Simplylife Bakery Café

Simplylife bakery café

Executive Summary

As the service industry is low communication with customers, to provide higher efficiency to customers, it can accord service design process, physical evidence and employee’s behavior.

Blueprint of Simplylife bakery café will be analysis in the following; it can see that their problem mainly is the capacity is not enough, customer’s waiting time are long etc. The improvement will accord to service design such as provide reservation or time limit in peak hour.

Servicescape is another concern; the problems maybe the employees may not handle heavy workload, the back stage is low efficiency, tray is not enough to solve heavy workload; the recommendation will focus on how to improve efficiency by adding some physical evidence such as increasing manpower and add diner.

People play a vital in service industry, employee’s behavior will directly affect the company, the exist employees may have some problems that affect the company such as their skills are low, quality of the employees are low. The suggestion will focus on how to change the company policy to encourage customers. For example, provide incentive or rewards to encourage employees.

Introduction

Simplylife bakery cafe is a restaurant under the Maxim’s Group, founded in 2007. Simplylife bakery cafe serves freshly baked handmade European style breads, pastries and simple eats. The aroma and display of fresh, out-of-the-oven baked goods never fails to appeal to your senses.  Less is more at simplylife. (Maxim’s Caterers Limited, 2009)

Nowadays, as one of the popular restaurant in Hong Kong, customers are not only satisfied by high quality of products, they also pursue high quality of services and efficiency.

In the following, the proposal will focus on improve the efficiency according to the service design, servicescape and blueprint, to provide a high quality of services to customers.

Service Organization and their characteristics

As a western restaurant, Simplylife bakery cafe are using standardisation, they has already set all the foods and drinks for examples fresh salads, pastas, organic brown rice risottos, burgers on the menu, customers cannot choose the products accord to their favorites. On the other hand, Simplylife bakery café has six stores in Hong Kong, their products are also standardised.

Exclude foods, Simplylife bakery cafe are also standardised on other elements such as environment and decoration in the restaurant. For examples their environments, it has a wide range between tables, and it can ensure the privacy and provide a private area to customers in each stores. In addition, the decoration in each stores are soft and romantic, it ensure the conditions and atmosphere are comfortable for customer to enjoy their meal and even have a talk. (Maxim’s Caterers Limited, 2009)

Target

Simplylife bakery café stores are local in the popular shopping mall of Hong Kong, for example New Town Plaza in Shatin, Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong, Queensway Plaza in Admiralty and Cityplaza in Quarry Bay, the above districts are also the popular for tourists. It seems that Simplylife bakery café are not only target the Hong Kong citizens, they also want to attract the tourists, as the above locations are famous attractions.

The above shopping malls also have one similarity; they mainly rent by the worldwide luxury brands such as ‘Prada’, ‘Miu Miu’, and ‘Fendi’. Simplylife bakery café provides a comfortable environment for the customers, for examples sofa, wide range between tables, they can sit here without time limits. It can seems that the targets of Simplylife bakery café are persuade quality whether foods or environment.

According to the above, their target will be the citizen or tourists that have basic purchasing powers, for example they are willing to enjoy a meal, which may cost HKD 300 per person rather than eating fast food shop.  (m.a.x concept, 2011)

Organization climate

According to the services process matrix, as a restaurant, Simplylife bakery café are in the group of service factory, it means the degree of labour intensity and interaction and customisation are also low. (Schmenner, 1986)

It represents the restaurants do not have many chances to communicate and interact with customers, to increase the efficiency or provide good quality, it may rely on other elements such as physical evidence or servie design.

According to Mudie and Pirrie, there have some elements need to be concern when designing services; it is suggest that service design should encapsulate all aspect of the intended experiences. For examples, the impact of technology, employees skills, nature of services, and the most importance is how design advances operational efficiency and service quality.  In the following is about the blueprint and servicescape of Simplylife bakery café, for the suggestion part, it will focus on the above element to ensure the improvement really can increase the quality of the restaurants. (Mudie and Pirrie (2006: 48))

Blueprint

According to the blueprint, the policy of the restaurants lead to some problems occurs. On the other hand, it can also see that some customers complain about the company in the social media such as Facebook.

 Firstly, customers are not willing to as they are paying the money for the products and services. The number of customers are more than the capacity in Simplylife bakery cafe, the customers waiting time are long, they may need to wait an hours for the table. Also, no menu will provide, it may lead to customer feel annoy. (Dabholkar, P.A, 2015)

It is difficult for customers to make the order because the manpower is not enough, the staffs are very busy.

The time for prepare foods are long according to the restaurant has strict standards on food quality and the customer may urge and complain. (Maxim’s Caterers Limited, 2009)

Simplylife has an area which mainly provide desserts, but the staff will not remind customers. (Appendix 1)

In addition, some customer will seat for long time in peak hour, it will lower the efficiency of the company.