Q1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Pret A Manger organizing itself so that the individual shops make the sandwiches that they sell?
- Advantage:
a. Since it is the same employee who serves your lunch that made the sandwich, he will be responsible for his job, I.e. ingredients selection, freshness, and packaging.
b. To keep items fresh and no overnight food is allowed, the volume of food prepared is relatively low, thus making staff do less repeating work.
c. Being a fast food store, the variety of its products is low, thus making the food preparation process standardized and routine, as well as saving unit cost.
d. The variation in demand is low, in other words, predictable, demand goes up at lunch time on weekdays and
If the performance is below standard, customers will be disappointed dramatically.
b. The carefully selected ingredients require a reliable and long-term relationship supplier to deliver, as well as resources examination occasionally. Once some healthy problems are reported, its store image will be ruined.
c. The sanitation in its kitchen is also a crucial factor that will affect the quality of food, as well as its success, and poor sanitation level is contradicted to its freshness concept obviously.
d. Since all sandwiches left after shop hours will be dropped, a false forecast of demand will lead to a huge waste in ingredients and affect its revenue.
e. Poor vendor selection or their delivered ingredients examination will result in poor food quality undoubtedly.
f. Since the store sells food made by itself rather than buy food from specialty factory, it need spend more effort in its flavor improvement according to customer feedback. If the sandwiches are not delicious, few customers will visit the store regardless of its freshness.
g. The store should be aware of false reports related to food safety brought out by its rivals, which will result in customer dissatisfaction.
h. All employees should be skillful ranging from food preparation to customer service. Poor employees training will lead to poor performance.
i. The ability of suppliers to deliver sufficient