Marchand's Restaurant Had Developed an Excellent Reputation in Recent Years

Essay

Marchand's Restaurant had developed an excellent reputation in recent years for its price, menu, and atmosphere. The restaurant is now completing a strategic analysis to determine whether it should make adjustments in its menu, pricing, or wait service, to better meet customer needs and to become more competitive. Marchand's has chosen to use Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to analyze customer preferences and its cost structure. The analysis focuses on costs that can be managed in the short term, and therefore excludes facility related costs.
The data that Marchand's has collected so far includes information about customer preferences (Marchand's surveyed customers regarding their preferences for taste, comfort and atmosphere) and the unit cost of the three key elements of its service: food preparation, wait staff, and food ingredients. Next, Marchand completed an analysis, using the expertise of its managers, wait staff and kitchen staff, to determine the contribution of each of the three elements of its service to satisfying the three components of customer satisfaction. Required:
Determine which of the three cost elements (food preparation, wait staff, and food ingredients) should be given increased or decreased emphasis based on a QFD analysis. Explain your answer with appropriate calculations.