Hospitality Operations Management
The Finest Catch – Case study
The field of operations management in hospitality sector is crucial for the failure and success of a s service organization. In service business, the operations management enable the restaurant capacity to develop capabilities to sustain the competition and become more responsive towards its customer’s feedbacks/review/inquiry (Gunasekaran and Ngai, 2012).
In the restaurant industry, it is essential for ‘The Finest Catch’ to achieve performance objectives and influence the customer satisfaction through a high customer service.
The report aims to examine and evaluate the performance objectives of hospitality operations management such as speed, cost and quality for the restaurant operations and functioning with respect to food service process change in the case organization, ‘The Finest Catch’.
Changes to food service process affects operations
In commercial food servicelike The Finest Catch restaurant the food service process is highly labor intensive which demands both skilled workforce and unskilled labors. Moreover, as food is perishable in nature it demands proper handling, food safety and caution in preparation and delivery.
The menu of service restaurant change which require changing production and re-scheduling of workforce and affects food costs. These processes require a strong operational performance in food scheduling and related areas for fast delivery of food to achieve a high level of customer service.
This will also be helpful to fulfill objective of the restaurant is to provide food services to satisfy customer which is possible through a food service design based on customers and business requirements. However, restaurant face difficulty in designing food service process and in determining the extent of service delivery process to offer standardized or personalized food services (Zeng et al., 2012).
Thus, it can be said that the changes in food service design and process affects the restaurant operational efficiency in terms of customer service, financial performance, operating cost and quality aspects. The food service process impact the business performance which can be evaluated through objectives of operations performance management such as speed, cost and quality dimensions.
Evaluation of operations performance objectives in The Finest Catch
The changes to the food service process in The Finest Catch would have changed the speed, cost and quality of the restaurant operations. The quality aspect of the restaurant focus on the performing the right thing and customer satisfaction. According to Wang et al. (2012), quality is a key consideration to evaluate performance of a service organizationfor customer satisfaction.
The change in service design process in The Finest Catch can have an impact on the quality in terms of consistency in delivering service by the restaurant. Quality is understood to be conformation to given specification to make it more reliable and enhance the desirability of the service feature in the case restaurant. The quality aspect in the restaurant context also refer to the degree to which the restaurant customers accept that the services provided by the Finest Catch meets the needs and service expectations.
The change in service design of the restaurant has affected the customer expectations for locating seats and offering menu and taking orders for food, side dishes and drinks from the respective seats. The quality is an important aspect for the Finest Catch in the competitive business landscape to provide its diners and regular customers with services that ensure satisfaction. Thus, the restaurant in changing the service process has not conformed to the service expectation for seating and ordering services.
This has affected the quality dimension giving a measure of the service indication that it is unable to fulfill customer expectations from the restaurant. Moreover, the quality performance in restaurant is impacting other operational objectives of cost and speed.
A good quality service design process in restaurant can be useful in reducing costs by avoiding mistake and fault in delivering inappropriate services (Mathe-Soulek et al., 2015) or mistake in take away orders otherwise it can have negative impact costing additional time and money in inadequate service consequences. In the case of the Finest Catch, restaurant customers who receive poor quality service would be dissatisfied, spread negative word-of-mouth publicity, show dissatisfaction in social media platform and impact the reputation of the restaurant in the marketplace. T
hus, it can be understood that the service design process can change the quality in terms of increasing dependability and decline costs.It can also be observed from the customer reviews that the main concern of the customers is for service experience and with change in service design for self-services and self-seating has led to disappointment among several customers/diners from the Finest Catch.Accordingly, in context of quality it is essential for the Finest Catch to pay attention in terms of food production, consistency of food delivery and take away food quality and packaging.
The feedback from customers regarding quality aspects can help the mangers at the Finest Catch to realise the change or improvements in service process. The company can alter the service process considering the customer’s requirements, expectations from the restaurant and organisational resources and capabilities can be useful in improving quality of service delivery in restaurant operations.
Another performance objective of speed in restaurant business is responsible to respond to customer request and orders. The speedfactor in the Finest Catch to add value to the customers through responsive and fast service delivery. The existing service design of the restaurant has not been fast in responding to customer request and resulting in long que in restaurant in weekendsor for take away and no reservations facilityleading to delay revenue and which is leading to negative review and customer dissatisfaction due to self-service and counter system.
It can also be added that the restaurant with low speed will not generate sales as speed in food services is essential to produce and deliver food to its consumers(Mason et al., 2013). Thus, it can be noted that the speed criteria in the service business is impacting the overall productivity of this restaurant. In the context of the Finest Catch, the time between the order and the food availability on customer’s respective seats is not minimizing due to que in counters and self-service process this is slowing the overall process for the customers.
Thus, the change in service process in this restaurant is not providing speed advantages for its customers. Hence, speed is a disadvantage from the external perspective (customers). This is viewed negatively by the incoming customers of the restaurant who might not revisits if dissatisfied and affect the business profits. However, Prajogo et al. (2012) states that increase in speed at operational level has positive outcome for reducing operating costs
.Hence, in context of speed, it was observed that the restaurant services were not able to cope with customers’ expectation of fast services and food delivery and the que in different counter was contributing to speed disadvantages.
This also indicates changes in layout of the restaurant for the self-service and counters type of service design so that the restaurant space is not overcrowded and provide a convenient space for customers and service staff to move around without creating any kind of disturbance to others.
The customer responsiveness is essential factor for to attract customers, satisfy customers and to efficiently schedule the food production for restaurant and take away orders and avoid any stock-out situations.
In addition to this, the cost performance objective points to the unit cost differences in assortment of products produced by the restaurant. The restaurant offers aa price range from £3.99 lighter meals to £8.99 main meals.
The variation in pricing of each product affects the food costs and profits.Leeet al. (2016) states that cost is most appealing performance objectives in operations.The low price is appealing to majority of price conscious customers. The restaurant can take benefit of cost factor by reducing operating costs and producing food at lower cost.
Yim et al. (2014) recognize that lowering the operational cost is helpful in lowering the product pricing which can be passed to attract more customers. It can be said that cost dimension in the Finest Catch can increase productivity through change in the process of food service design by making efficient use of inputs to provide better output through service delivery.
The cost dimension in this restaurant is also a crucial factor to compete with other similar food service business. It can also be noted that the performance objectives of speed and quality can be helpful for the restaurant in lowering the internal costs. I
n context of cost, it is significant for the restaurant to lower the cost by minimizing waste, avoid mistake, lower expenses, increase efficiency and productivity (Mathe-Soulek et al., 2015).This requires the restaurant to develop a culture of innovation to follow practices that save costs which can be distributed to staff through incentive or reward system and can also offer customer loyalty program, corporate discounts, etc.
to provide value for money to customers. It can be noted that providing services to customers at respective tables and service for seating and ordering can attract the customers and customers will not mind to pay good prices for the menu offering accompanied by good services.
It can be summarized that the operations management area in hospitality industry has a crucial role in the functioning of the restaurant. The Finest Catch restaurant is required to plan and implement an effective food service delivery to ensure operation efficiency in manging cost, speed and quality for customer revisits, satisfaction from high customer service, business profitability and positive publicity by its customers.
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