Question

Hard Rock Cafe: Operations Management in Services

In its 48 years of existence, Hard Rock has grown from a modest London pub to a global power managing 163 restaurants, 23 hotels/casinos, and live music venues. This puts Hard Rock firmly in the service industry—a sector that employs over 75% of the people in the U.S. Hard Rock moved its world headquarters to Orlando, Florida, in 1988 and has expanded to more than 50 locations throughout the U.S., serving over 100,000 meals each day. Hard Rock chefs are modifying the menu from classic American— burgers and chicken wings—to include higher-end items such as stuffed veal chops and lobster tails. Just as taste in music changes over time, so does Hard Rock Cafe, with new menus, layouts, memorabilia, services, and strategies.

At Orlando’s Universal Studios, a traditional tourist destination, Hard Rock Cafe serves over 3,500 meals each day. The cafe employs about 400 people. Most are employed in the restaurant, but some work in the retail shop. Retail is now a standard and increasingly prominent feature in Hard Rock Cafes (since close to 48% of revenue comes from this source). Cafe employees include kitchen and wait staff, hostesses, and bartenders. Hard Rock employees are not only competent in their job skills but are also passionate about music and have engaging personalities. Cafe staff is scheduled down to 15-minute intervals to meet seasonal and daily demand changes in the tourist environment of Orlando. Surveys are done on a regular basis to evaluate quality of food and service at the cafe. Scores are rated on a 1-to-7 scale, and if the score is not a 7, the food or service is a failure.

Hard Rock is adding a new emphasis on live music and is redesigning its restaurants to accommodate the changing tastes. Since Eric Clapton hung his guitar on the wall to mark his favourite bar stool, Hard Rock has become the world’s leading collector and exhibitor of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, with changing exhibits at its cafes throughout the world. The collection includes 70,000 pieces, valued at $40 million. In keeping with the times, Hard Rock also maintains a Web site, www.hardrock.com, which receives more than 100,000 hits per week, and a weekly cable television program on VH1. Hard Rock’s brand recognition, at 92%, is one of the highest in the world.

           

Source: Adapted from J. Heizer, B. Render, and C. Munson (2020) Operations Management: Sustainability and Supply Chain Management, Global Edition, 13/E, Pearson

In every successful brand such as Hard Rock, there must be strong contributions and coordination among different functions to make an operation successfully runs smoothly. Many of the decisions made by operations managers are dependent on information from the other functions. At the same time, other functions cannot be carried out properly without information from operations. Referring case above, kindly answer the questions below:

How does Operations function contribute towards the success of Hard Rock operations?

Apply 5W1H writing strategy - Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How
explanation and give and example.

Answer 1

Hard Rock Cafe: Operations Management in Services

Here the case discusses about the success if Hard Rock Café with the help of various operations strategies and processes.

Who – ‘Who’ discusses about the various stakeholders involved in the success of Hard Rock Café operations management success.

Here in the case the various stakeholders involved in success of Hard Rock Café are;

1- Café employees - Hard Rock Café employees who are highly competent in their work and passionate about music and very good at engaging customers.

2- Customers – Customers who are loyal to the business model and supportive to the business

What – What has been improved continuously to increase the business and attract customers.

Here in this case, Hard Rock Café has been focusing on continuously improving the business and they focused on below points for improvement in service.

1- Modifying menu as per the customer demand and trends

2- Café and retail model to attract customers

3- Highly engaging employees

4- Good feedback mechanism in place

5- Strategy to position themselves as world’s leading collector and exhibitor of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia

Where – This discusses about the place or location involved in Hard Rock Café business expansion and actions taken to tackle the location issues.

As per the case study it is mentioned that ‘Hard Rock has grown from a modest London pub to a global power managing 163 restaurants, 23 hotels/casinos, and live music venues’.

They were keen on geographical expansion in terms of two business models. First one is Restaurant model and 2^nd one is retail shops.

Hard Rock Cafe has also expanded their business in 50 locations throughout the U.S and many other part of the globe now. Identifying the target market and expanding based on the same is one main success factor of Hard Rock Café business model

When – This explains the time period at which Hard Rock Café came into the business as a leader and major changes they have carried out during this period of time.

Hard Rock Café started business 48 years back and till now they have focused on growing from a model of Pub to a global power which deals with restaurants, hotels and casinos.

Hard Rock café had moved its world headquarters to Orlando, Florida, in 1988 and has expanded to more than 50 locations throughout the U.S., serving over 100,000 meals each day.

Every year they were keen on updating the operations business models to stay relevant in the business in terms of business models and menus and customer experience.

Why – This explains the motivation, objective and reason behind the method of doing business by Hard Rock Café in the industry.

Hard rock café aims at providing a new level of customer experience to customers where they can enjoy variety of services such as;

1- Food items and latest trending menus

2- Music with food as a new experience to the customers

3- Positioned themselves as world’s leading collector and exhibitor of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia.

4- Effective feedback process from customers.

They were completely focusing on delivering a new experience to customers along with music as a medium.

How – How Hard Rock Café has achieved this success with help of operations management?

Here in the case study it is clearly mentioned various operational strategies adopted by Hard Rock Café to be successful leader in business. They are listed below;

1- Adopted a new model of business along with restaurant business by mixing music experience to customers

2- Latest food menu which they continuously improves based on customer feedback.

3- Smart geographical expansion in terms of business and adopting café and retail shops business models to diversify business

4- Highly competitive employee recruitment program which helps the organization to select engaging employees who are passionate about music