Doing your best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment
- Oprah Winfrey -
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Cesar Ritz was born in the Swiss mountain village of Niederwald, and went to work at sixteen in a hotel dining room in the nearby town of Brieg. A few months later he was discharged. "In the hotel business," commented his employer, "you need an aptitude-a flair. You haven't a trace of it.
Ritz got another job as a waiter-and again was booted out. He went to Paris, where he got-and lost two more jobs. His career really began with the fifth job, in a chic little restaurant near the Madeleine where he climbed from bus boy to waiter and finally to manager. He was still only nineteen when his employer invited himto become his partner. He knew now that what he wanted : the world of great names, of epicurean feasts.
In 1871, Ritz left Paris and for three years worked in fashionable resort restaurants in Germany and Switzerland. He was by then restaurant manager of the Rigi-Kulm, an Alpine hotel for its view and its cuisine. One day the heating plant broke down. Almost at the same moment a message arrived-forty wealthy Americans were on their way for lunch!
The temperature of the dining room was down around freezing. Ritz, wrapped in an overcoat, ordered the lunch table set up in the drawing room-it had red curtains and looked warmer. Into four huge copper pots, employed until then for holding palm trees, he poured alcohol and set it ablaze. Bricks were put into the ovens.
When the guests arrived the room was tolerably warm, and under the feet of each diner went a hot brickwrapped in flannel. The meal was a cold-weather masterpiece, starting with a peppery hot consomme and ending with flamming crepes suzette.
This small miracle of quick thinking was gossiped about wherever hotelmen gathered. Finally it reached the ears of the owner of a large hotel in Lucerne that was steadily losing money. He asked Ritz to become general manager. In two years the 27 years old peasant put the hotel on a paying basis.
For Ritz no detail was too picayune, no enterprise too large if it meant the happiness of great. " People like to be served," Ritz used to say, "but invisibly." The rules he formulated are the four commandments of a good hotelkeeper today: to see all without looking, to hear without listening, to be attentive without being servile, to anticipate without being presumptuous.
Ritz had a prodigous memory. He remembered who liked a certain brand of Turkish cigarettes, who had a passion for chutney-and when they arrived these things were waiting for them. He also catered to his more permanent guests. The tall man found an eight foot bed in his room. Mrs Smith, who could not bear flowers, was never annoyed with them but Mrs Jones, who loved gardenias, always found a bowl of them on her breakfast tray.
In 1892, Ritz went to London to take over the financially tottering Hotel Savoy. The public responded and the hotel was out of the red in an astonishingly short time. Roving from room to room, Ritz remade beds to be sure they were right; once, inspecing the dining room, he smelled soap on a glass and sent several hundred glasses back to be rewashed.
Arraging a party for Alfred Beit, the South African diamond king, Ritz flooded the Savoy ballroom-transformed it into a miniature Venice. Guests were served as they reclined in gondolas.
The success of the Ritz of Paris was never doubt. On one dinner menu preserved by an old Ritz employee were the autographs of four kings, seven princes, and assorted nobility. On all Ritz lavished his extraordinary attention, sensitive to every mood and price.
Even today, years after his death, the hotels and services attached to Cesar Ritz's name services attached to Cesar Ritz's name set the standard for quality. Quality was his every mind-set. Meal by meal, hotel after hotel, he paid the price to produce high quality, and the people were willing to pay a price to enjoy it. But like other success stories in this collection, his reputations did not come overnight.
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Ritz adlah satu cth org yg mnjga kualiti dlm khidupan. As a muslim, adkah kte mnjga kualiti stiap ibadat? Adkah kte yakin kte dpt pahala sesudah kte mngerjkn solat? Adkah kte sntiase mnjg hubungn fmily? Adkah kte sabar apbila dtegur parent? Adkah kte sdah cube sdaye upaya mnuntut ilmu?
Kejayaan yg besar slalunya dtg dlm tempoh yg lame.
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