Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Tourists visit restaurants for a number of different reasons and this is high-
lighted in the research carried out by Jason Guenther and Barry Zimmerman
in a report by Professor James Potter titled 'Restaurant Research.'
2
Guenther
and Zimmerman concluded the choice of restaurant is based on different
reasons, but primarily, in priority sequence, they are:
1.
Quality of food: 70%.
2.
Customer service: 70%.
3.
Restaurant atmosphere: 20%.
4.
Price of the meal: 5%.
5.
Location of restaurant: 5%.
6.
Speed of food delivery.
7.
Healthiness of the food offered.
8.
Networking opportunities.
Customer service
Around the world the general view is that customer service is declining in all
retail establishments. Research in the restaurant industry covered a number
of areas of customer service.
Team visual appearance
•
70% of customers polled felt team visual appearance was very important
when choosing where to eat;
•
20% of customers felt it was important;
•
10% felt it was not important.
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This identifies how important team training is in the restaurant industry.
Team members need to know where the food served came from, they need
to understand how the meal is prepared, they need to understand the ingre-
dients and must be able to advise customers with allergies etc. In addition,
they must have the personality skills and empathy to know how much en-
gagement the customer wants whilst dining.
Restaurant atmosphere
The key ingredients that make up the atmosphere in the consumer's
mind are:
•
Lighting: fast food restaurants tend to focus on using fluorescent light-
ing. Their aim is persuading patrons to eat their meal quickly as 'table'
turns are important to making a profit; the more tables they can turn in a
session the more money the restaurant makes. Whereas upmarket res-
taurants rely on 'mood' or accent lighting to relax patrons and will often
allow the guest to book a table for the whole evening;
•
Privacy: some patrons are looking for privacy within the restaurant
whilst others want a more public location to share with friends and to be
seen. Generation Y restaurants are all about being seen in the right
