Improving Customer Wait Lines and Wait Times through New Restaurant Layout - Essay Example

Improving Wait Lines and Wait Times through new Restaurant Layout Proposal Submitted Mr. Reed Wright Owner, The Village Grill Winding Way, Waterside, MI 48546. Submitted by Your name Senior Project Manager, Consultant Experts, Inc. (CEI). 6346 Industrial Drive Tecton, MI 48555 Date Submitted: February 28, 2013 Approved by: _______________________ _____________ Mr. Reed Wright, Owner, The Village Grill Date Introduction Village Grill, a cafeteria style restaurant, has expressed concern regarding declining revenues over the recent past and the proprietor attributes this to the construction of a bridge which has reduced access to the restaurant. The proprietor is also concerned that customers spend a lot of time on the line for food and this creates further confusion especially when the lines intermingle. The proprietor therefore wants to improve the layout of the restaurant to minimize the length of time customers wait in line and to avoid confusion. The owner wants to know how much time customers are currently spending in lines and how much time they will spend in lines in a new layout by using the new process that CEI shall develop. These changes are expected to help the restaurant increase profits by reducing costs, retaining customers, and attracting new customers. CEI team will visit the restaurant and examine the current layout of the premises, collecting data on site. The team will analyse the data and develop conclusions and recommendations that will help improve the facility’s layout and reduce the time customers take to wait on line and the confusion thereof. This proposal presents the plan on how this project will be done. Background Village Grill is a cafeteria style restaurant which started its operations in 1996 in the busy university town of Waterside, Michigan. The Grill offers comfort foods that are seasonal and are made with locally grown ingredients. The profits of the Grill have increased since 1996 but revenues began to decline in 2012. The owner, Mr. Wright attributes the decline to the construction of a bridge, which is reducing access to the restaurant. Originally, the customer service and eating area in the restaurant originally consisted of two food lines, which offered the same food choices, and two centrally located cash registers. As the number of customers increased, the Grill added another food line and rearranged the types of foods offered in each line. In the current layout of the restaurant, customers enter the restaurant and walk in a circle along the outside edge of the room to choose their food. Sometimes customers cross through the middle of the seating area and join another part of the line. After the customers select their food, they walk to one of the two registers to pay. The lines at the registers often intermingle with the lines at the food bars and sometimes the cash register lines extend into the seating area. This creates confusion. In addition, the Grill recently began offering take-out orders. When customers enter the restaurant to pick up a take-out order, they walk through the seating area and join the line at the cash register with the “Carry-out” sign. The delays on line as well as the confusion created have made it difficult to retain customers. Goals and Objectives The primary goal of this project is to describe the methods that CEI team will use as well as the schedule that will be followed to decide how to address the issue of restaurant’s layout problem. The plan will help the team to come up with two designs which shall help attract more customers to the restaurant and reduce the confusion hence improving the revenues. To achieve this goal, CEI will address the following objectives: Provide two alternative design concepts for a new layout and queuing that reduces the time customers spend in lines. Gather information on the time customers currently spend in lines and the time the customers will spend in lines using the new process in each layout. Recommend on which alternative the Village Grill should implement. Project Scope The scope of this project will include visiting the restaurant and monitoring the way customers queue especially during the peak hours of the restaurant’s operations. This project will also include the CEI team observing the process through which a customer goes through from the time he/she gets inside the restaurant to the time he/she leaves and record the time taken between ordering for food and the payment of the same. The project will also include interviewing the proprietor, the employees and the customers. CEI shall also record operations of the business through installing cameras. This project will not include collecting traffic data from the bridge as the client has asked that CEI only focus on the experience of the customers while inside the restaurant. Data Collection and Analysis To provide layout plans for the restaurant that will help reduce the time taken for customers to queue on the line and avoid confusion, the CEI team will collect and analyse quantitative and qualitative data. This data will be collected through observations, time studies, surveys, literature search and interviews. Observing Current Layout The CEI team will visit the restaurant in order to observe how the current layout works. This will involve observing how customers move from the initial time that they check inside the restaurant to the time they finally sit down to have their meals. This process observation is important because it shall help the team check on the inefficiencies or the problems in the current restaurant layout and also to give insights into how the confusion can be corrected with the current food lines. This observation will also help record the kitchen arrangement and the number of employees. Performing Time Studies In order to address the issue of the time taken by the customer to be served on the line, it is important that a time study be done in order to determine the time it actually takes to be served and to estimate the time that can be reduced on the waiting through a combination of layouts. The CEI team will therefore perform the time studies. This will require an technical expert in the field statistics especially queuing theory and this will therefore be sought. The expert will perform a time study in order to establish a baseline from which to drive improvement efforts. Without basic time study measures, it may be impossible to know whether there are actually areas in which time taken for a customer to be served can be reduced. Conducting Customer Surveys Given that the experience of customers in the restaurant is what the Village Grill seeks to change for the better, it is important that the customers be surveyed. Therefore, a baseline survey on the experiences of the customers while in the restaurant shall be performed through an expert in surveys who will prepare the data collection instruments and survey the customers. The feedback shall be analysed and form a basis upon which improvements in customer experience can be measured after the change of current layout. Conducting Literature Search The CEI team will also perform a literature search on ways of improving waiting lines in restaurants. One of the studies which we shall review and use is a simulation study of a quick-service take-away restaurant which was conducted by Thomas (1974) which found that the level of service could be improved with the same number of employees and half the number of cash registers. The study had also found that queues would be shorter and fewer customers would be lost during peak hours of restaurants’ business. Interviewing the Proprietor The CEI team will also interview the proprietor in order to gather some qualitative data on the operations of the restaurant. The owner will be interviewed to gather information on the budget provided for the layout design, the operations of the business, any other problem areas, the capacity of the restaurant, the food lines and future plans to expand the food lines as well as the capacity of the restaurant. General expansion plans will be sought from the interview. Schedule This project should be complete by June 30, 2013 to allow for Village Grill to implement the recommendations including any renovations to the layout by early July. Immediate tasks will begin immediately this proposal is accepted. Deliverables On project completion, the Grill will receive the following tools to sort the problem of customer lines and the customer wait times, thus improving customer experience. A detailed report at the end of the project Two alternative layouts and process developed for the restaurant A detailed report on the advantages and disadvantages of each of the proposed layouts Recommendations for one of the alternatives A report on how long customers wait in line and how much time they shall spend in the new layouts proposed Qualifications CEI’s team is best qualified to carry out this project. We are experienced in process analysis, facility planning, simulation, and statistical analysis. We have in the past undertaken such projects. For instance, one of our clients Hunger-Fest Restaurant had similar problems in 2010 and engaged us. We were able to design a new floor layout which has helped the restaurant increase their capacity by 30%, improve their revenues by 40% and reduce waiting times by 90%. The second client, DBC Bank also had waiting time issues as the bank hall was usually busy and customers taking forever to be served. With our suggested floor layout, the bank has been able to reduce waiting times by 85% thereby improving the company’s bottom line. These two examples explain that indeed our layout designs for the businesses have been successful. Investment Considerations CEI will perform the project described in this proposal for $ 50,000 payable according to the following schedule: $ 25,000 due on project approval $ 10,000 due on survey approval $ 10,000 due on completion of on-site data collection $ 5,000 due on project completion This fee is divided by labor allocation as follows: Project Management $ 20,000 Data Collection $ 15,000 Data Analysis $ 15,000 If at any time during the project, the Grill requests changes to the project scope and deliverables, the Grill and CEI will discuss how these changes might impact the project fees. If changes occur, CEI will document them for the Grill’s approval. Conclusion The Grill restaurant would like to improve customer lines and customer wait times. Therefore, CEI will collect and analyse data from the Grill and develop recommendations for and layouts for improving on the same. On completion of the project, the Grill will receive detailed recommendations report together with recommended layout plans for the restaurant. Implementing the recommendations that CEI develops will improve on the customer lines and wait times. As a result, this would improve customer experience in the hotel. References Thomas, G.R. (1974). Simulation study of a quick-service take-out restaurant. Simulation, 22, 139 – 144. Read More