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 Finance/Accounting 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

Finance and accounting are those factors that help the business to move forward. These are also very crucial for the strategic planning of the business. The team members in the finance /accounting department have to accomplish the goals of the business. They perform the tasks with full responsibility according to the changes which are made in an organization regularly. The finance and accounting department incorporate new methods and technologies o that they can adapt to the changing working environment and perform well for the benefit of the organization. By gaining new skills they manage to cope with the changes and they learn new skills so that they can gain knowledge of handling a large amount of data and develop a new understanding which is necessary. They also have to build a strong relationship with other departments and the suppliers so that the collaborations can be effective and successful for the working of the organization. The changes need to be made in the software and the technological skills and development must be included in the day-to-day operations. The hard rock cafe is such an organization that runs on the strong relationships within the department and the suppliers which are very important for the successful running of the business. This also results in the possibility of generating better outcomes. It is also very important that the finance and accounts department must be ready to incorporate changes in the workings. If they will not be ready then the business will not be able to run effectively in the long run. The finance managers must also accept to work on new technologies and they must make the team members apply the same. Without the full support of all the members, the transformation will not be successful. They need to change accordingly for beating any kind of challenge in the working of the business. With the changing environment, they have to modify themselves and incorporate all the changes with the immediate effects so that they can work with full efficiency. These changes adopted by the finance department helps in making the business successful from the backend.This is how the Finance/Accounting function contribute towards the success of Hard Rock operations