Analysis

Total Quality Management

With quality being the most important competitive priority for Famous Dave's, they utilize a company wide TQM philosophy to ensure every guest is satisfied with their visit. The core of any TQM style management is customer satisfaction and at Famous Dave's that's our main focus, from the moment guest first arrive everything is tailored to meet their every need.

Customer satisfaction is continuously checked on thru out their stay; this is primary done by their server or bartender who will follow up and check on their guest as their food and drinks come out. Managers are also encouraged to make table visits and check up on guest themselves. This is because it is believe that people might be more likely to voice a complaint if their talking to someone in charge. In order to measure how well we are satisfying our guests, servers and bartenders are told to inform their guests of our customer survey, which is located online at Famousdavesfeedback.com. The survey will ask several question relating to the overall quality of their stay such as; speed of service, temperature of their food, and the friendliness of the staff. Upon completion guest will then receive a code for a free dessert for their next visit. In this regard the survey has two purposes, to help gauge customer satisfaction and to encourage repeat visits with the free dessert code. 

Famous Dave's guarantees food within 30 minutes of customers being seated, using 30 minutes as the upper control limit with an average of 24 minutes and an range of 4 minutes. Converting those figures in to seconds (1800, 1440, and 240 seconds respectively) and we get the following equations:

UCLr = 1.777(240) = 426
LCLr = 0.233(240) = 56

UCLx = 1440 + 0.308(240) = 1513
LCLx = 1440 - 0.308(240) = 1366

Employee involvement is crucial in meeting customer satisfaction, and at Famous Dave's employee involvement revolves around the idea that everything and everyone at Famous Dave's is indeed Famous. This includes the front of house staff are trained to always put forth an famous attitude and to go above and beyond in meeting customer expectations. This also applies to the back of house staff were their are trained prepare and plate every meal to our "famous" standard even if that means taking a little longer preparing it. Servers are also encouraged to double check plates before they leave the kitchen and to hand the plates back to the cooks if the order is incorrect or doesn't look "famous" enough. Through the use of one simple work Famous Dave's has instilled a mindset among its employees to ensure that everyone does their part to increase and maintain customer satisfaction.

Inventory Management 

While inventory management is important for any business, it is especially crucial for a restaurant because of the relatively short self life of uncooked food, and the unpredictable week to week demand for certain items. Because of this Famous Dave's using a periodic review system with a program called Decision Logic. Orders are placed on a weekly basis because to wait any longer in between order would require larger orders that would run the risk of items spoiling before they're used. Managers check current inventory levels and place the numbers into the program. The program then uses the previous inventory levels and decides what items need to be reordered for the upcoming week, and then places those orders automatically.