The details of dining out

In just a month or two, Kawartha Lakes will start to see seasonal visitors returning to our area, whether to open a cottage or to explore on a day trip. Those of us who live here know how much they’ll enjoy discovering our beautiful scenery, relaxing pace and pretty communities.

An especially enjoyable aspect of our rural city is the growing range of restaurant options. The big chains have their place (and a healthy market share) but it’s particularly heartening to see homegrown entrepreneurs willing to serve locals and visitors alike.

The people who arrive early in the morning to start breakfast prep and stay late to close up deserve our applause and support, and the decisions about what to put on the menu and whom to hire are entirely theirs to make. When it comes to the dining experience, though, just a few simple things would make it even easier for the rest of us to be enthusiastic about local dining, and to provide a wholehearted recommendation when visitors ask.

Think of the places you’ve eaten out in Kawartha Lakes over the past year or so, whether humble or fancy. Which felt comfortably welcoming, and which felt, well, functional? Which ones had put care into décor and which had bare, uninviting walls? Which were tidy and organized and which seemed to have grown oblivious to a cluttered counter or stacks of supplies in diners’ sightlines?

It takes enormous reserves of time and energy to keep a kitchen stocked and running smoothly and a dining room fully staffed and efficient. It must be stressful seeing food costs rise and rise again with no option but to charge more for your meals, knowing your clients will be displeased.

With all of those pressures, it’s just good business sense to boost customer loyalty by ensuring a pleasant atmosphere. Peeling paint, ripped seats, unfinished drywall repairs, missing baseboards, stained carpets, ancient bathroom fixtures — they’re all fairly simple and inexpensive to address, but left unattended, they can put a diner off as surely as subpar food or service.

Decorations don’t have to be costly or on-trend. Rotating displays of paintings by local artists, a cheerful (but high-quality) paint job and displays of thrifted items can all make a restaurant a place people want to return to. If the Christmas decorations are still up in April and dust has gathered on the antiques, though, the opposite may be true.

In the months between now and summer, a few touch-ups would be enough to make local dining even more delightful.