The owner of Eat Now Restaurant implemented an expanded menu last year. The menu

Question

The owner of Eat Now Restaurant implemented an expanded menu last year. The menu was a success, drawing many more customers, who seemed to like the increased variety of the menu choices over the previous menu. But, good news soon became bad news as long waiting lines began to deter customers and business dropped off. Because of the space and other limitations, there didn’t seem to be any viable options to consider. Then a customer mentioned a technique called mass customization that was being used at his company. He said it really streamlined processing and maybe it could work for the restaurant. Describe how that approach could work at the restaurant and why it could be expected to reduce waiting lines. What costs would be involved in transitioning to this system? What other approaches could be used to reduce waiting line times?

Explanation / Answer

The mass customization is a technique of made to order wherein base product is made in advance and as per customer choice it is customized to meet the requirement. The technique is very useful in restaurant industry to reduce the waiting time and help in high customer satisfaction. The restaurant can prepare semi cooked food basis demand and common curry. At the later stage it can be used as per customer demand. Example: A restaurant may be serving Veg Biryani as well as Chicken Biryani. These are two different dishes with commonality of Biryani. So, restaurant can prepare Biryani in advance and as per order add either Chicken or Vegetables to make Chicken or Veg Biryani respectively. Same holds true for many others dishes and can help to drastically reduce time. The cost involved would be to have infrastructure to support advance production of base items. It is also slight risk as if the orders are not received; the base item will be wasted. Additionally, the preparation of base item needs to start well in advance of actual operation hours of restaurant.

The other approaches to reduce waiting line times are:

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