Kiroran - A Xinjiang Gastronomy-Themed Restaurant

KIRORAN RESTAURANT Name: Institution:Date: 1 The organization. Kiroran is a Xinjiang gastronomy-themed restaurant located in 10728 Fairfax Blvd, Fairfax, va22030. The restaurant targets Chinese and Russians. The first impression upon walking into the restaurant is its ambiance which is soft and calming. The decorations on the wall are beautiful and artistic which makes the room feel cool and welcoming. The aroma in the restaurant is welcoming and mouthwatering. The restaurant serves more than 100 items, including hand pilaf, pulled noodles, kebabs, sauté spicy chicken and lasagna. The restaurant operates like most restaurants and is open daily from 11 am to 9.30pm. Among them, 12 pm to 1.30pm and 6 pm to 9.30pm is the peak business hours for this Xinjiang restaurant. The restaurant has four helpers and two chefs, one for pasta and the other for the rest of the meal. This restaurant has one person in charge at the front desk during non-holidays and three at the front desk during holidays. 2 The current process. The restaurant prepares food according to the daily number of customers. On average, 30 to 40 servings of sauté spicy chicken will be served per box, and 8 to 10 cartons of muscle will normally last 4 weeks. Each case of mutton weighs 40 pounds and is normally used for two days. Every day the restaurant uses15kg of vegetables and six bags of flour, two ingredients that rise slightly by 30% over the weekend. The restaurant is also in a good sanitary condition. After a table of guests finishes eating, someone will clean the table and disinfect the tableware. The serving time of each type of dishes is different. Generally, the serving time of normal dishes is 5-10 minutes, while the serving time of complex dishes is about 10 minutes. This restaurant takes 12 to 15 tables on weekdays and 40 to 50 on weekends. The restaurant has reached cooperation with three delivery service providers, with about 10-12 orders for delivery on weekdays and more than 15 orders for delivery on weekends. What is noteworthy is that delivery orders through uber are the highest. 4) Potential areas for improvement After investigation, we found some problems. First of all, the restaurant doesn't do risk forecasting. The restaurant does not have an elaborate system of tracking inventory such that the administrator can forecast sales and make appropriate orders for ingredients to minimize wastage. Secondly, most of the dishes take too long to serve, some may be more than 20 minutes to half an hour, also not in the rush hour. The restaurant hasn’t come up with a solution to cut down on the length of time before an order is served. That is a long time for clients to wait before their order is delivered and some of the clients cited that the waiting time is one of the issues they find unsatisfactory with the restaurant. The restaurant lacks a waiting area for guests who would like to take their orders away. In some cases, they may leave to have their meals elsewhere rather than waiting while standing. This happens often when there are many guests. the sanitation in this restaurant needs improvement. It is a clean restaurant from the face value especially where clients sit but, in the kitchen, things are far from what they seem from the outside. The restaurant management seems to be actively trying to maintain high hygiene standards but, in the kitchen, things seem far less attractive. The kitchen floor and shelves are messy. The ingredients do not appear to be arranged or stored in order and that seems to pose a problem to the chefs when sorting through the ingredients to pick the one they want. This contributes to their slow delivery. The other issue comes from packaging the takeaway foods. The box can't be insulated, like the big plate chicken, it's very difficult for the customer to take it away. This leads to low takeaway orders. Online orders also come with an additional cost of transport and adding to a long time of preparation and delivery, it could explain the slow online sales. Some of the reviews on Yelp are negative pointing to poor service or poor quality of food. This shows that the restaurant has less attractive service than some guests would expect. Several people have noted that their service is ‘satisfactory’ while others have pointed out that their quality of food is subpar. Their website is poorly designed and though it is easy to navigate and place an online order, its aesthetics are below average. 5) How the information and data was collected We used primary means to collect our information. Observation, questionnaires, and interviews. First, we observed the operations of the restaurant as clients where we visited the eatery and ordered a meal. We were keen on how they carried out their services and noted down all the observable things from the point of a client. Some of the data we collected by observation is the general look and feel of the restaurant as a client. We looked at how service was conducted from the moment a client walks into the moment he/she walks out. We also observed that a person clears, cleans and disinfects each table after service. We also ordered an online meal which was delivered by uber. We also wanted to experience the online experience especially the time it would take to get our order and the general quality of the meal. We also used a questionnaire to some of the clients. We obtained permission from the management to be allowed to administer few questionnaires to willing customers requesting them for their honest opinions on a range of issues such as quality of food, nature of service. The questionnaires contained both open and closed-ended questions but it was just one-paged to enable the respondent to fill it out as soon as possible. We managed to administer 13 questionnaires though several customers did not want to fill it out. We also conducted interviews with some workers in the restaurant. First, we interviewed the chef, their helpers, front desk customer care officer, waiters & waitresses, and the restaurant administrator and supervisor. For each one of them, we had a different set of questions that were structured to enable us to collect the information relevant to their role in the business. 6) Analysis of client's problem using the information and data available The first step to improvement is to recommend the boss to conduct a risk prediction assessment of the restaurant. The second point is to prepare as much as possible the materials of the day and the ingredients used in each dish, according to the type. The preparation of the pasta has a problem with keeping fresh. So, it is only possible to increase efficiency by increasing the number of cookers. The above mentioned the distribution of the kitchen. In fact, there should be three people in the kitchen in daily life, not just the weekend time. This may increase daily expenses, but it is necessary to improve the efficiency of serving and reduce the waiting time of customers. This also has a positive impact on the customer's dining experience. Third, the hygiene of the kitchen is good, but the reserves of ingredients need to be placed neatly according to the category, instead of being cluttered on the shelves. This can greatly improve the efficiency of the chefs. The fourth point, the packaging box can be customized to be more special, different from the traditional Chinese packaging box. This can increase the number of external clicks and expand the audience. The fifth point, it is very necessary to set the waiting area. You can set some snacks or games in the equipotential area, instead of letting the customers stand in line to wait for the meal. Sixth, increasing the peak service staff, try to ensure that each table can be cleaned up after the meal is finished. In the end, we strongly recommended the boss to reduce the number of dishes. The current ingredients are 100 kinds of ingredients, but the click rate of many dishes is not high. There is an old saying in China, “things are valued for their quality rather than their numbers.” Concentrate on a few signature dishes better than others. At the same time, it can also reduce the cost of preparing food. 3) How the organization measures the performance of its current operations. Currently, the restaurant does not have an elaborate system to measure and track its performance. The management seems to be occupied with the daily running of the restaurant and they do not have clear strategic and performance goals that need to be tracked. In most cases, the management is satisfied with serving their average number of customers and they do not seem to be eyeing new performance metrics such as reduced wastage of ingredients, increase in the number of tables served per day, increase in the number of online sales, etc. Concisely, the re...