Congratulations to Daniel Crawford of One MICHELIN Star Spring, the 2024 MICHELIN Guide Atlanta Outstanding Service Award Winner!
With a career beginning in 1985 at Pizza Hut, Crawford had stints as a theater actor and a medic in the United States Army before pursuing his calling in restaurants. Training under Chef Günter Seeger, he picked up a wealth of knowledge on providing the best guest experience. He later met Chef Brian So while working together at Bib Gourmand Heirloom Market BBQ, eventually partnering on Spring in Marietta.
Under his direction, the service and experience at Spring excels at every turn. Never fussy or stuffy, the whole team is warm and welcoming.
What's your favorite part of the guest experience?
I enjoy looking over at a table of four and their faces are glowing from the candlelight, the wine glasses are perfectly poured, the table is set and free of any debris, there's nothing on there that looks out of place. It looks like these people are dining and having a fantastic time. That makes me happy. I want people to have a good time, and if we can make that happen, then that's a good day.I am very proud of parents that bring their children to our restaurant. They have this 8-10 year old sitting there eating foie gras, and talking to me about how wonderful that is. That means there is a future. This is the next generation of great diners, people that are inspired, so that makes me very happy.
What is a typical night at the restaurant?
Spring starts with our baker, Hannah Beyer, who arrives between 6:00 and 7:00 AM. She has been with us from the very beginning. She makes a polenta sourdough that Brian used to show up at six o'clock in the morning every single day and make himself for years. That bread is the star of our restaurant. It smells so good, and that's what sets the tone for our day.Brian, my wife, Lynn, and I meet in the morning to discuss last month and profitability. Later in the day, other kitchen staff set up. We have very detailed instructions for opening, and they are all done and rotated between everyone. These are folks that care very much about what they do.
When the restaurant is open, music is going, everyone's dressed. We get going at five o'clock straight away. The restaurant's completely full by 6:30 – it feels full and vibrant, and people are enjoying themselves, glowing from the candles, or enjoying the fresh flowers on the table and having a great dinner.
We have the great advantage of being about 15 or 20 feet away from train tracks right outside our window. When the train comes, it shakes the building, and people get so excited about seeing a train come by, it makes everybody turn into kids again. As a tradition, guests put coins on the tracks, which get flattened and they collect at the end.
As they leave, we try to be at the door, smiling, waving, holding the door for people, Then, we prepare everything for the next day. Everything we serve is as fresh as it could possibly be because of the size of this space. We are artists. An artist's mind typically goes everywhere. At Spring, we have been given these tools and this space. Artists perform best in a confined situation.
How do you build a great service experience?
The most important thing that I do is hire people. Try to do the best you can to hire good people because while I can teach somebody how to serve and open a bottle of wine, parameters for your menu spiel or open-handed service, I can't teach somebody to give a damn. I want someone that actually cares about their job and serving people. We’re very fortunate because the staff that we have are really great. Our turnover is very low. We have four sommeliers out of the six people that are working on the floor. These are professional people that care about what they're doing and want nothing more than to serve people at the highest level.If you set up a good structure for service, then service should be easy in any restaurant. The number one thing for me is that you work on a tip pool. I am a very firm believer that that is not your table, that is our table, that's not your guest, that's our guest, all of us are responsible for that guest, and if it's all of our money, then it forces everyone to be responsible for those folks.
Wearing a suit, standing and serving someone at a very high level restaurant helps the server with their confidence, with their presentation, with how they feel, because you look good, you're dressed sometimes better than the people that you're serving. It empowers the server. Everybody wears a suit in their own individual way.
If you're leaving the kitchen, you need to leave the kitchen with a task or something in your hands when you walk out. And you don't just leave the dining room. You pick your head up and look around and see what needs to be done before you leave the dining room. Whatever setting you're in, you evaluate that setting before you leave it, because then you can prepare yourself for the next task and even be ahead of that task. If we have every staff member in there accomplishing that, then nothing gets missed.
Crumbing the table. We have handmade walnut tables. They're gorgeous, but that is not for an old school crumber. After every course, no matter what, someone crumbs that table.
“May I?” is also a very powerful statement for a service worker, because that's polite, and it allows you to assert yourself. We're not going to go and clear these other folks who have finished, because then that puts you on the spot right to finish your dish. We wait until we feel it's appropriate, I'm going to come to you because you haven't finished yet but you haven't touched anything in a while, and say, “Pardon me, sir, may I clear this away?” You're not going to be offended, and I've asserted myself.
We are not there to upsell. We don't need to upsell. Everything in the restaurant is expensive. All you need to do is have competence and information that you can offer to the guests so that they feel good about what they're purchasing.
Service is very personal. When someone comes in the door, there's someone there to greet them. We have our iPad here with your name. We're certainly a special occasion restaurant – we know what special notes there are already. All we have to do is congratulate them when they have dessert at the end. We don't make a big deal out of it. We have a single gold candle that goes on a single beautiful little plate that we put on and set it in front of them, and it's just so nice, and people appreciate it. We don't have to go overboard. In my mind, you made a reservation with us, so nothing special has to happen other than that.
What is the biggest misconception about your role?
People think it's really glamorous to own a restaurant, and it's really excessively difficult, and there's not a lot of money. Sometimes we all look at each other like, we're crazy, this whole group of entrepreneurs. There's this one group of insane people that decide to have their own restaurants, and it's because we love it.How are you able to keep the team motivated and calm?
It's just dinner. I don't want to discount what we do, but I also want everybody to understand that no one's dying here. I never want staff members to be in a hurry or to look like they're in the weeds. There are no weeds at Spring ever. If somebody is in the weeds, that means I'm not doing my job. I notice, and I step in and help calmly.
What advice would you give to someone who wants a career like yours?
Embrace it as soon as they can. I was a medic in the United States Army. I could have continued to be an EMT, or my family even thought that I was going to go to medical school when I got out of the Army, but I went to school for theater, which made me the ideal waiter, so I struggled with how I supported myself. For theater, my most prolific year, I did five plays and made $17,000, and I supported myself working part time as a server.When I stopped acting and was serving full time, I'm like, “wow, I've had so many other opportunities and directions that I could have gone. And here I am in a restaurant with no future, with no growth.” I had this internal struggle.
But then about 15 years ago, I recognized how I like seeing a table of people having dinner and enjoying themselves, and knowing my part in that. It didn't take very long for my efforts to get noticed by basically everyone around me. Find what you care about and do it as soon as you possibly can, because the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be.
Hero image: Dominic Reilly / Daniel Crawford
