Adopting lean principles in the restaurant kitchenLean principles and practices is a methodology that is very much seen as something that works only in manufacturing. Not necessarily. If you were to dine at Xibei a popular chain of restaurants with more than hundreds of locations in Chinese cities; no sooner you finish ordering your food, the waiter would place his hand on his chest, and solemnly promise you that the food served would be freshly made and would not contain any monosodium glutamate, a flavour enhancer used widely in China and considered by many as harmful. The waiter would then proceed to place a sand clock on the table and tell you that, if by the time the sand in the clock had trickled down completely and your food had not arrived by then, you would be offered a bottle of yogurt as compensation. The sand clock is a clever and visually novel idea to measure and monitor the speed of delivery.
When Xibei, a popular chain of restaurants with more than hundreds of locations in Chinese cities launched a pilot lean project in one of its restaurants in Beijing, it began with the premise that ‘diners hate to wait long for food and no restaurant wants unhappy diners’. The organisation realising that faster service through shorter lead times meant more customers and therefore more revenue, focused on important metrics relating to efficiency, such as income per square metre and revenue per employee. Additionally, the introduction of a number of tools such as the sand clock proved useful.
Initially, the ‘lean’ team completed a study of all the main work zones, both in the kitchen and in the dining area, resulting in the introduction of standardising a number of tasks. They even standardised the way orders are taken, which proved to be the most challenging, given the interactive nature of this particular touchpoint. These Standards Operating Procedures (SOPs) brought in a solid ‘software’ platform for measuring general efficiency and for training employees. Previously, it took between 12 -24 weeks to turn a new hire into a fully skilled team member. With SOPs and using the ‘show-practice-certify-share’ model, waiter training was completed within 6 weeks.
Digging deeper to seek opportunities to improve, it became clear to the Xibei lean team that lean principles had to be now built into the ‘hardware’ in operations. Essentially, it required a new blueprint for the ‘perfect’ restaurant configuration. This included navigating the tricky part of determining the layout for the dining area, where normally, there would be between 50 - 100 tables of many different sizes and shapes. Usually, big tables were near the kitchen, while the smaller tables were positioned further away from it. The big tables seated the large groups and its proximity to the kitchen meant less time spent on dish transportation, whereas a greater time was spent in dish transportation when serving the smaller, far - from - the - kitchen tables. Compounding this further, it is not uncommon for diners in large groups to spend more time at the table, even after they have finished their meal - thus impacting on ‘table-turnover’ unlike that of the smaller tables.
Xibei was operating two restaurant models. One was the large restaurants it opened in the first few years, located on the sides of busy streets and the other the smaller eateries within office buildings. In sync with a popular Chinese saying “One warm dish is worth three delicacies” the lean team discovered that the large restaurant modal was no longer a good option. The smaller restaurants in the office block had its drawbacks too, however, with several design refinements, a third generation Xibei restaurant, built on the idea of a scaled down operation was ready. The new model incorporated key characteristics, such as:-
Restaurants, even those that assume they are doing a pretty good job need to understand that lean could help solve certain problems. Taking a cue from Xibei’s sand clock, how about looking at ticket times – how long it takes for food to reach the guests once they have ordered. One restaurant which had a 15 minute standard, after tracking and measuring found that out of 150 tickets, only 42 were served within the standard. That’s a huge 72% non-compliance. Lean methodology revealed that 41% of the delay was caused by the oven station. On closer examination it was discovered that the menu had several dishes that required more handling than others – for example they have to go in and out of the oven many times. The solution was to either provide the cook with the item partially prepared (without compromising on quality),, prior to needing it and/or redesign the menu. A combination of both reduced the oven caused delay from 41% to 8%.
Another example was that the cooks would constantly run out of ingredients, and, everytime they left the line for any reason the process would miss a step - resulting in guests waiting longer for their food. Adopting lean principles enables chefs to stop, observe and work with soon-to-be cooks to help them improve their skills. Right now, the majority of chefs are just inundated with work, with the sole objective of getting food to the guests - with little or no opportunity to improve the workplace.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier |
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