Case Study: Hard Rock Café

Read the case that follows.

View the video tour of Hard Rock Cafe that addresses this issue.

If you wish to have further background, reread the material in this chapter of the text.

In its 30 years of existence, Hard Rock has grown from a modest London pub to a global power managing 110 cafes, three hotels, casinos, live music venues, a rock museum, and a huge annual Rockfest concert. 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 40 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 the 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; they 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 done 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 favorite 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 1,000's of pieces, valued at $40 million. In keeping with the times, Hard Rock also maintains a Web site, www.hardrock.com, which receives over 100,000 hits per week, and a weekly cable television program on VH-1. Hard Rock's brand recognition, at 92%, is one of the highest in the world.

Case Study

Assignment Questions

1. From your knowledge of restaurants in general, from the video, from the profile of Hard Rock that opens this chapter, and from the case itself, briefly identify how each of the 10 decisions of operations management could be applied at Hard Rock Café.

2. What might be some measures of productivity of the kitchen staff and wait staff at Hard Rock that would allow you to evaluate those positions' effectiveness?

3. Select one of the measures of productivity that you listed, above. What would be some limitations of this method?

Textbook: Heizer, J. Render, B. (2013), Operations management, (11th ed.), Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN: 978-0-13-2921145.