Modern Etiquette: Power Breakfast Dos and Don’ts
Monday, February 21, 2011
Gone are the sublime three-martini-twelve-cigarette lunches of Mad Men's' Don Draper, make way for the Power Breakfast. The work ethic has changed, the boozy power lunch is no longer powerful or appropriate; two hour lunches are too expensive in the age of expense account cuts and let's be realistic, who has time for lunch? These days lunch is now on the go picked up from franchises, as well as mom and pop bodegas and lunch trucks, or delivered by the fast growing industry of sandwich chains bringing lunch to your corner office or cubicle. The working lunch is newly defined.
Breakfast + value = good business
The in-trend is breakfast + value = good business. As more and more restaurants take full advantage of their high rent facility by serving breakfast and brunch—which are relatively inexpensive to procure and serve—to executives on the rise looking to power up with breakfast after an early morning run or workout at the gym. Hence the increase in the power business breakfast, and what's the etiquette here? Is it OK to order steak and eggs with a pecan waffle and a mimosa, or should you be abstaining with half a grapefruit, an egg white omelette with dry toast, and decaf?
What appeals to executives about the business breakfast is, you can hit the day running powered by exercise and breakfast; you're stimulated with the nourishment of high protein food and fresh ideas you need for a productive day. In other words, you get a lot done earlier in the day for a lot less money. For most of us, the business breakfast makes good sense.
Power breakfast dos
Do invite a business associate or acquaintance to breakfast. Do dress for success—dressing up a notch shows confidence.
Do be the big shot and pick up the check.
Do order heartily first to establish that you're there to eat—as well as to talk.
Do keep your napkin in your lap and used utensils on your plate.
Do keep your elbows off the table—this is business.
Do make plans to do breakfast again—then it will be her turn to pick up the check.
Power breakfast don'ts
Don't be looking for love in all the wrong places—don't flirt.
Don't wave your utensils in the air while you're talking.
Don't lick your hands after you've fingered the bacon.
Don't drink alcohol—even just a Bloody Mary—it's frowned on.
Don't gossip about colleagues. Don't even think of using your Blackberry—except to take meeting notes or fact check.
In a time when making face-to-face conversation has never been more of an issue, meeting over breakfast will serve to speed along negotiations and close the deal sooner. Best places for the Power Breakfast, aside from your neighborhood haunts such as Rue de L'Espoir and Rue Bis, would be a hotel: the Biltmore, the Hotel Providence, the Courtyard by Marriott, the Renaissance.
Didi Lorillard's first Power Breakfast at the Regency Hotel in New York City defined the PB etiquette-wise as a great venue over which to broker a deal. Ask Didi questions about business, social or wedding etiquette on her Web site NewportManners.com or follow her on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook.
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