Barcelona Restaurant Group:The Evolution of Management Thinking When Andy Pforzh

Question

Barcelona Restaurant Group:The Evolution of Management Thinking

When Andy Pforzheimer was in college, he took a road trip to New Orleans that would change his life. The sights and sounds of the Big Easy were thrilling to the nineteen-year-old student, but it was the smells and tastes of the city restaurants that captured his imagination. While discussing the city’s eclectic dining

with locals, a chef challenged Pforzheimer to go to France to discover what cooking is all about.

Decades after heeding the chef’s words, Pforzheimer is himself a renowned chef and the co-owner of Barcelona Restaurant Group, a collection of seven wine and tapas bars in Connecticut and Atlanta, Georgia.

Barcelona Restaurant Group prides itself on being “antichain.” When customers dine at any of Pforzheimer’s Spanish cuisine restaurants, they experience the local color and personal touch of a neighborhood eatery in Milan, Rio de Janeiro, or SoHo. Th e wait staff is personable, and the head chef is known

for cooking up fl avorful custom dishes to please regulars. Managers get to know customers’ tastes, and they often descend upon tables, bringing flavorful specialties accompanied by wines from Spain, Portugal, and vineyards around the world.

At Barcelona, life is all about authentic cuisine, exceptional service, and a good time. But delivering this unique dining experience requires a unique approach to restaurant management. Barcelona Restaurant Group gives employees the freedom and control they need to impress customers.

Th e company begins by recruiting self-confident individuals who can take complete ownership over the establishment and its success. When Andy Pforzheimer coaches new recruits, he instructs, “This is your restaurant—when customers walk in the door, I don’t want them looking for me, I want them looking for you.” The straight-talking restaurateur is adamant that his staff be mature and willing to take responsibility for their work and success: “Some of our best managers come from highly regulated large restaurant companies where they were told how to answer a phone and how to set a table and how to greet a guest. We don’t do that; we attempt to hire grownups.”

The enormous trust Barcelona places in workers is evident during weekly staff meetings. Pforzheimer routinely mixes it up with employees, and the dialogue gets feisty at times. “I can be difficult to work for,” the owner says candidly. “I’m interested in having other people’s opinions thrown at me. I like managers who talk back, and I like people who self-start.”

Scott Lawton, Barcelona’s chief operating officer (COO), shares Pforzheimer’s approach, and he underscores that Barcelona’s success depends on the mature initiative of employees: “We give some basic guidelines as to what our philosophy is and what our beliefs are, but we have to trust them to work within those confines and make the right choice.”

In refusing to micromanage employee behavior, Barcelona takes risks that other dining establishments would rather avoid. Lawton insists such risks are intentional and beneficial: “They might not always make the choice that I would make, but sometimes they make a better one. To give them a correct answer to every question is impossible, and it doesn’t work. In fact, you’re actually limiting your ability to get better.”

While Barcelona’s leaders care about the wait staff , they make it clear that employees must care about the clientele. “We’re here for the customer experience,” Pforzheimer says. “Everything else is secondary to that.”

Lawton agrees, and he adds that Barcelona’s insistence on service excellence leads to high satisfaction among employees. “If we can empower them to make the guests happy,” Lawton argues, “they’re going to make money, the vibe in the restaurant is going to be a ton of fun, everybody’s going to enjoy the shift, and they’re going to be proud of what they’ve done. And they are happy, because that’s a byproduct.”

Discussion Questions

In what ways does Barcelona’s management approach run counter to contemporary developments in management thinking?

(I need more words,Thank you !!!)

Explanation / Answer

Management Approach: Consistency Barcelona's management approach is consistent with the humanistic perspective's concept of employee empowerment and rejection of authoritarian-style micromanagement. The restaurant's approach also draws from Total Quality Management, especially in the areas of employee involvement, focus on customers, and continuous improvement. In contrast, Barcelona Restaurant Group wants individual employees to create a personalized dining experience by applying their individual skills and personalities. Even so, the customer is always the primary concern within Barcelona's business model Management Approach: Contemporary Devlopment While some contemporary management approaches place heavy emphasis on the happiness and psychological needs of workers, Barcelona Restaurant Group adopts an unapologetic focus on customers. Barcelona makes customer satisfaction an esteemed prize that wait staff should seek to achieve above all else-a common philosophy in high-end service industries Management approach: To help employees overcome the downsides of the job Barcelona's leadership team believes such challenging aspects of restaurant work can be managed best when employees are given significant responsibility over the restaurant and its success. New hires learn at the outset that the restaurant is their responsibility, and if the place does well, the members of the wait staff get all the credit

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