, the team, the environment, and the culture of the place when people visit. This goes beyond who is employed in restaurants and cafes. This is about the whole experience for anyone visiting a venue. How do people feel when they arrive? What is the experience like for them when they are there? And what is the lasting impression?<\/span><\/p>\n

Hospitality venues serve communities, customers, suppliers, and their employees who all come from different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences. So, embracing diversity and inclusion is not just a social responsibility but also a business necessity. People go to restaurants and cafes for a treat, so they need to feel that they are welcomed and included when they visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

People will show you through their behaviour what they really think, if people feel welcomed, they will be back. They might write a review and they are very likely to recommend the place to people they know. On the flip side, if people do not feel welcomed, they will be quick to tell people about their experience, and perhaps write a negative review. Something restaurant, caf\u00e9 and hotel owners are so aware of, as this can influence other people into making their decisions about where to spend their money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\"Mo<\/h2>\n

Biases and choices<\/b><\/h2>\n

Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all biased. This influences how we make our choices. Our brains are faced with 11 million pieces of information swirling around our heads at any moment. That is a lot of information to process. The thing is, our brains can only process 40 out of that 11 million. So, what happens? Well, our brains form patterns, and rely on assumptions and behaviours that we learn. We all do this and form patterns in our minds as we go through life. If we have a good experience somewhere, it starts to form a bias in our minds about that place. So, we favour that place, and recommend it to people, even though there could be many different places we could go instead. These biases take different forms. So, it could be recency bias, where we favour the most recent good experience we had somewhere. It could also form a negative bias, if there is somewhere we love, but the next time we go there, we experience something negative, it could put us off somewhere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The forms of biases that are in the recipe for how we choose hospitality venues is made up of our patterns in our minds, our experiences there, and we are very influenced by other people too. Many people will take a recommendation from someone they trust over reading a menu or description.\u00a0 This all down to the biases in our minds and how much we can value and appreciate differences.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Watch Mo\u2019s Tedx Brighton talk about valuing differences<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/iPDsC4LPPc0<\/span><\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

Making the Dining Experience Inclusive<\/b><\/h2>\n

How can restaurants ensure their customer experience is welcoming to all to help people to feel included. Some ways you can work on to achieve this could include:<\/span><\/p>\n