Operations Management: Hard Rock Cafe

Operations Management: Location Decision for the Hard Rock Café Using Factor Rating Approach
Name
Institution
Location Decision for the Hard Rock Cafe Using Factor Rating Approach
In the current highly competitive globalized market, companies are concerned about enhancing their competitive edge in order to survive. Organizational managements have become critical in analyzing their decision-making approaches in order to facilitate making the best decision that would enable the organization position itself strategically in the market to acquire more customer base (Wisner, Tan, & Leong, 2011). Some of the most important decisions that provide the hallmark for organizational competitive edge pertain to operational issues such as costs of operation, proximity to the desired customer base and the availability of necessary factors of production among others. Different industries rely on different elements in determining their strategic decisions concerning how to promote competitive edge. In the hospitality industry, location is one of the most strategically important decisions that determine the competitive edge of a company. In the decision-making process concerning location of a hospitality company, various methods can be used to analyze the factors that identify the best location where a firm can be positioned in order to acquire a strong and unique competitive edge. This paper seeks to analyze how the factor-rating model can be employed to determine the best location decision for the Hard Rock Café.
Since its inception, Hard Rock Café has operated with the mission of promoting the spirit of rock music in a café environment. Although the restaurant also emphasizes on domestic strategy where it includes the local populations’ culture, particularly on matters of food menu, the organization’s restaurant are created as a rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia museum characterized by live rock music and rock antiques that cannot be seen or purchased anywhere else (Hard Rock, 2014). Apart from the local delicacies, the Hard Rock Café menu comprises of the classic American food such as burgers, lobster, and chicken meat. The success of the restaurant is attributed to its quality food and services. It unique differentiation based of rock music has won the firm big customer bases of music lovers in many regions in the world where the company operates. According to the company’s vice president, Oliver Munday, the locations of the restaurants are carefully selected keeping in mind various aspects of business environment suitable for the restaurants (Hard Rock, 2010). Some of the most valued considerations include favorable political and legislative environment, favorable population culture, good infrastructure in the area, and the availability of labor and suppliers.
Notable, the Hard Rock Café restaurants are located in areas with more traffic particularly the areas that have developed tourism (Hard Rock, 2014). This, they believe, greatly exposes the restaurants to a wider customer base of diversified culture that tends to favor the firms operations. Furthermore, in most cases tourists seek fun loving activities that drive most of them towards appreciating music during their visits. Rock music is one of the most loved genres of music in the world and this puts the firm in a good position to attract a lot of visitors to its premises (Slaten, 2014).
Space is another critical factor in selecting locations for the restaurant. Normally, Hard Rock Café requires very large space enough to accommodate large number of seats and support live rock music band (Hard Rock, 2014). It rock music memorabilia museum-like arrangements also needs lots of space in order to facilitate a well-organized place to attract visitors. In this regard, the firm would opt to introduce its restaurant in places where there is easy availability of enough land to build the premise or in places where it can easily secure a big space in a building to put up the restaurant.
The company pays attention in cost minimization strategies in order to promote profitability, growth, and development. The Hard Rock Café prefers operating in areas where it can easily access different suppliers of various inputs into its operations (Hard Rock, 2014). Such supplies include different foods, and clean water among others. By considering some of its already established restaurants, the firm prefers locating in urban areas where different suppliers can easily access. This way, it safeguards adequate suppliers hat ensure the restaurants operates efficiently.
In general, the Hard Rock Café management value highly developed urban areas as their most preferred areas of location (Magyaries, 2013). Urban areas ensures of favorably developed infrastructures such as transportation and communication networks that can facilitate customers’ easy access to t...