Week 7 - Wiki Assignment

Q1. Choose one topic about the restaurant business you’re interested and discovermore details about it.

We are more interested in how to develop a restaurant, as there is more factors need to be considered than what we think before.

For the operating philosophy, different categories of restaurants have different philosophies. They need to find the most suitable one for themselves to differ from competitors.

For the market, the restaurants must have an accurate market segment. And they need to promote to the target market. In addition the owner need develop strategy according to their market segment.

For the concepts, we think it maybe one of the most important factors of a restaurant. The owner of the restaurant must operate the restaurant according to the concept. It can improve the consumer loyalty and build a good reputation.

For the location, it is one way to appeal to the target market. It is important for a restaurant to find a place, which is easy to find. The location will directly influence the revenue of a restaurant.

For the ambiance, it is more and more important nowadays. People start to pay more attention to the atmosphere. People prefer to enjoy the meal in a more comfortable way. Thus, if a restaurant wants to be successful, the owner has to make the environment more comfortable.

Q2. Explore the importance of menu planning and design.

Restaurant menu is essentially a marketing tool towards a business goal.

Restaurants use menus as a presentation to their targets. Customers can know the food items and even the images from the first impression from menus. And the design also can help a restaurant build up the company concept and promote it to customers.

A good combination of menu description, layout and pricing will entice customer to order, thus creating more revenue.

Via a psychological approach to design a menu, restaurant can sell the items that the want to sell. And combined with the analysis of popularities and costs, restaurant can keep revenues.

Restaurant can do promote sales though menus.

Restaurants will promote some new dishes every period. Via menus, restaurants put the new items on the positions that customers will notice quickly, which will help to sell those food items out.

Q3. Give other real life examples for each classification of restaurants.

1. Independent Restaurant:

   Owned by one or more owners and they are not affiliated with any national brand or name. In Hong Kong there are many cafes which are independent restaurant. The one in Sham Shui po named LPlace Café providing pastry, coffee, steak, Pasata and salad is typical example of independent restaurant. 
   
   
   

2.  Chain restaurants:

   The chain restaurants are a group of restaurants which have the same menu, food quality, level of service and atmosphere. Butao Ramen offers delicious Japanese style Ramen with moderately price. It has restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, Causeway Bay, Central and Sha Tin.
   
   
   

3. Fine Dining:

   This kind of restaurant often has a high level of service which offers good selection of menu items made by fresh ingredients. Lung King Heen in Central which offers contemporary Cantonese cuisine at its best – created from the freshest local ingredients by a team of regionally renowned chefs.
   
   
   
   

4. Theme Restaurants:

   It combines a sophisticated specialty and several other types of restaurants. There is a café in Tsim Sha Tsui named Theme café of Ms. Teresa Teng. It offers coffee, cake, and different afternoon tea. The decorated the restaurant with the items are related to Teresa Teng.
   
   
   

5. Celebrity Restaurant:

   It is owned by famous people and supporters of them are prefer to go to this kind of restaurant. Monster sushi which is owned by Daniel Wu is a very famous Japanese restaurant.
   
   
   

6. Steak Houses:

   This kind of restaurant offers additional value-priced items like chicken and fish to their menus in order to attract more customers. Dan Ryan’s offers the food in this style and has a relatively good atmosphere.
    

7. Casual Dining:

   Epsuma offers the Spanish food with a comfortable environment and a kind service. Let can let consumers enjoy the food comfortably.
   
   
   

8. Quick-service/fast-food restaurants:

   Pizza box provides delicious pizza. Its delivery service is very famous in the market.

Q4.  Find out more recent trends and practices about restaurant business.

The restaurant business is combined with Internet closer and closer nowadays.

It is no doubt that the online business is part of the restaurant business operating with the Google search, Facebook social network and even the main page of a restaurant. Take Facebook as an example, people click like to show their preferences on restaurant, and the restaurant can got more likes, customers will be more likely to consume on the restaurant. In addition, the comments on some review website become important even can replace promotional advertising. It is necessary for a restaurant to make relative strategy of Internet opportunities of threats.

High-tech is more and more important in restaurant operation.

High-tech is involved in the operations of restaurant, such as using iPod to coordinate different department, from order, pass and cook, to finish an order efficiently. Some mobile Apps help customer to book, check status and review.

High touch and more flexible strategy used in operations

It is more and more important to care customer services on the operation. Moment of truths is chances for restaurant to promote itself as well as keep customers. And there will be more special cases, which needs emergency managements and adjust strategies in time.

Reflection:

I would like to start this week’s reflection by quoting the trending phrase on contemporary social networks; “I’m either wearing all my money or I ate it”. Why? Because, I can relate to this 101%. Hence, this week’s topic of Restaurant Business really intrigued me. We as consumers pay a very menial part: pay. It was interesting to learn about the skeleton of restaurant business; what goes in, who does what, etc. We don’t realize how much thought has to be put into creating the perfect ambience, the appropriate concept and operating philosophy for instance. It is in fact a lot of work as we were taught today and as a regular restaurant goer (yes it has me barely scraping by but what can I say, I cant cook to save my life) I realized all the work that goes into to please your consumers and still maintain a profit margin, plan your menu with a variety of considerations such as the needs and desires of guests, capabilities of cooks, and price and pricing strategy. All this sounds like a lot of work, which is possibly why the “menu planning” portion of the lecture was what really captured my attention, I was specially riveted by the ‘menu psychology’, I found myself thinking back to every time I had held a menu and agreeing with the double-view and triple-view eye movement. I decided to dig deeper and found an article on the internet, link has been attached below for your convenience, and came across other maneuvers used to ensure that the menu is ‘on-brand, easy to read, and profitable’ they include limiting your options where they use a psychological theory commonly known as the “paradox of choice” which states that the diners are likely to feel anxious when presented any more than 7 choices (per food category), and another intriguing method restaurants use is the utility of colors, where it is believed that colors help to induce feelings and “motivate behavior”, some examples are the calming effects blue brings, yellow draws your attention while red stimulates an appetite. Hence, through this week’s lecture topic and some related internet surfing I was able to better understand my own and other diners’ mentality and how restaurants manipulate them. 

Reference:

http://www.openrice.com/en/hongkong

http://mentalfloss.com/article/63443/8-psychological-tricks-restaurant-menus