Press Kit

Press Kit for “How to be a Better Restaurant Customer” by Marta Daniels

 

Official Press Release
Contact: Marta Daniels marta@howrc.com

 

It’s 8 O’Clock and Date Night—Do You Know What Kind of Restaurant Experience You’re About to Have?

Oak Park, MI: It’s 8 O’clock—Do you know what kind or restaurant experience you’re about to have? How about the experience your date will have? Will you leave full and satisfied or disappointed with a bad taste in your mouth?

How would you feel if you found out that your bad experiences at restaurants in the past were probably your fault —that most likely you sabotaged your own dining experience!

According to ten year plus veteran server and server trainer Marta Daniels, this scenario is all-too-common. In a groundbreaking but highly readable new book, How to be a Better Restaurant Customer, Daniels reveals the insider knowledge necessary to get the best dining experience possible, whether you’re chowing down at a coney island, or noshing at a posh eatery.

Daniels, author of the popular website that spawned the hot new book (How to be a Better Restaurant Customer www.howrc.com), enjoys eating out herself.  She recognizes that the level of hospitality at an eating establishment plays a key role in the enjoyment factor for the guest, and that a smile should be integral part of any customer service uniform. The restaurant server is often the main (and sometimes the only) employee the guest interacts with, and the server is the coordinator of the dining experience. But Daniels suggests the transaction goes both ways-manners are something that everyone should have, not just servers, and servers, though intuitive, are not mind readers.

When, for example, a customer orders a dish without thoroughly reading the menu description and the item arrives with mushrooms (p. 23), Daniels feels that the guest is out of line if they go off on the server.  The server has no way of knowing that his/her guest hates mushrooms, and this is precisely why the menu contains such information.  When asked, Daniels is confident a good server can provide such crucial ingredient information to a guest, key words being ‘when asked’. Daniels is equally cogent on issues such as ordering drinks at the bar and dining in large parties.

How to be a Better Restaurant Customer, ISBN 978-1456346201, includes step by step insider advice that takes you from the door and back to the door a satisfied guest, comments and insight from other servers and restaurant customers, and humorous anecdotes from over ten years in the biz. The 158-page 5.5×8.5″ trade paperback is available directly from the publisher for $10 plus shipping at https://www.createspace.com/3501051 , or at Amazon.com and Barnesandnobles.com.

Journalists: to obtain a review copy and/or interview the author, please contact (Marta Daniels marta@howrc.com )

Author Marta Daniels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Sheet:

 

 

How to be a Better Restaurant Customer is a funny look at how people sabotage their own dining experiences when they go out to eat. Part One of this book takes you from the door to the door with dos and dont’s if you want to have a great time without screwing up your own meal or traumatizing your server! Part Two dispels common myths and misconceptions people have about dining out, and lists specific pet peeves that waiters and waitresses share.

Marta Daniels has been a restaurant server for over ten years, and this book contains the humorous musings of a seasoned industry veteran. From the neighborhood coney island to the ritziest of restaurants in the toniest towns customers do the same things! Daniels started a website called How to be a Better Restaurant Customer ( http://www.howrc.com ) where servers and customers could share their experiences, and the book evolved from that website.

Do you dine out? Ever? Do you (or did you ever) work at a restaurant, or any customer service job? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you will love this book!

 

 

Author Biography:

 

Marta Daniels is an author, a wife, and a stepmom. She is cute and quirky, smart and sassy, and a little clumsy! She loves God, her husband, her family, great movies, phenomenal books, the word awesome, & CHOCOLATE!

Marta has done a little of everything when it comes to employment. Retail management, telemarketing, house cleaning and salsa instructing, just to name a select few. Interesting story behind the salsa instructing, considering the fact that to this day she has no idea how to salsa…remind her to tell you all about that should you hang out with her! The job she has the most experience in? Waiting tables. Marta is definitely the Veteran Server. Over ten years in the biz. Her first book is called “How to be a Better Restaurant Customer”. In it Marta explains how oftentimes, when a restaurant customer has a poor experience while dining out, s/he did something unintentionally to sabotage their own experience! Her book is a humorous look at how restaurant customers can avoid this, to insure a better time while dining out.

Marta was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan (home of the U of M Wolverines!) where she attended Greenhills School and the University of Michigan; and currently resides in Oak Park, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.  She lives there with her husband Tyson Daniels.  She is currently at work on her next book!

 

 

 

Sell Sheet:

 

How to be a Better Restaurant Customer

 

 

Published: November 25, 2010

158 pp

ISBN-10: 1456346202

ISBN-13: 978-1456346201

Retail Price: $10.00 (Paperback-Amazon)

$.99     (Kindle)

$10.00  (Paperback-Barnes and Nobles.com)

How to be a Better Restaurant Customer is a funny look at how people sabotage their own dining experiences when they go out to eat. Part One of this book takes you from the door to the door with dos and dont’s if you want to have a great time without screwing up your own meal or traumatizing your server! Part Two dispels common myths and misconceptions people have about dining out, and lists specific pet peeves that waiters and waitresses share.

 

Marta Daniels is an author, a wife, and a stepmom. She is cute and quirky, smart and sassy, and a little clumsy! She loves God, her husband, her family, great movies, phenomenal books, the word awesome, & CHOCOLATE! Marta was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan (home of the U of M Wolverines!) where she attended Greenhills School and the University of Michigan; and currently resides in Oak Park, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.  She lives there with her husband Tyson Daniels.  She is currently at work on her next book!

 

“Daniels is sarcastic, snippy, and flippant, all qualities I admire in a writer and a server (are waitress, waiter, and waitperson now politically incorrect?). Reading How to Be a Better Restaurant Customer is like having a witty friend tell you how the day went. ” Bob Etier, Technorati Review

“Daniels has found a unique angle to dining and this should be required reading for anyone who dines out in restaurants.”Review on website “So You Want to be a Waiter”

 

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Where are you from? I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and I grew up in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
• Tell us your latest news? How to be a Better Restaurant Customer the Kindle edition keeps appearing in the Amazon top 100 paid for Hospitality and Tourism and Dining and occasionally Business.  Woo-hoo! It stays in the top 100 for Hospitality and Tourism on Amazon UK.
• When and why did you begin writing? I was making up stories as soon as I could talk and recording them on paper as soon as I could write.
• When did you first consider yourself a writer? When I held the first proof copy of my first book in my hands.
• What inspired you to write your first book? I’ve been a restaurant server for over ten years, and I was always telling humorous stories about my customers and my experiences to my friends and family, and they just ate it up! I started my blog by the same name (How to be a Better Restaurant Customer) at the suggestion of my husband and my sister, and the response to it was so positive, that I knew I had to write the book.
• Do you have a specific writing style? My writing can be a sarcastic, which is odd, because I don’t consider myself a sarcastic person!
• How did you come up with the title? I was going for humor! And the whole “For Dummies” thing is copywrited.
• Is there a message in your book that you want readers to get? That they play a significant role in the experience they have at a restaurant.
• Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life? Absolutely! I don’t disclose the restaurants I’ve worked for, or names of customers, or any of that, but the whole book is based on my personal experiences waiting tables in a variety of restaurants.
• What books influenced your life the most? The Bible,Gone With the Wind, The Left Behind series, Getting Things Done
• If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor? Nora Roberts, her storytelling genius is awesome!
• What book are you reading right now? Knit Together by Debbie Macomber
• Are there any new writers who have caught your interest? Joanna Penn, Karen McQuestion.  Both are fairly recently self-pubbed with great success.
• What are your current projects? A fiction called Make Me a Bird and promotion for How to be a Better Restaurant Customer.
• Name one entity that you feel supports you outside of family members? God.
• Do you see writing as a career? Yes.
• If you had to do it all over again, or if you put out a second edition, would you change anything in your latest book? More anecdotes! People can’t seem to get enough of them, and there are plenty more where they came from!
• How did your interest in writing originate? My parents read all the time when I was growing up; one of my earliest memories is my parents reading, and also my mother reading to me.  I learned to read when I was three, and I knew I wanted people to read me from an incredibly young age (probably four).
• Can you share a little of your current work with us? Head over to the website for the next book www.makemeabird.com and you can sign up to receive regular updates and free sneak peeks directly to your email!
• Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Finding the time! It can be a bit difficult when you have a day job and other obligations, but I can do all things through Christ, so I’m finding the time!
• Who designed the covers? I did! I will expand that to include some more professional covers in the future,but I’m very please with the paperback and Kindle covers I designed!
• Did you learn anything from writing your book? That I can write a book.
• Do you have any advice for other writers? Keep writing and keep researching how to write better, how to promote, and all that jazz.  Keep believing in yourself and keep praying for peace and direction.
• Do you have anything specific you want to say to your readers? I love you all! Thank you, thank you, thank you for buying my book and helping my dream become a reality! Stick with me, there’s a lot more to come!