The Restaurant Business

“The Restaurant Business” Please respond to the following:

The Restaurant Business
Compare and contrast a freestanding restaurant and a hotel restaurant to differentiate the two (in terms of demographics served, traffic patterns, etc.).

A free standing restaurant and hotel restaurant are almost like night and day. Yes they both serve food but there is quite a bit of a difference between the two. Free standing restaurants only focus on their food. Menu is usually more expansive than a hotel menu, and the range of quality can be higher than in a hotel. A hotel restaurant is less likely to have a lot of traffic in and out because guest staying at the hotel have the option to go to a free standing restaurant or ordering food from another location, while standalone restaurants get customers simply because they provide food. Hotel restaurants tend to provide more expensive food choices as well which can dictate how many customers they get in the long run. Most hotels that serve food also cater to business people or the upper crust so to speak, and in this way they can differ from a standalone because freestanding restaurants can have much more of a diverse crowd of people.

The location of a restaurant is very important to its financial success. Analyze key location criteria to determine which two are the most important to a restaurant’s success.

After examining all the aspects of a restaurants location I believe that determining customer profile and the accessibility / visibility of the location make the most different when determining the successfulness of a restaurant. Knowing who you want to cater your business to is one of the first things that you should determine when deciding to open a business. Having this knowledge can prevent you from putting your family style dinner in the middle of an upscale city fashion district, or your posh French restaurant in the middle of a suburban family community. Know who you want to serve and cater your whole business to that. Accessibility and visibility is hands down the most important factor when looking at the location of a restaurant. It’s very simple, if your potential customers can’t see or get to your restaurants then you have no customers. Accessibility and visibility work together and you can’t really have one without the other. Having a great location with plenty of parking and accessibility is great but if the business is down a dark alley or behind many buildings it is less likely that you will be getting business.

“Restaurant Operations” Please respond to the following:

From the e-Activity and Chapter 7, analyze the ideas for supporting sustainable restaurant operations and make at least two additional recommendations that could be added to the list. Explain the rationale for the recommendations you made.

There are so many great ways to make your restaurant sustainable. One of my recommendations would be to of course have your own in-house garden. Another way to sustain the garden as well would be to put all uneaten food or wasted food into a compost bin. This way you can replenish and enrich the soil you grow with without any chemicals; plus you would have a cool way of getting rid of waste. Another great upgrade to your restaurant would be to add solar panels to your restaurant so that all lights and items using electricity can run off solar power.

From the simulation and the Explore-It activity, determine the best way to seamlessly integrate front of the house and back of the house operations for the restaurant you selected. Provide specific examples to support your response.

After getting into the simulation this week I really enjoyed learning about the point-of-sale system. Restaurant POS systems can really help to improve the speed and efficiency of kitchen operations. This system helps enable better communication between the kitchen and the front counter. Employees taking the order can immediately enter an order into the system, and instantly send it to the kitchen via printer or monitor. The POS system lets managers and employees monitor times in order to get food delivered promptly. The touch screens speed up the time it takes to place orders and reduces training time. The POS systems also improve the way guest are served, since servers can easily access open checks at any time to verify the accuracy of an order, as well as split checks among large groups at an easier pace.