The Lodge Bistro Chain opened with its first café in 1989, a prestige old-fashioned French style bistro concept
The business expanded using the same unique template as the original café, it now has 25 restaurants across the Southwest of England.
Overtime they have started to experience problems, a competitor has opened 100 restaurants with the same French bistro style concept, the rigid formal structure which was once in place has now downgraded to an informal structure, thus giving each bistro manager autonomy in the way it recruits, trains, and appraises its staff. This is a cause for concern as in one of its satellite restaurants East Cheam bistro there is a particular high turnover specially among serving staff.
Lodge Bistro’s main strength is it is a long established business, which has gone to adopt a unique brand of “Old fashioned French-Bistro” template for all of its restaurants.
While the company has strengths it also has weakness, one of these it has changed a rigid formal structure which gave it excellence and uniformity in all its processes to a downgraded informal structure, which together with the problems specified in paragraph two has led to inconsistency throughout the chain.
To address these problems and to look at how we can rejuvenate Lodge Bistro into the success it once was, I suggest we apply a SWOT analysis framework to the Lodge Bistro business, it is a method of structured planning, used for the purpose to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats a modern business faces. We specify the main objectives of the business, in order to do this we identify which internal and external factors are favourable to the business and which internal and external factors are not favourable to the business and we place these factors under the below headings to determine if the factor is a:
Strength - does the factor provide us with any traits and qualities to Lodge Bistros continued success?
Weakness - does the factor prevent us from achieving our potential? Does it deteriorate influences on Lodge Bistros success?
Opportunity - is there a gap in the market that Lodge Bistro can exploit to gain more profit?
Threat - Is there an internal or external factor that can jeopardise Lodge Bistros reliability and future profits?
The SWOT analysis framework for Lodge Bistro will be its guide in formulating strategy, to allow it to build up its strength, correct its weakness from internal and external factors including any