Intangible
- relaxed, stress-free atmosphere
- cool place to spent time with friends
- pleasant service
- feel of well spent time
Explicit
- Szwejk movie related climate and decorations
- helpful staff
- high quality food
- menu
- interesting promotions
- high standards restaurant
Implicit
- attitude of service personnel
- ability to have conversations
- need to wait for service
- toilet
- cloakroom
- music
- comfortable tables and chairs
Role of décor, atmosphere and arrangement to provide context.
Décor and first experience of atmosphere encourage to stay (in case someone wasn’t sure about it).
Inside décor music and atmosphere create pleasant feelings and are coherent with our expectations according to the famous movie. We can say that once you are in you will stay and make an order. The climate is good for business meal, a private meeting of a couple or dynamic meeting of a group of friends. There is also opportunity to chose among different rooms with different arrangement s of furniture.
One can even take a tour round the restaurant being curious about some funny details.
First impression is very good and experience of having a dinner in Szwejk encourages to come back again.
Points of contacts, line of visibility, information and participation.
There are several points of contacts:
- At the door customers are asked to choose a table (in smoking or not smoking area). We believe there could be some additional questions considering the choice of room, distance from the kitchen and from the windows. This I very important because this very first moment decides whether customer will stay or go somewhere else.
- Waiter who serves you is the second most important factor. Waiter advises customer to chose a meal, informs about promotions, asks if the meal was good and tries to solve any possible problems. The service of waiter and the quality of provided food have a great impact on general evaluation of value of time spent in restaurant.
- When going out of the restaurant the waitress at the door thanked the customers for coming.
Line of visibility allows customers to see how the orders are processed, how the meal is prepared and how the cookers and waiters interact each others.
Well it is nice to see this things but this has to be managed well in order to create good image of restaurant and gain the loyalty and trust of customers and to fulfill their curiosity. In Szwejks situation we could see food lying on the heaps and the cookers who wasn’t looked professional. Than all the waiters were seemed to be sad and some of them ware wondering around without aim. These wasn’t surly positive experience.
Information – lots of it, many funny ways of presenting important information but it is often hidden somewhere and there is still a lot of to do about its visibility and awareness to new customers about different possibilities, promotions and customs.
Participation – customer is involved in choosing it’s table and than customer can see some part of preparations of meal (provided that the table is near the kitchen). Well there could be some more Szwejk related customs, rituals and perhaps some interactive items for instance some Czechs newspapers, some Szwejk’s comics and stories. There could be some competitions about knowledge of movies and historic times related to Szwejk.
Part C
Capacity Organisation
How are channels used to differentiate types of need?
- diversified menu – there are some breakfast propositions, different kinds of dinners available as well as beverages with different snacks or some special meal for a couples. There are also some interesting promotions that allowed some other kind of people to have a dinner in Szwejk (good students propositions on Mondays)
- possibility of choosing a table
- chance to see the kitchen where meals are being prepared, we had a possibility for we were setting close to the kitchen
- asking clients if they would like something also or more of the previous ones in our case they asked us if we would like another alcoholic drink it was a beer for half the price
- menu in two languages (Polish and English)
- free baby caretaker on Sundays
- time of service
- quality of service as perceived in general
- lots of possibilities to make some choices about the conditions of service
How are employees utilization addresses (i.e. where does their time go?)
- waitresses take clients to the tables, take orders from clients, go to the kitchen to give the orders to the cooks, later they bring the orders back to the clients who ordered them, ask customers who have previously ordered if everything is all right and if they would like to order additional meals or drinks, they inform customers of promotions which is a marketing strategy implemented in every day activities
- we noticed that some employees were standing and wasting time
- it was hard for us to notice supervision of staff however there was a manager
- cooks were occupied with cooking and heating meals
- we do not know how the rules are designed after the closing hours, we have no knowledge for example who cleans up the restaurant, kitchen and other places
What do customers spend their time on and how are queue handled?
- social meetings we saw couples and group of colleagues at the restaurant
- business meetings
- project meetings such as our group who came to assess the quality of service or do any other tasks
- people also come jut to fulfill physical needs for having a meal
- family visit the restaurant to have a meal and also spend time together
- some people come also to meet new people
- there are also some celebrations (there is possibility to rent a part of restaurant)
- foreigners who come there for it has a good location in the centre of Warsaw
- In spite of many people inside we noticed no queues so it is difficult to judge. There is a kind of computer system to support service and managed the customers, tables and orders. It can decrease the danger of appearing of queues.
Concept Organisation and success realization
Marketing Service Concept observed:
- Every day there is a special menu with very good prices
- On Saturday and Sunday special offer for beer: buy one get one free
- On Monday beer costs half of regular price
- Between 10-18 meal should be served in 15 minutes. Otherwise, customer receive it for free
- The beer glass should be filled to the top. Otherwise customer get it for free
- On Sunday Babysitter is available for free
- Free meal for customers who gets the parking ticket in Warsaw
All Marketing concepts are very well and precisely realized by the service.
Conceptual model of service quality:
Part D
How does the customer get value for money? Which type of customers especially visits this restaurant?
Considering the localization, high quality service, nice atmosphere and all other factors that make this restaurant exclusive, prices are relatively low. The restaurant makes a lot special offers, what make them even the lowest in local of this type, in whole area. The portions are bigger then expected. Before the meal is served, customers get an extra appetizer and after the consumption good-bye cherry drink. Summarizing value for money is very high.
The customers, that has been observed mostly are people over 20 years old, businessmen having lunch and meetings after hours of work. Sometimes they are students and adults celebrating special occasions or having dinners.
How does the restaurant make a profit?
The calculations are based on Regular price sets. Special offers not considered.
The average number of customers per day 200
TOTAL SALE: 8. 800 per day / 264,000 per month.
The average bill: Chicken breast with rice and cabbage 29,00 PLN + one liter of beer: 15 PLN = 44 PLN
Cost of products
- Meat 4 PLN
- Rice 1 PLN
- Cabbage 1 PLN
- Sauce 0.50 PLN
- Appetizer 1 PLN
Total cost of food 7.50
Total cost per bill: 12.50
Total cost 2500 per day/ 75,000 per month
Cost of service per month
Average number of waiters: 20
Average work hours: 180
Price per hour: 9 PLN
The average salary of waiter: 1,620 PLN
Total cost of waiters : 48,600 PLN
The average number of cookers: 8
The average work hours: 160
Price per hour: 18
The average salary of cooker: 2880
Total cost of cookers: 23,040 PLN
Average number of managers: 6
Average work hours: 180
Price per hour: 19 PLN
The average salary of waiter: 3,420 PLN
Total cost of waiters : 20,520 PLN
Rental cost: 30,000 PLN
Depreciation and leasing costs: 6,000 PLN
Cleaning service (kitchen&rooms): 19,200PLN
Additional costs: 10,000 PLN
TOTAL COST: 232,360 PLN
Monthly income: 31,640 PLN
How does the organization of facility match the service requirement?
While talking about fulfilling service requirement by organization facility we mean:
- easy to move around, find your place
- allowing for fast service
- clear signs available
- possibility to having some privacy
- adaptable or design to various number of person wishing to seat together
- having some quiet places
- facilities for smoking and no smoking
- it is supporting atmosphere creation
In general all organizational issues that are connected with facilities quite good match service requirement (which we mentioned above). We would only make some remarks:
- information system – signs, promotion information are not correctly exposed
- there should be some hidden warehouses (or any other support rooms or some furniture) what would safe customers from watching heaps of food lying in the kitchen
- there could be some new decorations ideas to support atmosphere even more
- there could be toilet on the ground floor
How well can the service employees contribute and participate naturally in their tasks and both create and support the culture of the organization?
As we mentioned before the role of employees providing service, the way they behave and perform their duties is a crucial for creating added value – in this case good atmosphere and visible culture of organization. In Szwejk we could clearly see that there is a concept of cultural organization and there are some scenarios and instruction for staff in order to support it. However we noticed some serious problems in executing these concept. We could even say that most of waiters while waiting for new customers is not even wasting their time staying and talking near the entrance but what should trouble much more they seemed to be sad and tired. And this caused that in general we perceived the whole service employees to be somehow unhappy and just waiting for customers to go out. Amazingly while talking to customers and taking new orders they were able to smile and be kind so perhaps there is a need to train employees how they should behave while not interacting with customers and aware them that customers observe what is going on around. If they want to take a breath and have some rest they should go to some kind of staff-room.
There are also positive evidence of supporting organizational culture like warm welcome at the doors, serving appetizer, wearing nice traditional clothes, asking whether meal was good or serving an extra drink for good-bye.
We could also suggest to try to renew some ideas and refresh the image of restaurant. It is just good to change something or try something new.
QFD matrix – contributions of the interactions between service value and system design:
Summary:
At the end of our audit of service in “U Szwejka” Restaurant we would like to write some general thoughts about it.
We strongly believe that the idea of this business – starting up a restaurant that has some relations to Jaroslaw Hasek’s famous book – has great potential, which is used very well and brings considerable profit. There was a lot of effort put to turn this idea into a real restaurant with a good reputation, pleasant atmosphere, interesting design and good service. Szwejk has also a very good localization and the quality of served meals speaks for itself. These are all very strong sides of the business.
However we noticed some small problems which in the long-term can possibly grow and become more serious ones. As we have already mentioned in our audit, these are managing staff’s appearance and internal information system.
There is also an issue of the marketing strategy or to be more precise the lack of a marketing strategy. There are some nice and interesting promotions concerning meals and other things, but the awareness of them and information about them is not presented well especially to the new customers. Target groups of customers should be chosen and defined, then proper ways of getting in touch with these people, and giving them the required view of Szwejk restaurant should be introduced. Right now there is an information chaos which leads to the disorientation of customers. And there is a great need for Szwejk to have it’s internet site. Nowadays it a very important factor and it is a pity that you cannot learn anything about Szwejk from the Internet.
Anyway, we would like to recommend Szwejk to anyone who likes a good meal and/or to have a good time with friends!
