Assignment On Benihana Simulation

The purpose of this paper is assessing my strategy and decisions in the simulation Biz Café. Then, I will give my results and explain how I got there. However, there were many factors involved creating these results. In this simulation, everything was left up to me to decide how to run my new coffee shop. There were big decisions at the beginning you had to make to create the overall theme of your business. Then, I was to hire employees, buy goods, and act on specials decisions or react to good or bad customer reactions. This, I will explain more in the following paragraphs.

The restaurants setting is aesthetically pleasing and uniquely from other traditional fast-food restaurants. The restaurants’ food preparation area was equipped with stoves and grills, pots and pans, cutting knives, wire whisks, walk-in refrigerator and other kitchen utensils. Besides, the company support systems and functions include distribution centers, quality assurance department, training and risk management department, accounting and finance, internal team of real estate managers, administrative and general management. All of these let the company to maintain the daily operation and run the business

This paper will cover a reflection of my experience with the Biz Café simulation. After reading this paper, one should have an idea of what I learned from the simulation and how it works. I will be talking about the challenges my team and I dealt with and how we overcame these challenges. Most importantly, I will be talking about how we made Coffee Connection run as a successful coffee shop. In this paper, I will also discuss my thoughts on teamwork and the significant factors of running a small business.

After seeing what choices my assistant, Sarah, would have made I continued the simulation when I encountered my first obstacle. Harvey, my choice for Assessor and Advisor was running into a conflict with the other team members because he was not available to them as much as they would have liked. I met with the team members and explained that Harvey had been given the technological tools necessary so that web conferencing would be able to take place whenever

The combined service rate of the two pre-cooked food servers is 1.03 minutes. This is the average of the 35 samples taken.

My answers were not decisive which reflect my weak critical thinking skill. For example, when it comes to medication administration, in instances where things are not clear, it should always be referred to the doctor which in this case I belatedly remembered. Nurses should also make sure that they knew how to use all the equipment that is used in the nursing care. In a medical emergency situation, every second counts. In the simulation, epinephrine administration was delayed since the nurse did not know how to use the automatic injection. Over-all the simulation had a significant impact to my learning process.

Blackshop is a popular casual restaurant in the area of Cambridge. It is a well run business in quite a competitive market. However, in a competitive market, proprietors of a business must do what is necessary in order to remain competitive and “maximise the number of guests” (Cerny). Blackshop must decide whether or not the Open Table system will allow them to gain a competitive advantage, and if so, what sort of operational strategy needs to be implemented for it to be successful. Issues that need to be addressed are whether Open Table systems such as the new reservation system and the table management system will, in fact, leave Blackshop with a competitive advantage.

Nevertheless, the majority of customers are very satisfied with the amount of serving along with the quality of their meal as well as the price paid. The strategy of being a low priced high value added has seen problems due to lack of customers which is affecting the bottom line drastically. This inevitable circumstance has put a hold on operations and started an investigation upon various neighboring competitors and their own strategies.

Once the exercise was over and as the individual points were displayed a lot of things became clearer. Having experienced the system and then debriefing later on, helped in filling a lot of gaps in information that seemed to exist during the simulation. With a better understanding of ‘the rules of the game’ and some of the strategies that did work, it is difficult to introspect now without a bias. As the saying goes – “Hindsight is wonderful. It's always very easy to second guess after the fact. “– Helen Reddy

For my project, I ran Coffee-Roma, a coffee shop located in the business district of a large city. My simulation ran for 60 days. Over this timeframe, I hired 7 employees and earned gross revenues of $89,984.20. From those revenues, my net profit totaled $14,046.83. Below are the details of how I attempted to best run my business.

Set an ambitious but not overly optimistic target completion date, according to resources invested and management’s targets. In case of delays, readjust target completion date.

The cost factor is one of the major concerns for Benihana’s growth. Each new unit costs $300,000. In order to reduce the startup cost, Benihana must find revisit its operating model and re-evaluate what is the most important to the customers. Looking back at exhibit 4, majority of respondents valued quality and taste of the food, service and preparation of food. These are the qualities that truly separate Benihana from other restaurants. Changing Benihana’s staffing model, including training, and the use of materials and labor from Japan, will most certainly minimize new unit cost.

The issues inherent in the simulation are not textbook problems or questions in which answers are cut and dried and determined quickly.

The average turn from the time customers receive their food to the time they exit the restaurant, is 32 minutes. Additionally, it appears that even the experienced staff has difficulties in serving the customers as the demand exceeds labor utilized creating queues on the weekends of up to 25 minutes.

Introduction which includes a short description of the case study restaurants and a brief explanation of research