2014

Samantha Ricard
Professor Conrad
3/31/2014
Case Study: The Publick House
OVERVIEW
The Publick House Historic Inn is located in Sturbridge MA. It was built in 1771. It
is a well-known establishment for tourists coming from all over the United States.
Walking into the Publick House feels as if you have stepped back in time. Along with
banquet facilities, the Publick House offers 2 restaurants, the Historic Tap Dining room
and also Ebenezers Tavern. On top of that, it is also a hotel, with 32 Historic Rooms
and a motor lodge at the top of the hill.
Many famous people have made their way to the Publick House including actors
Bill Murray, Susan St. James, Natalie Portman, Jon Hamm and John Travolta. Today,
the old world spirit continues welcoming guests with open hearths and Yankee
hospitality. The dining room features an indulging array of duck, lamb, lobster, and other
specialty meat and seafood dishes, including a traditional Thanksgiving fare available all
year long. The famous saying at the Publick House is every day is Thanksgiving at the
Publick House thats what brings people in the most, is the turkey.
Although the Publick House has been in staple business in Sturbridge, they
started seeing a serious decline in business during the week. To make matters worse,
the economy crashed. On top of that, many restaurants starting opening up around the
area, such as Kaizen and Cedar Street Grill. Management was faced with a dilemma to
bring in people
Management along with the owners decided to put a coupon into place. It was a
Buy one get one free coupon that we would offer Monday through Wednesday valid at
both lunch and dinner. The decided to start putting the coupon in every newspaper and
also online. They also decided to promote it within the restaurant by having servers tell
their guests about in hopes of coming back.
The increase of guests spiked drastically, which was great. It turned a normal
Monday lunch where servers would only make 10 to 15 bucks, to a busy lunch with a
wait and servers walking out of the door with upwards to 75 dollars. Same with dinner
service, cover counts went up greatly throughout the whole restaurant and management
was pleased. What could go wrong?
Dilemma
Although business was going great, there had to be a downfall to all of this.
One of the first problems, is that servers were allowed to do their own discounts
with the Managers Micros Card. For example, Manager A would give Server B their
card to go take care of the discount, and then ask for the card back. So there was really
no accountability for the discounts being done.
It all started when a server Jen, was promoted to restaurant supervisor. She
wasnt the most honest character to be in that position, however management really had
no choice as she was the only one to apply within the 6 month time the position was
open.
Jen had been on the staff at the Publick House for 10 years. She started around
the time where the coupons started to come out. She had figured out a solution to all
the servers need for cash. Within the hospitality industry comes theft, and thats exactly
what happened here.
She had taught her friend and longtime companion, Rick, who was a server, how
to pocket cash from the coupons. What he would do was a long complicated process.
He would wait for a customer to come in without a coupon. He then would see if
towards the end of the meal if they were paying cash. He then would take the
customers payment, apply his own coupon he got from home, then pocket the rest of
the cash.
So let me show you a more realistic example, say you go out to eat and order
two lobster pies which are $32.00 each. The total comes up to $64.00 and you leave
$80.00 on the bill and leave. Then the server comes along, take a coupon out of their
pocket, goes up to the manager and asks for a card to do a discount, does it, then
pockets the $32.00.
This seemed like a fool proof way to get some extra cash, especially during these
hard times at the Publick House. Soon after Rick started doing it, the word started to
spread amongst the servers. Soon after this, a lot of the staff was doing it. One person
turned into 8 people doing it. A lot of the servers doing it were the type of people who
you wouldnt expect it, people who had been there for over 7 or 8 years.
Explanation
So, what do you do? As a business owner, it doesnt seem like your employees
would do such a thing at your establishment.
There were rumors circulating that management started to have an idea about
what was going on. But one of the huge dilemmas they faced was they had no idea who
exactly because there was no way of making any one person responsible. This goes
back to the fact about the Mircos Card, servers had free reign of the card, but there was
no way of telling who was using it and when.
After 6 months of this going on, management finally had secret shoppers come in
and caught the servers who were stealing money. The Publick House decided to
continue the coupons after the servers who were doing it were fired.





Discussion Questions
1. Would you get rid of the coupon or keep it after noticing there was theft going
on?
2. What would you do as management to stop this from happening again?
3. What do you think could be some policies that could be put in place to help
prevent this?
4. How do you improve the moral of the employees at the Publick House?
5. Do you think there will always be a way that employees will steal?