The Cursed Shop

“Beware of this haunted shop I heard there was a kid who once entered this shop and never came out. His poor mother lives in misery because of her loss” said Cousin Noah. I still remember that day while my cousin and I were walking passing by this shop located in Arad Town. It was before 20 years but I remember it like yesterday, this shop was called the cursed shop, or the haunted shop. Furthermore the title (cursed shop) came because whenever a restaurant opens in this same shop after a while the business shuts down. By time people started believing that this shop was really cursed, it’s funny how some people are naïve.

 

 

I kept in mind this shop and the different restaurants that opened there; I said to myself there must be a reason behind this. Further investigation in this case I found out the reason was simple; the restaurants did not have good forecasts for the demands of the customers. A restaurant would open to operate and they would order for example a large amount of Kebab given it’s a restaurant serving fresh food they would have many Kebab left unfortunately some were already grilled and been ready to serve, this is just one example. Of course the forecasting was not the only reason, given the place of the restaurant, prices, and demand of customers played a role.

I believe that this restaurant could have avoided the risk by using the forecast starting from Qualitative method (using surveys or even second hand information.)Also using the Quantitative methods to forecast the demand and base the price on the forecasts.

Friday (11th may) class was an eye opening class, I always wanted to know how restaurants were able to survive and know exactly how much portion of meat, salads , fish , or any type of food to prepare each day. From the class exercise I leaned that there are different types of forecasts that addresses different categorize like (Economic, Technological and Demand forecasts.)Furthermore each method is suitable for a different case or scenario. There are two approaches to this matter the Qualitative  including ( Delphi method , consumer market survey , sales force composite) , and the Quantitative method including  ( Naïve approach , moving averages , exponential smoothing , trend projection , linear regression. )Moreover the manager has to know what type of forecast to use because each approach will give an answer however only one answer is accurate and reflects reality.

 

 

CLICKER TIME:

 

Do you believe that Forecasting is vital for any restaurant?

  1. YES
  2.  NO
  3. I didn’t read the article I just want to comment for the 5%

What do you think is the best Quantitative method to use for the restaurant?

 

 

More on restaurants failure click here:

http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/Ec1F07/restaurantsfail.pdf

 

6 thoughts on “The Cursed Shop

  1. Yes, forecasting is vital for any restaurant. I think the moving average is the best quantitative method for a startup restaurant. By using the moving average it will give the forecasted number based on the average of the last two days. The demand of a startup restaurant will increase gradually over time so the best forecasting method is the moving average.

    1. Maryam I agree with you that forecasting is vital for any resturant actually for any inventory business.Its not an easy task to choose which forecast method is the proper one.

  2. Answering the clicker question first, YES.

    Forecasting is a very important task in every business. Every business that wants to be successful in every part it needs to forecast the customer demands carefully. Choosing the appropriate forecasting method is vital as well. It will tell what you need to perform better.

    By the way Mohammed, we have the same story in Manama, where we have a haunted building itself and every business that comes shuts down in a very short time. However, the reason is for sure not bad forecasting. I am sure you know the reason!!

  3. Ali truley forecast has its importants even in setting the companies strategy in terms of deciding the next step. Yeah I think I heard about that building in Manama, well yeah there could another reason with the building in Manama

    Ali and Maryam thank you both for commenting

  4. Very interesting post Mohammed! Yes, forecasting is very essential in any business such as restaurant. Because, forecasting aids the corporation prepare for the future. In addition to that, it aids management to make a decision whether the product will be successful or unsuccessful. Also, Forecasting prevent the corporation from spending time and money on the failure products. I defiantly agree with Maryama that by applying Moving average will determine the average cost of goods available for sale and that will be effectively smoothes to provide stable forecasts. So, this is the best Quantitative method to use for the restaurant

  5. In an answer to your question, yes, forecasting is crucial for any business be it a restaurant, a furniture shop or even an insurance company. Also, you mentioned that the restaurants failed because they did not know how much to keep in store, which I believe brings up the topic of inventory management. Obviously this is a very sensitive issue when it comes to restaurants since many of the products they keep in inventory are highly perishable. So my question for you is, were they failing because they didn’t forecast or because they didn’t maintain proper inventory?

Leave a Reply to tariqa502 Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *