Restaurant Service Operation Management

1.0 Introduction

Satay King (沙爹王) is one of a famous chain of restaurant in Hong Kong with 20 years history, owned by Satay King (Holdings) Ltd and which is founded in 1991 by founder Cheng Chit.

The restaurant was expanded rapidly, and now there are 7 stores in Hong Kong and 300 staff. The location of the chain stores are always in busy centre, where are Tsim Sha Tsui, Mong Kok, Jordan, Tsuen Wan, Kwun Tong and Causeway Bay. The signature dishes, homemade white curry sauce pork, there are always long queues of customers waiting for enjoying the dining when daily peak hours. Apart from the popular dishes white curry, the mixture dishes of Malaysia, Thai and Vietnamese etc delivered delicious dining experience to customers.

The food quality is not the only that the founder concerns, but also image of the restaurant, in 2002, a local re-imaging, decoration of each store were renovated in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ theme with the design of wooden bathtub, manger, prison etc to relocate the image of the restaurant, younger people was attracted to, the age group of customers are younger from 18 age to 45 age after re-imaging.

From the information from Satay King’s website advised that the person-time is almost 220 thousand per month and the turnover is more than 1 billion Hong Kong dollars per month.

2.0 Service Concept

A clear service concept is very important to an organization, as it is in regard to the shared understanding of nature of the service provided and service received. It should be provided in sufficient detail, so that service concept can be made clear what organization is providing and what customer is receiving. (Johnston & Clark, 2008)

According to Johnston & Clark (2008 p.42), service concept can be illustrated with a summary table, the following adopted the same approach as for Satay King Restaurant:

Organisation : Satay King

Organising idea : More food choices, unique dining experience, good quality of food

Service concept (summary) : A chain of restaurant that provides a unique dining experience to customers. They offer mixture dishes of Malaysia, Thai and Vietnamese etc at reasonable price, and themed design for attracting younger age. Besides, a table call machine was invested to the restaurant, in order to enhance a speed of service and special ordering experience to customer.

Service experience :

1. Easy to access the restaurant

2. Quick for waiting table

3. Usher customers to their table

4. Enough space in dining area