Free Custom «Innovation of a Restaurant» Essay Paper

Problem statement

I have been a manager at Delicious Restaurant for quite some time now, and I have observed and identified the following problems: 

• There is a lot of food being wasted both by the employees and customers;
• Environmental pollution from the restaurant (Clarke).

These problems affect the restaurant both financially and customer-wise. Some customers who are environmentally friendly find it unsafe to purchase food from this restaurant and so end up promoting our competitors whose restaurant conditions are better. The restaurant also overspends on purchases that just end up in the garbage can. The money spent on these could be comfortably diverted to putting in place methods that will eventually result in a reduction in environmental pollution brought about by the restaurant. It is advisable to the restaurant to fix these problems and to purchase the right amount of food products as well as to focus on implementation of ways that contribute to the restaurant as environmentally friendly. Since these problems extremely cost the restaurant they must be fixed as soon as it is possible (Abraham).

These problems come about because of:

• Foods that need to be trimmed
• Foods that contain a lot of fat
• The restaurant is not offering a variety of sizes when it comes to main dishes.

These problems should be fixed in order to save the restaurant from incurring unnecessary losses and expenses and also to make it more environmentally friendly. This will be possible if customers have a variety of food choices to order from so the chances of them leaving the food on plates will decrease. This will make the budget committee of the restaurantable to come up with an accurate flexed budget that will make the restaurant just incur necessary food expenses. Upon fixation of these problems, the restaurant will also be more environmentally friendly bearing in mind no fats of its bi-products. Suppliers will experience losses because fewer products will be bought and some of them who supply fatty products will end up losing market, because the restaurant will start dealing with new suppliers who supply lean products.

This proposal seeks to promote:

• Just enough food product purchase
• Recycling of used glass bottles
• Going digital in terms of menu and receipts to save on paper
• Encouraging partnership with farms so as to compost wastes in a healthy manner
• Save on water and electricity expenses
• Use of printed handkerchiefs in place of tissue
• Encompass more vegetarian dishes in the menu

The restaurant can do away with enormous Carbon components found in meat. This proposal will deal with water wastage by installing water efficient washroom systems. It also supports frequent checkup for leakages in all toilets and faucets. It suggests that aerators should be installed in all sinks. Water efficient dish washers that only work on a full work load should also be installed. The restaurant can also become greener if energy efficient appliances are bought and installed in order to help to reduce the electricity consumption. Replacing conventional cleaners with eco-friendly ones is also another helpful suggestion, because they will help to reduce air and water pollution. Digitalization of the menu and receipts will assist in saving paper which comes from trees thus few trees will be cut, and less processing (which always results in air pollution, because of the smoke emitted from the factories) will take place. This will contribute to a greener environment, because no smoke will be emitted and no trees will be cut. The restaurant will also not incur the expense of purchasing paper (Clarke).

The restaurant will also offer different sized options of dishes to reduce plate wastes. The restaurant will also print tips that help in protecting the environment on those handkerchiefs that will be used instead of tissue in whipping hands after a wash. Customers will have the freedom to carry them home if they prefer so. They will act as a reminder to always protect the environment. This proposal will strongly address food, water and electricity wastages and going digital. However, I will not address the ways of raising enough finance to support this project and making employees more efficient in their service delivery. I will not also tackle the steps that should be taken when dealing with employees who do not support the restaurant’s goal of going greener.

Observation

My research was necessitated by the discoveries I made about the restaurant. It is a renowned one but still had some difficulties that needed to be addressed. Its commencement dates back to 1971 from a remarkably easy structure made of wooden poles and a metallic roof. These implied the application of locally available materials which also ensured sustainability. This structure had no windows or doors. The restaurant did not have a menu per table, because it simply worked with direct orders. A customer could just make an order and wait by the wooden bench to be served in few minutes. The restaurant only operated during the day because of lack of electricity. Smoke used to go directly to the skies because of lack of chimneys. Customers could not empty their systems for the reason that of lack of toilets. All wastages used to be dumped in the neighboring river since the restaurant had not partnered with any farm to compost its wastes.

Food wastages were alarming due to lack of different size options of dishes. The employees could also over trim food products because they lacked enough training on being efficient. Fatty meat used to be a specialty in the restaurant’s menu. The restaurant was not environmental conscious back then it just focused on what helps it make more profit that is why fatty meat was its specialty despite it was having a whopping footprint of carbon. This carbon would go up and form a zonal layer that may come out as the most dangerous component of smog. Currently, the restaurant is a well-established place. It has electricity and well-fixed bulbs. It is planning on partnering with more farms to compost its wastes. It has a water system in place. It has a menu in place and supremely comfortable tables and seats. It is not only a profit making place, but also an environmentally friendly restaurant. The restaurant has massive shareholders and suppliers. Its principal strategy is going greener day by day and also concerns with the environment protection. The restaurant also has toilet systems and sinks besides conventional washers.

The restaurant currently specializes in frying foods and providing fast chain dishes. Meat is still a vital ingredient of the restaurant’s menu. Oil and butter are majorly used for cooking. The restaurant does not prepare foods in any other way apart from frying. Paper menu and receipts are in place. Tissue is a current way of drying hands though some handkerchiefs that advertise the restaurants services can be applied, but not carried home by the customers. The water system in place is not water efficient neither is the washing system. The washing system starts washing even when not fully loaded thus wasting a lot of electricity, water and soap. A conventional cleaning system is also in use. The toilets water systems are not efficient. The current employees are not efficiently trained on how to operate these systems professionally.

Precooked foods like rice and potatoes are prepared in large amounts. This leads to loads being wasted because they end up going bad as a result of not being bought. The employees also over trim foods like vegetables and potatoes during preparation due to their inefficiency. This makes the restaurant buy extra food stuffs in order to cover up for the wasted amounts. These wastages also make the restaurant spend more than it should in disposing. Glass bottles are just used once and disposed of. This pollutes the environment because glass does not decompose easily thus end up polluting the soil.

Body

Fast foods and fries will not necessarily be done away with if this proposal is implemented instead cooks will just be trained on how to prepare them differently. They will either be poached, slow-cooked, grilled, boiled or a microwave used to prepare them. Fatty foods will be completely done away with and will be replaced with lean products. Reduced fat yoghurt or sour creams will be put in place instead of fatty versions of dips, stews, dressings and spreads. Since dripping fat in flames while cooking contains harmful compounds, nonstick spray for cooking will replace the use of butter and oil. Very lean meat will be purchased and any visible fat will trimmed off.

Handkerchiefs printed with tips that help to protect the environment will be used in place of tissue papers. Customers will also be permitted to carry them home. The handkerchiefs can act as a reminder of what steps should be taken in order to protect the environment. A new menu with more vegetarian foods and various size options of all dishes will be digitalized. Receipts will also be digitalized to help to save on paper. These different size options will help to reduce on 30% of food waste by customers in form of plate remains. Cooking grease and glass bottles will also be recycled.

The restaurant will also partner with more farms to allow disposal of the restaurant’s waste. The restaurant will also promote local organic products instead of imported refined food products. Water efficient toilet systems will be put in place to reduce the restaurants water wastage. Aerators will also be installed in all sinks besides leakages, in faucets and washrooms being checked on a frequent basis. Any leakages brought to the knowledge of management will be corrected with immediate effect. Energy efficient appliances like bulbs and many others will be bought and installed to replace the current appliances. This will come in handy in reducing electricity consumption. Air conditioners and heater filters will also have a random and frequent checkup to ensure that they work efficiently. Conventional cleaners will also be done away with and replaced by eco-friendly ones which will ensure a decline in the air and water pollution

Just enough food products will be purchased to do away with the 65% food waste during food preparation. This is brought about by inefficiency on the employees’ side. They over peel all ruins and off cuts. Examples of such foods include vegetables and potatoes. Small amounts of precooked foods like rice should be prepared but on a frequent basis, so that the restaurant can minimize wastages that come about because cooked food got spoilt before being sold.

Reactions

• The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the restaurant supported my proposal. They liked it because it worked around enhancing the restaurant’s foremost strategic goal.
• The Finance Manager, however, raised some concerns. He stated that my proposal will be too costly for the restaurant. Nevertheless, the Chief Executive Officer challenged his statement saying that the Finance Manager should be in a position to creatively device means from which the restaurant can raise those funds from.
• Some of my co-workers gave to my proposal full support whereas some of them gave all kinds of reasons against the proposal. They focused on any loophole that my proposal had. For example, basing on the fact that I did not apply strict methods that nurture the employees to be more efficient. One of them even argued that employees are the core contributors of making the restaurant greener. He said that if they are taught on how to be efficient in their services, wastages will reduce immensely. He also said that the current equipment will not need to be changed if employees are well-trained. The worker also said that the costs of training the employees and perhaps recruiting new ones, is much less compared to the cost of purchasing all the suggested equipment. The Finance Manager supported this challenge.

I challenged them stating that employees are not permanent. I also stated that they are not a long-term asset to the restaurant, unlike the new equipment. The Managing Director seconded me and stated that my proposal is necessary now and even in the future. He also suggested that the organization could just sacrifice and incur these expenses as soon as possible because he termed it as unavoidable. He said that whether the restaurant incurred the expense now or postpone it, it will still have to be incurred in the long run.

Conclusion

I was so grateful for all the concerns raised. These concerns brought out what was missing in my proposal. As suggested by the Chief Executive Officer, my proposal will encompass smart techniques that assist in raising enough amounts of money that is necessary for this proposal. An example of this is providing a dish at a certain price. This dish will be a combination of three different things that go hand in hand. Its price will be set at a markup which will go directly to funding my proposal. I also take into account the fact that more efficient employees need to be hired, besides, the existing ones being better trained on how they can be more efficient. Even though this is a short term project, I believe it will come in handy in making my proposal a success.

I do believe that efficient machines still are needed in order to achieve full control. Machines are like robots which work as per the command so if the employees keep putting a wrong commands, the machines will always do a wrong thing. Even though my proposal may seem expensive, it is mandatory that it shall be implemented someday. Personally, I also like this proposal because it is a suggested long term program to the restaurant unlike what the Finance Manager seconded. Sometimes what we consider being cheap can be too costly in the long run. An example, being the cheap cost incurred in training employees instead of buying efficient equipment, can seem cheap now but will be costly in the future. It is important to mention that a service cannot be separated from its service bearer. If anything ever happens to the trained employees to render them useless in terms of service provision, consequently it will lead to the restaurant incurring losses. This issue will not apply to machines because at least they can be repaired. A machine requires maintenance once in a while unlike employees who need salary on a monthly basis, besides a salary increment after the efficiency training.

During implementation of my proposal, the restaurant will be able to meet some of its needs. This world is going digital with every passing day. Digitalizing the restaurant’s menu and receipts will help to save on paper now and also meet the future’s digital demand. Various sized dish options will prevent the restaurant from incurring the 30% food waste due to customers leaving remains on plates. This size options will also prevent the restaurant from spending money on purchases that will just end up being wasted. The size option will make the restaurant greener by reducing food wastes.

The use of printed handkerchiefs will assist to educate the restaurant’s customers on how to protect the environment. This will meet the restaurant’s need of spreading the good news of going greener and in the future most of these customers will end up implementing the suggested tips. This will make the restaurants interior and exterior more environmentally friendly. Recycling glass bottles will save the restaurant from incurring extra costs of acquiring new bottles, which are about $12000. This will also help the restaurant to go greener by not disposing glass components to the soil bearing in mind that glass takes ages to decompose. By replacing meat with vegetarian dishes will assist in reducing the enormous carbon footprint found in the fatty component of meat. This will prevent the restaurant from incurring whatever cost it used to when purchasing meat considering the fact that vegetables are not as costly as meat. This will also come in handy in promoting an environmentally friendly and healthy restaurant. Water efficient toilet systems will reduce the restaurant’s water bills by almost half the amount that it usually pays. In the future, that saved money can be channeled to other helpful programs (Skousen).

Water efficient dish washers that only work when they are fully loaded will reduce the soap consumption by almost $1200. These savings can be channeled to counter other miscellaneous expenses. Energy efficient appliances like bulbs will cut down the restaurant’s energy consumption by almost $9000. This simply means that the organization will spend a minimum amount on paying the electricity bills as soon as my proposal is put into practice and also in the future. Replacing the existing conventional cleaners with eco-friendly ones will largely reduce the air and water pollution in the restaurant. Doing away with fast food chains and frying as a whole will assist in eliminating smoke in the cooking section of the restaurant. Moreover, it will create a favorable environment for the employee’s workplace. This will also make the restaurant green and fresh in terms of its air.   

Cooks will instead grill, boil, steam, braise, slow cook, use a microwave or poach foods. These methods do not produce as much smoke as frying does thus help in cleansing the restaurant’s surrounding. Reduced fat sour cream and yoghurt will be applied instead of other full version of spreads, stews, dips and dressings. The restaurants use of nonstick cooking spray instead of oil and butter will make the restaurant more environmentally friendly, because no fatty component will be released in the smoke to further combine with other elements of pollution and end up forming the ozone which is known to be the most dangerous component of smog. Eliminating the fat component during the cooking process will make the restaurant greener now and in the future.

Over trimming of foods like vegetables and potatoes will be avoided. This will help the restaurant cut down the 65% food waste that occurs during preparation. This will also save the restaurant close to 70% of the costs that it usually incurs while purchasing these foods. It will also reduce the amount of wastes that the restaurant disposes and in so doing, it makes the restaurant more environmentally friendly. Preparing small quantities of precooked foods as frequent as possible help reduce the amounts thrown as wastes. Training employees to be more efficient in all they do, will make the restaurant experience fewer shortages, it will also save on repairing costs, because now the employees will know how well to operate the machines. Customer service will also improve and so marketing the restaurant’s name. The employees will also have a better place to prepare foods without wastages and also estimate the correct amount of food ordered by the customer. This will also result in less waste. The employees will also be accurate in switching on and off the power and water systems thus less wastage will be paid for (Jonas).

The employees will also be keen to trim off the fatty property before preparing the foods, because they know what harm it causes to the environment. The employees can also avoid wasting precooked foods like rice during preparation through the washing process thus evading massive losses. If these wastages are done away with, then less food will be discarded. This will mean that the restaurant will only need to partner with few farms to compost its wastes. The restaurant will also spend less money in disposing its limited wastes. The use of nonstick cooking spray will allow the restaurant to save on the amount of money it spends when purchasing butter and oil for cooking which just end up polluting the environment by the smoke they emit thus making the restaurant less environmentally friendly. Since, the smoke that these products emit during the cooking process contains a high percentage of carbon which ends up forming the most dangerous component of smog.

Aerators will also be installed in all the sinks to control the type of dirt that goes down the gutter. This will only give a chance to soluble dirt to pass through the system; fatty components will simply be sieved out of the sinks. Filters and air conditioners will also have a frequent checkup to ensure that they are working properly. This will save the restaurant from incurring unnecessary electricity costs brought about by an ever plugged in air conditioner that is not even working properly. Any problems noticed will be corrected on a frequent basis and with immediate effect. It will eventually make sure that there is some fresh air in the restaurant despite the number of customers (Abraham).

Leakages will also be checked in all faucets. Leakages come about because of the systems wearing out or due to it having been mishandled. Some individuals whose backgrounds do not have such faucets will not amicably focus fully on them in a correct and recommended way. Individuals who are not learned and civilized will also operate these systems with no care. They will end up tampering with them thus causing leakages. Leakages can be disastrous, for example, in the toilet system, if a pipe leaks; it will give space for air to enter the system. This air will act anti normal to the operation of the toilet during flushing, instead of the dirt going down the drain it comes up the seat (Wayne 200). Detecting leakages is much helpful than just sitting there, because these leakages can be corrected and the amount of water that could be wasted, saved in the process.

Steps that need to be taken

• Change the cooking styles
• Do away with meat
• Replace conventional cleaners with eco-friendly ones
• Installing aerators in sinks and checking for leakages in all the faucets
• Recycling glass bottles
• Menu and receipts will be digitalized
• Handkerchiefs will be printed with tips that help to protect the environment
• Energy efficient appliances will be installed
• Water efficient gargets will be installed
• Vegetarian diets will be introduced instead of meat
• Nonstick cooking spray will be used instead of butter and oil
• Employees will be trained on how to be more efficient
• Creative methods of raising funds for this proposal will be devised.

This innovation proposal should produce positive results in a spun of five years (Abraham).