An ala carte restaurant serves a variety of cuisines from three different regions. The food from different regions involve both common and specific materials (e.g. vegetables, meat, and spices) and cooking processes (e.g. grilling, frying, boiling). Each cuisine from a region is prepared and cooked by a specialist chef with local knowledge and expertise. The raw materials from all regions are stored in one common storage and all cooking is carried out in one common kitchen in the restaurant. The restaurant also employs one kitchen staff to assist the three chefs and three staff to serve customers in the dining room. The restaurant is generally full during the dining hours (lunch and dinner); sometimes people even have to line up outside waiting for tables to become available. Customer feedback, however, is mixed. Many customers highlight the quality of the meal, and the price is considered as reasonable; however, there are also many complaints on the long waiting time for their orders to be served. Some customers even complain about the meal from a certain region which they believe should not take so long to prepare and serve. 6 The restaurant manager has investigated the problem and believes that the problem is rooted in the common kitchen where chefs have to take turn in using the shared facility and equipment. Often two chefs have to wait idly for the other chef to finish the cooking process before they can take turn to cook their ordered meals. There are suggestions for prioritising meal orders which take shorter time to prepare in order to reduce customer's waiting time; however, the restaurant's policy stipulates that meals have to be cooked in accordance to the orders placed by customers. The manager believes that solving the kitchen's problem will not only prevent the restaurant from losing its existing customers due to long waiting time, but also win more customers based on their high-quality food. The manager plans to expand the restaurant's kitchen facility by setting up three separate kitchens (each with its own equipment) for each region's cuisine. Each kitchen will have its own storage facility for the raw materials, and each chef will also be assisted by one kitchen staff. The manager believes that this expansion will not only enable the restaurant to serve the food more quickly to customers, hence, allowing more customers to dine in the restaurant, but also improve the productivity of the three chefs. Based on the above case study, answer the following questions:

a) Analyse the competitive dimensions that are applicable for the restaurant and how the restaurant performs in those dimensions 

 

b) Analyse the problems in the restaurant and their impacts on competitive dimensions and business performance of the restaurant 

 

c) Analyse the implications of the manager's plan in solving the restaurant's problems on various key aspects of the restaurant's operations, particularly (but not limited to) process layout, capacity, inventory, and competitive dimensions

d) Based on your overall analysis, what key recommendations would you offer to the manager to improve the restaurant's operations? Demonstrate your understanding on the relevant theories and the concepts of operations management and their application in your analysis.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

a Competitive Dimensions of the Restaurant The competitive dimensions relevant to the restaurant represent the critical ways the restaurant competes in the market and includes quality speed time flexi... View the full answer