CASE STUDY

QUADRUPLES RESTAURANT*
Restaurants Limited, a Seattle-based restaurant group, has recently hired an aggressive person to manage
Quadruples, which caters to business travelers. The new manager, a total quality management (TQM)
enthusiast, is concerned over complaints about Quadruples self-service breakfast buffet. In the interest of
improving customer service, the manager develops a survey form, obtains responses from customers over a
three-month period, and summarizes the results on a Pareto chart (see Exhibit B). The chart show that
customers biggest gripe is having to wait too long to be seated.

Exhibit A: Percentage of Customers Waiting More than One Minute

Week 1
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

7.3
8.2
6.3
6.3
5.3
3.5
3.0

Week 2
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

8.1
7.0
6.4
7.3
5.4
4.7
4.0

Week 3
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday

8.4
9.3
7.3
7.2
6.7
4.9
4.0

Next, the manager collects three weeks of base-line data on percentage of customers waiting over one
minute. The data are summarized in Exhibit A. Officers at Restaurants Limited have observed these
preliminary initiativesin the interest of possibly applying TQM to other restaurant management issues.
Several questions need to be answered, and a step-by-step project improvement methodology would need
to be established.
Before addressing the following questions, organize the data into a scatter (run) diagram.
Discussion Questions
1.

Can these kinds of customer response data be obtained reliably, systematically, and cheaply enough for
a restaurant? If so, how?

2. Which of the Exhibit B complaints are natural targets for continuous improvement in the restaurant (or
any enlightened firm), thus, perhaps, not requiring solicitation of customer inputs to reveal the target
for problem solving?
3.

All of the complaints in Exhibit B clearly are things customers would notice. If restaurant staff, instead
of customers, were asked to express their complaints, suggest at least five complaints that would
probably come forth. To what extent could the staffs mind-set be altered so that they would worry
about the same things as customers? How could this change occur?

4.

How to deal with the complaint data from Exhibits A and B. Consider the relative merits and uses (for
this case) of each of the tools for process improvement listed in the chapter plus brainstorming,
competitive analysis, and benchmarking etc.

Exhibit B: Pareto Chart of Complaints

Complaints: June - September, 20xx

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
D

Code
Code Reason
Reason
AA Room
Roomtoo
toodrafty
drafty
BB Table
not
clean
Table not clean
CC No
Nodietetic
dieteticsweetener
sweetenerprovided
provided
DD Had
to
wait
for
seats
Had to wait for seats
EE Buffet
Buffettable
tablenot
notwell
wellorganized
organized
FF Missing
utensil
at
Missing utensil atplace
placesetting
setting
GG No
ashtray
on
table
No ashtray on table
HH Had
Hadtotowait
waittoo
toolong
longfor
forcoffee
coffee