With the growth of Hard Rock Caffrom one pub in London in 1971 to more than 129

With the growth of Hard Rock Café––from one pub in London in 1971 to more than 129 restaurants in more than 40 countries today––came a corporate wide demand for better forecasting. Hard Rock uses long-range forecasting in setting a capacity plan and intermediate-term forecasting for locking in contracts for leather goods (used in jackets) and for such food items as beef, chicken, and pork. Its short-term sales forecasts are conducted each month.

Discussion Questions
1. Describe three different forecasting applications at Hard Rock. Name three other areas in which you think Hard Rock could use forecasting models.
2. What is the role of the POS system in forecasting at Hard Rock?
3. Justify the use of the weighting system used for evaluating managers for annual bonuses.
4. Name several variables besides those mentioned in the case that could be used as good predictors of daily sales in each café.
5. At Hard Rock’s Moscow restaurant, the manager is trying to evaluate how a new advertising campaign affects guest counts. Using data for the past 10 months (see the table) develop a least squares regression relationship and then forecast the expected guest count when advertisi9ng is $65,000.