Executive summary

Melbourne was voted “Most Liveable City 2011” In August 2011 by the The Economist Intelligence Unit that its rankings of liveability for 140 cities around the world. After almost ten years, Melbourne reclaimed its number one position from Vancouver. In this multiculturalists climate, in this city where there are 100 languages spoken and almost 5 million people there are a lot of restaurants that satisfy any culinary request (http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au). The focus of the report is going to be a Japanese restaurant “ Don Don” located in the heart of Melbourne CBD. The customer service and the strategy that made this small Japanese take away restaurant so famous will be discussed and analysed. Although it prides with flavoured food there are a lot of things to be improved and restructured.

Introduction
There are around 160 nationalities living in Melbourne and Japanese is one that managed to leave a mark on the map of Melbourne mainly because of it s cuisine. Based on the statistics only 45% of the people living in Melbourne are born in Australia the rest come mainly from Asian countries. (Melbourne City Research City of Melbourne 2006 Multicultural Community Demographic Profile June, 2008 www.melbourne.vic.gov.au) The huge amount of Asian restaurants have managed to have as customers not only Asian people but also tourists and Australians. Japanese cuisine offers a great variety of dishes and regional specialties. Some of the most popular Japanese dishes are rice dishes, seafood dishes, noodle dishes, nabe dishes, soya bean dishes, yoshoku dishes and other. With so many things to offer and with such a hard competition on the restaurant market Don Don Takeaway managed to create a tradition and an name in the industry.
History Background
Don Don is one of the numerous restaurants with a japanese menu. They started their activity in central Melbourne in 2002 and managed to grow into being one of the most appreciated takeaway restaurants. To respond to the increasing demand of asian food but also to keep up with the fast moving culture Don Don focused on takeaway food. They kept a fairly simple menu that gave them the opportunity to be effective and efficient in serving customers thus promoting the good values of japanese cuisine.Don Don – Central Melbourne is going to be the main focus of this report.
Location
The main location is right next to Melbourne Central Station on Swanston Street ( see appendix 1) . in the past year Don Don opened 2 other restaurants in Southbank Melbourne and one in Sydney at the heart of Darling harbour. Their main focus is takeaway food but they also serve food on the premises.
Competitive advantage
In this market with so many competitors the main advantage that Don Don has is the cost they charge for their dishes. The cost advantage strategy they adopted has brought them a lot of loyal customers and many new ones. Being a small restaurant that is addressing to a lot of people, Don Don could not adopt a differentiate strategy. Their menu only offers 11 dishes and the customers are very different thus the focus strategy could not be adopted.
Performance objectives * Quality - Don Don has maintained a certain standard of quality that is transmitted to customers and at the same time is the same level of quality the customers receive with every meal * Flexibility – considering that their main advantages are price and express serving flexibility can only reach a certain point. The food is already cooked and just a little things can be added or takenoff * Speed - one of the main things that get people to go back over and over again is the speed with wich they are served. The time for a customer to get into the shop and receive their meals is no longer than 3 minutes. ( field observation) * Cost - one look at the prices in the menu gives the impression that the prices are from another time. Low cost meals with nothing more than 9 dollars.