Business Review 1: Chicken Buffet Restaurant

I just came back from stuffing myself at a chicken buffet. Noticed some interesting business aspects of the restaurant, so feel compelled to jot them down. By the way, this post is dedicated to my first encouraging comment left on my blog by P J Stuart, Thanks :)

As I sat there and observed the business operations, I thought that it's quite a good concept. But before we go through the strengths of that particular business, let's discuss what makes a BAD restaurant:

1. Bad food or inconsistent quality
2. Bad service from that bitchy waitress
3. Food takes too long to be served
4. Unhygienic place
5. Overpriced

Let's run the above through with the buffet restaurant I just went to:

1. When the main course is fried chicken, it is usually hard to go wrong because to me, the hardest thing to cook wrong in this world is fried chicken. Even if the other dishes have been cooked bad, you don't usually complain because there's others to choose from.
2. The only interaction I had with the service staff is at the entrance where I paid my dining fee, then accompanied to my table. The rest was self service at the buffet bar, so very little interaction with the service staff, less chance of being poorly served
3. The buffet bar is ready when you are so no waiting time, unless there's a queue...
4. It was neat and tidy. The staff attentive because their only job was to clear the tables. They were focused on the job because they do not need to carry out the typical restaurant tasks like taking orders, sending out food to the right table, making recommendations, distributing and retrieving menus, etc... 
5. All customers are aware of the price before dining, so there can't be surprise because you pay first.

Other than point number 4, which is unavoidable in any premise, the buffet restaurant doesn't seem to be susceptible to the usual restaurant complaints... Now lets talk about the strengths, or advantages:

1. Ease of operations - the cashier can easily be the person who shows you to your table, and also help bring out the food from the kitchen to the buffet bar. Low skill sets and able to carry out different tasks. Even the complexity of calculating the bill is almost non-existent because everyone pays the same amount.
2. Easy to track profit and loss - as the boss, you should have a rough estimate how many people need to walk into your restaurant for you to break-even. Imagine if you're overseas on holiday, all you need to do is to have your manager send you an SMS on how many people visited your restaurant that day and you'll know you've made money or not.
3. High revenue per table- buffets are usually social events so there's usually more than 2 people dining per table.

Seems like a good business to own... easy to operate, duplicate and monitor. But what do I know? I've never run a restaurant in my life. Just sharing my thoughts. And even if this is not a good business idea, the morale of the story is, whenever you are at a business establishment, ask yourself questions like:

• is this a good business model?
  
• how do they make money?
• what are the potential weaknesses and threats?
• what else can they do to make more money?
• how do they keep the business running smoothly?
• what can i do better if i were the boss?

Ask more, learn more, grow more...