Operational Efficiency Memo

Due to questions in the operational efficiency of this establishment, Team A has analyzed several factors in an effort to determine the cause and then suggest improvement to its overall performance. The primary issue was the capability limit of the pizzeria and will be one of the items to be addressed.

ITEM 1. Will changing the distribution of tables increases the utilization of the wait staff and kitchen staff? Does changing the staff capacity impact waiting time?

Redistribute seating to a balance between 2 and 4 person tables to better utilize space and dispersed evenly between available wait staff. Changing the distribution of tables of two, utilizes the wait staff to its fullest potential, in other words keeping them busier. In addition, this would allow Mario to turn over customers quicker, because most customers come in groups of two.

The issue of the capacity of the wait staff and kitchen staff does not impact waiting time, because the staff is already under-utilized. Again, changing the distribution of tables would help this.

ITEM 2. Customers are leaving even when waiting times have been decreased and lost sales have decreased?

There is no magic formula that allows the operations manager to obtain a 100% customer satisfaction or a 0% balk percentage in the restaurant business. This is due to the fact that the requirements, needs, and expectations of customers, though mainly similar, differ from one person to the other. The operations manager must take in consideration several variables that play a role in determining why few customers still balk before being served even though wait times are short. These variables are:

• Some customers become impatient very easily

• A customer may have little time to eat and finds that even 2 minutes of wait time are too long

• A customer may have not liked the looks of the waiter or waitress

• In groups, one of the members may voice dissatisfaction thus affecting the group’s decision of whether to wait or go to another restaurant

• The restaurant may look crowded for the person who feels somehow claustrophobic even if has never been diagnosed as such.

ITEM 3. Modernization of equipment with the purchase of Plax oven and MenuPoint system.

By using the traditional pen and paper method, wait staff would spend a lot time on the floor taking down customers' orders. They would have to run back to the kitchen/cashier to submit these orders and this would increase the customer wait time. Even though the purchase of the Plax Oven and the MenuPoint system helped to decrease the customer wait time and increase the kitchen productivity of making 8 pizzas every 4 minutes, wait staff, kitchen staff and tables were impacted because the restaurant is now able to serve customers faster and turn tables over quicker. The staff is still seating the same amount of customers but servicing more customers in shorter period of time.

Some customers may still leave the restaurant without being served