Pasta Italia: Guiding Principles for Franchise Owners

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Recession-Immune Products or Services3

Brand and Image5

Financial Targets5

Location6

Effective Marketing Strategy7

Franchise Agreements7

Layout Planning8

The Planning Process9

Preliminary considerations9

The Planning Team10

Equipment and Space Needs10

Redesign Goals11

Kitchen Design Considerations11

Physical fatigue12

Noise12

Lighting12

Temperature12

Observing Food Safety Codes13

Service Design13

Employee Opinion Surveys14

Customer Feedback14

Focus Groups15

Pre-Shifts15

Turnover and Employee Retaining16

Assign a Mentor16

Consistency17

Safety17

Training18

Employee Self-Evaluation18

Training Techniques19

Demonstration19

Shadowing20

Instruction Methodology20

Supervised Performance20

Capacity Management21

Prioritizing Customers22

Utilizing Extra Space23

Identifying Bottlenecks24

Managing Trade-off between Productivity and Quality24

Conclusion24

References26

Pasta Italia: Guiding Principles for Franchise Owners

Introduction

Franchises are licensed outlets or similar business agreements through which outlets, stores and branches are operated and consequently owned by franchisees. These franchisees sell and distribute products or services depending upon the nature of business of the already established organisation. Principally, the franchises operate, achieve growth and perform their overall business activities under the trademark or logo of the business organisation, the outlets belongs to. Moreover, these franchises follow the marketing and operation plans and manuals of the parent organisation and also pay a certain percentage of their profit to that organisation as royalty for using their trademark and market goodwill.

Presently, there are several examples of companies that have franchises not only in a single country but in many countries of the world. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Subway, McDonalds and Burger King are examples of some of most popular and, perhaps most successful, franchises in the food service industry, which operate in number of countries around the world. There are several factors, which are responsible for the success of those franchises mentioned above. Some of the factors are discussed in the following sections (Lee, 1994, pp. 633-646).

Recession-Immune Products or Services

In today's competitive business environment, the business organisations must offer services and/or products that are unique in nature, provide unmatched features and worth purchasing, in order for the business to be successful. To sell its products or services to a wide range of customers, the business must make the customers feel that the product or services offered by the organisation can not be acquired elsewhere and are of supreme quality (Jones and Mifli, 2001, pp. 61-71).

Moreover, in addition to optimal quality of the service or product, the business must keep the price of the product or service at affordable level keeping in view the socioeconomic conditions of the community or society in which the business operates. The price factors play an essential role in deciding the likelihood of a product's or service's marketability and future sales. Present market trends suggest that majority of the customers tend to focus more on price rather than on quality of the product or service. So it is imperative that businesses ensure that their products and/or services are priced in accordance with the purchasing power of the majority of the target population.

All these attributes of the service or product generally make them less prone to the financial recession, as the demands for such services or products never die out. In recent global financial crisis, though there were several business organisations, which were forced to close their operations, many established business franchises, having the qualities and attributes mentioned above, continued to grow ...