Case Study for Organisational Performance

Exercise 1: The Horizon Yum Cha Restaurant

One of the key areas where ideas about organisational performance and measurement are applied is the area of production planning and management.

Note that this case is based on Kimes, S. E. (2008) Afternoon Tea at the Peninsula Hotel Hong Kong, Nanyang Business School, Singapore

The Horizon Restaurant operates in a heritage building just off Broadway in Sydney. The building has six levels and there are yum cha restaurants on each level. The Horizon Restaurant is on the third floor and regularly has a large number of patrons, especially on weekends for yum cha.

The main dining room can accommodate up to 220 patrons at any one time. During weekends queues start forming at 10:40 in the morning with some groups waiting up over 30 minutes during the peak period from 12:30 and 2pm. Queues may be up to five or six group or over 30 people.

On average 505 patrons are served yum cha each day (as set out Table 1).

Table 1 “ Average number of patrons

Day of the week Average number of patrons
Monday 532
Tuesday 481
Wednesday 434
Thursday 464
Friday 510
Saturday 554
Sunday 562

Most patrons order meals which range in price from $16 to $40 per head per sitting, with most groups staying at their tables for about 50 minutes.

For yum cha, the restaurant has 20 tables to seat 4 patrons, 10 tables to seat 2 patrons, and 15 tables to seat 8 patrons. As the photo above shows the tables are well spaced to enable ease of access for staff and patrons.

The restaurant occupies the whole third floor of the building and with the dining space occupying most of the useable space on the floor (see Figure 1 below).

Figure 1 “ Floor layout

The atmosphere of the restaurant is a friendly, but because of the bustle of serving and patrons arriving and leaving it is a busy place. Nevertheless many patrons are keen to take photos of their groups and often ask the waiters and waitresses to for help in taking pictures.

Question:
You have been asked to develop a plan for increasing yum cha revenue by 15%.

1) What factors will you consider? Why? (Hint: what are the key drivers in this business, what performance measures would you use, what are those measures of performance telling you?)

2) How well would your plan match the objectives of the restaurant and the expectations of patrons?

Organizational performance problem solving Exercise 1

Read the questions at the end of the case study and draw a line graph of the data presented in Table 1 in the Week 3 Tutorial Case study. Do use computer software to draw the graph.

As Studyzone.org says: A line graph uses points and lines on a grid to show change over a period of time. You will need to construct the graph to have a horizontal axis (x) and a vertical axis (y), plot the data from Table 1 and label the graph correctly, including a title for your graph.