Power Lunching

Power lunching tactics can turn a restaurant meal into an occasion to impress Power lunching

Power lunching tactics can turn a restaurant meal into an occasion to impress your lunch partner.

Power lunching aims to impress without letting the luncheon become a tasteless display of ego and one-upmanship.

• Patronize restaurants that have a reputation for business lunches and where you're known. Select restaurants with excellent service and plenty of space between tables. Eat in restaurants that important people frequent.

• Avoid luncheon invitations to other people's private dining rooms. You lose power on their turf.

• Call the maitre d’ personally to make reservations. Tell him where you want to sit and how long you give the maitre d’, the more his staff will be in tune with your needs.

• Don’t order drinks served with a paper umbrella or a lot of vegetables or fruit. Draft beer is appropriate, but bottles look tacky. The “fancy waters” are wimpy now… club soda is a power drink.

• Order food that’s easy to handle. Example: Steak instead of lobster so that you can do a lot of talking without fumbling. Power foods: Black-bean soup, fresh oysters and clams, brook trout, calves’ liver, London broil, pael-French onion soup, fried oysters and clams, corned beef, coquilles St. Jacques chicken a la King, lasagna, shrimp de jonghe.

• Pay the bill with cash, if possible. Next best is a house charge. You don’t have to wait for a credit card to be processed. You can quickly sign the check and leave before your guest becomes anxious to get back to the office.

• Tip 20%.

Source: Power Lunching by E. Melvin Pinsel and LigitaDienhart, Turnbull & Willoughby, Chicago.