New guests rarely know what is on the menu in advance, but occasionally will have read somewhere about one of our signature dishes and ask for it.
Repeat guests almost always have their hearts set on something and they always get it.
We can accomodate any dietary restriction and willingly do so if notified of it in advance. When folks spring on us, she'll do her best and is usually prepared, but we don't just drop everything and run to the store due to our rural location for some obscure items.
We don't do lots of substitutions of ingredients as she cooks the entrees but will omit anything someone doesn't like.
As someone else stated very aptly, breakfast is half the equation here and we don't want a single guest to go away not feeling totally satisfied with our efforts.
There is some risk to the way we offer breakfast, but considering my wife once owned a breakfast/lunch restaurant that served over 125 breakfasts each morning, the six to eight guests we host many days is a piece of cake for her.
One drawback we encountered just this morning is that some regulars can't ever decide between the two entrees so she'll make them a combo in smaller portions. We don't like doing it because it uses lots more pans, cleanup and juggling on the stove, but she does it and grumbles under her breath to me only a little.
Well, the new first time guests we also fed today saw the combos coming out and after ordering only one or the other, I can just bet what is going to happen tomorrow morning.
In fact, this past week has us really wondering just how valuable the handful of repeat guests we get are that receive a generous discount each year, but put us through our paces every minute of their stay and aren't very grateful or appreciative of the extra effort we expend for them.
Let me be perfectly clear, the overwhelming majority of our repeat guests are not like this, just a small handful.
When any of us get the same folks year after year doing the same thing every year and are less gracious, appreciative and in a few of our cases not even very friendly than brand new first time guests are, one has to wonder if being all booked up the next year isn't a sound approach on a few fronts.
For one, if its a really busy time which in this case it is for us, we stand the chance of booking the rooms to possibly much nicer, friendlier first time guests and probably not affording the size discount these folks have taken for granted. Second, we might enjoy the experience so much more than we have the last four years with these same folks which means a lot to us.
We're not in this just for the money and why fill up rooms in the busiest part of the high seson with folks you really wish would just go elsewhere?
These aren't "bad" guests, just not our preferred type of guest and not at all friendly or appreciative of all the extra effort they make us put out. The problem has always been that they book for an August stay in January in the dead of the winter and we've been gunshy to refuse them a room..