Outline the Benihana Restaurant Concept

1) Future Expansion Difficulties

Benihana has limited capabilities for future expansions primarily because it has only two teams of Japanese carpenters which are able to work on almost five units per year. And the restaurant cannot forgo these workers because the Japanese design is an essential aspect of the place.

Also, since the cost of opening a new unit is no less than $300,000, the vice president of Benihana, Mr. Bill Susha, prefers focusing in the short run on only the key cities such as Atlanta and St. Louis with the hope of benefiting from these major units to later on expand in various towns.

Franchising is also difficult for the Benihana concept because of the uniqueness of the concept and its dealings with employees, which makes control very difficult.

2) Table Accommodation Limitations

The fact that each table at Benihana is designed for eight people and a chef and a waitress are assigned for two tables might be a drawback for the place. When a team of a chef and a waitress serve a table of eight and another table of two at the same time for example, there is some forgone potential happening. In other words, such a team would earn more for the services they are providing if there were more people on the table they are handling.

In addition, if customers came in groups of less than eight then there would be more empty space on a table that could have otherwise been occupied by another group of people. So a possible solution in this case is designing a certain amount of tables for a fewer amount of customers. In this way a single unit could handle more people and of course profit more.