My wife, Carole, and I decided to get out of town to get warm during my recent spring break. While at our destination, Carole decided to look on the Internet for a restaurant that was new to us, had a great view, and a great reputation for food and service. Carole, always value conscious, also thought it would be good if the restaurant honored discounts. She found such a restaurant.
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She then went online and got a $50 coupon for dinner! Next, she attempted to get a reservation. She could not make reservations at TripAdvisor, Yelp, Open Table, by phoning the restaurant, or even on the restaurant’s own website. She finally got through by calling the front desk of the hotel in which the restaurant was located and asked to be connected to the bar. The people at the bar put Carole on hold so they could check to see if we would be allowed to dine at the restaurant. The bar folks took our reservation. We got there early at 6:30, and the place was practically empty. We did get a table with an excellent view. We thought that it would perhaps fill up later. It did not. We decided that maybe there was some kind of glitch in the reservations system and decided to let the management know in an attempt to be good quality professionals.
We saw a young woman who seemed to be wandering around and asked her if she was the manager. She was quick to reply that she was not; she was only a supervisor who was the acting manager that evening. We explained how difficult it was to get a reservation, and she just as quickly as before explained that was their policy. Their intent was to make sure that there were always available tables in case any of the hotel residents wanted a table at the last minute. At that point, about half the tables were empty in the middle of the busiest time for dinner.
W. Edwards Deming used to say, “Some people don’t want to make money.” I suspect someone in the management system felt that way... or maybe was just clueless. Just to check if we ran into an out-of-control situation, we searched for and found some other online comments about the restaurant:
“Service was very good. HOWEVER, I had been given a gift card for [the restaurant] from co-workers, and when I tried to use the gift card to pay gratuities, I was told I could not. Gift cards at any other restaurant I have been to are the same as cash. I was also not able to use this with a Restaurant.com certificate. Again, a gift card should be the same as cash.”
“This restaurant refuses to return calls, and has no menu on its website. I went to Open Table.com to make a reservation. I wanted reservations for dinner, but they are not open for dinner or were full for just about any day. I made reservations for their brunch at 11 a.m. When I got there, I found out brunch stops serving at 11 a.m. Never heard of a Sunday brunch closing at 11. I had breakfast, which was just OK.”
“Management is sometimes unprofessional as they have already twice canceled reservations on me.”
My immediate reaction to all this was to think that it would be easy to reduce the variation around the number of people eating there, and thereby increase sales, by reducing the number of empty tables while making sure that no hotel guest is turned down for a reservation. You could, for example, set up a control chart monitoring how many tables are requested by hotel guests each evening… maybe even at what time, to get a little more precise. You could simultaneously set up a control chart monitoring how many tables are empty each evening… maybe every 15 minutes. Once you know how many tables will be requested, you could begin to take steps to fill those empty tables.
But I think there is a bigger message here. Six Sigma is a brilliant approach to improving marketing. The restaurant’s (perhaps unconscious) policy of suboptimizing among the pricing, promotion, accessibility, and customer service functions reminded me that there is an opportunity within most of our organizations to take on projects that cross departmental boundaries. I’m sure some of you already use Six Sigma in your marketing and in whole organizational efforts. I’d love to hear about them. If you don’t, I suggest there are great opportunities in those areas. I hope the opportunities at your organization are not as rich as those at our empty restaurant.
As always, I look forward to your comments and questions.
Comments
Nice story
Thank you for this story. Clearly you approach your leisure time in the same way I do. It is all experience we can learn from. If we were interested in Italian and there was an Italian speaker in the restaurant we might go up and chat. But, since we are interested in operations and systems and operating models, then the fact that this one is not working very well is a good reason to "chat" with the manager.
I am not sure you need lean methods to solve this one though. My guess is that this is a strategy problem or a leadership problem. Change the strategy or the leader and you will find that the tables are full. But, yes, some charts to help optimise external bookings with hotel guest requirements probably would be helpful.
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