CHAPTER CHANDLER'S RESTAURANT: A CASE OF STRATEGIC CHOICE This chapter presents a description of the communication and supply’ prob- lems of a restaurant. The purpose is to analyze this organization as an information processing system so as to illustrate the concept of strategic choice of organizing modes introduced ia the last chapter. The restaurant is large enough to have information processing problems and small enough so that we can comprehend it in its entirety. The case is a modification of an actual restaurant described by Whyte.’ Much of the description is quoted directly but the charts and work flows have been added to facilitate the analysis to follow in the next chapter. ORGANIZATION AND WORK FLOW Chandler's Restaurant is a fainy large restaurant employing 100 persons and serving medium quality food. Chandler's operates on three floors. The second and third floors are devoted to dining areas. The bottom floor is the Kitchen. The pantsies are on the floor of the dining room that they supply. Dishwashing is on the bottom foor. Figure 4. represents the work flow and information flow relevant to the supply system. The system is directly analogous to a durable good distribution system in which the kitchen repre- sents the fabrication or job-shop stage; the pantry, the assembly operation; and the dining rooms, the distribution of the product. This supply system is coordinated through an authority structure which is diagramed in Fig. 42. There is a dining room supervisor who manages the admission, seating, serving, and customer request functions. A kitchen supervisor is in charge of the pantry, kitchen, and dish provisioning functions. And finally, the ad- 58Chandler's Restaurant | 59 Kitchen supplies Dining /E—>| Pantry ee | tn Lemar room fe TY ke are rr Fish |Vegetavies| Other 1 t t 1 1 1 susomers Dining }e— >} Pantry room 2 Dishes > Flow of suppor => Hlowof information Fig. 4.1 Schematic of information and supplies flows. ninistretive function of bookkeeping, financial, and personnel activities are placed in a third group. While reading Whyte’s description, the reader should try to identily the problems of supplying food at Chandler's and to think of as mary methods as possible to alleviate these problems. It should be mentioned that the description is relevant only to the supplying function, The manage nent is also concerned with menu and recipe selection, selection of sup- pliers, selection and purchsse of foodstuffs, supervision of preparation ad quality of food, handling of food, quality complaints, advertising, etc, These sre issues, but are not considered to be problematic in the described situi- tion CHANDLER'S RESTAURANT* In discussing the kitchen as a status system, we have only incidentally taken account of the fact that the kitchen is part of a communication and supply system, which operates to get the food from the range onto the customer's table. Looking at it this way will bring to light other problems. Where the restaurant is small and the kitchen is on the seme floor as the dining room, waitresses are in direct contact with cooks. This does not eliminate friction, but at least everybody is in @ position to know what + From Human relations in the restourant industry, copyright 1948 by McGraw-Hill, pp. 47-60. Reprinted by permission ofthe anther.Manager Dining ome Kitchen mae supervsor supervisor Pantry | Pantry Dither Assit Assistant Assatont Assistant Assia supervisor! supervisor Iv supervisor supervisor Supervisor supervisor CT TT Ber TIT Waitresses TTTITT Penner = TTITT) Runner Salad Fish Meat Vegetables Other Fig. 4.2 Authority structure of Chandler's Restaurant. aa1o1 agiareng jo areD y wesnersny ssaqpueyy | 09)Chandler's Restaurant | 61 everybody else is doing, and the problems of communication and coordina: tion are relatively simple. ‘When the restaurant is large, there are more people whose activities must be coordinated, and when the restaurant operates on several floors, the coordination must be accomplished through people who are not gener- ally in face-to-face contact with each other. These factors add tremendously tothe diiculty of achieving smooth coordination. The cooks feel that they work under pressure—and under a pressure whose origins they cannot see or anticipate. ‘As one of them said, Its mostly the uncertainty of the fob that gets me down, I think. I mean, you never know how much work youre going to have to do. You never know in advance if you're going to have to make more. T think that’s what « lot of 'em don’t like around here. That uncertainty is hard on your nerves. For a cook, the ideal situation is one in which she alvays has a sufficient supply of food prepared ahead so that she is never asked for something she does not have on hand. As one of them said, “You have to keep ahead or you get all excited and upset.” Life would be simpler for the cook if she were free to prepare just as much food as she wanted to, but the large and efficiently operated restau- rant plans production on the basis of very careful estimates of the volume of business to be expected. Low food costs depend in part upon minimizing waste or left-over food. This means that production must be scheduled so asto run only a litle ahead of customer demand. The cook therefore works within a narrow margin of error. She can’t get far ahéad, and that means that on extra-busy days she is certain sometimes to lose her lead or even to drop behind. ‘When the cook drops behind, all the pressures from customer to waitress to service pantry to runner descend upon her, for no one between her and the customer can do his job unless she produces the goods. From this point of view, timing and coordination are key problems of the organization. Proper timing and good coordination must be achieved in human relations or else efficiency is dissipated in personal frictions. While these statements apply to every step in the process of production and service, let us look here at the first steps—the relations of cooks to Jktchen runners to the service pantry. ‘When the restaurant operates on different floors, the relations must be ‘carried on in part through mechanical means of communication. There are three common channels of this nature, and all have their drawbacks. Use of a public address system adds considerably to the noise of the kitchen and62 | Chandler's Restaurant: A Case of Strategic Choice service pantries. The teleautograph (in which orders written on the ma- chine on one floor are automatically recorded on the kitchen machine) is quiet but sometimes unintelligible. Orders written in a hurry and in ab- breviated form are sometimes misinterpreted so that sliced ham arrives when sliced toms (tomatoes) were ordered. Besides, neither of those channels operates easily for two-way communication. It is difficult to carry fon a conversation over the public address system, and, while kitchen run- ners can write their replies to orders on the teleautograph, this hardly makes for full and free expression. The telephone provides two-way communica- tion, but most kitchens are so noisy that it is difficult to hear phone conver- sations, And then in some restaurants there is only one telephone circuit for the whole house, so that when kitchen and pantry runners are using it, no one else can put in a call. The problems that come up with such communication systems can best be illustrated by looking at a particular restaurant, Chandler's, where tde- aph and phone were used. rn supervisor was in charge of Chandler's kitchen, and paniry were in charge of each pantry, under her general supervision. ‘There was also an assistant supervisor working in the kitchen, he supplying function was carried on in the kitchen by two or three runners (depending upon the employment situation) and by a runner on each of the service-pantry floors. Food was sent up by automatic elevator. The kitchen runners were supposed to pick up their orders from storage bins, iceboxes, or direct from the cooks. When the order was in preparation, the cook or salad girl was supposed to say how long it would be before it was ready, and the runner would relay this information by teleautograph to the service pantries. When the cooking or salad making had aot been Lexus, the runner had no autherity to tell the cook to hurry the order. Before each meal, the cook was given an open order (a minimum and maximum amount) fon each item by the kitchen supervisor. She worked steadily until she had produced the minimum, and, from then on, she gauged her production ac- cording to the demands that came to her from the runner. That is, if the sm was going out fast, sho would keep producing as fast as she could until she had produced the maximum. Beyond this point she could not go with- ‘out authorization from her supervisor. Ideally, the supervisor and cook would confer before the maximum had been reached in order to see whether It was necessary to set a new figure, but this did not always happen. While the runner could not order the cook to go beyond her maximun, his demands did directly influence her behavior up to that point. He origi- nated action for her. ‘That was at the base of his troubles. Among kitchen employees, as we have seen, the cooks have the highest status. In Chandler's, runners had aChandler's Restaurant | 63 Jow: status, just above potwashers and sweepers. The jobs were filed by inexperienced employees, women or men whe, if they performed well, were advanced to something of higher status. Their wages were considerably Jower than the cooks’, and the cooks also had a great advantage in seniority. In this particular case, the age difference was important too. The runners were a young man, a teen-aged boy, and a young girl, while the cooks were middle-aged women. The runners would have been in a more secure position if they had in close touch with a supervisor, but here the communication was dic and ineffective. The supervisor was inclined to let the runners fend emselves. ‘When the runners put pressure on them, the cooks were inclined to react 50 as to put the runners in their place. For example, we observed incidents like this one. One runner (Ruth) asked another to get some salmon salad from the salad girl, The second runner found that the salad gill had no more oa hand. “They want me to get some more of that salmon salad,” he said. ‘Could you make it, please?” “Who told you that?” she asked, “Ruth did.” “You can tell Ruth that I dor't take no orders from her. I have a boss, and I don't take no orders from nobody else. You can just tell her that.” Now it may have been that the salad gir] had made her maximum and could not go on without authorization from her supervisor, but the runner had no way of knowing that this was the case. He put his sequest to her pilitely, and she could have responded in kind by saying she was sorry that she could not make more without consulting the supervisor. Instead she responded aggressively, as if she felt a need to make it clear that no mere runner was going to originate action for her. Even when they complied with the runner's requests, the cooks some- times behaved so as to make it appear as if it were really they who origi. noted the action. They always liked to make it clear that they had authority over the foods after they had been prepared, and that they could determine what should be done with them. While this was a general reaction, the salad girl was most explicit in such cases. A runner went to look for some boiled eggs. The salad girl was not present at the momert, so he could not ask her, but after he had got the exgs from the icebox, he saw that she was back at her station. He showed her the pan of eggs, asking, “What about that?”64 | Chandler's Restaurant: A Case of Strategic Choice “I don't like that,” she said belligerently. "You have no business taking them eggs out of the icebox without asking, “Well, I'm asking you now.” “Thave to know how much there is. That's why I want you to tell me....Go on, you might as well take them now that you have them.” On other occasions when he asked her for salad, she would say, “Why don’t you people look in the icebox once in a while?" In such a case, whatever the runner did was wrong. The salad gitl’s behavior was irrational, of course, but it did serve a function for her, Be- having in this way, she was able to originate action for the runner instead of being in the inferior position of responding to his actions. The runners also hed difficulty in getting information out of the cooks. When there was a demand from the service pantries, and the food could not be sent up immediately, the runners were always supposed to give an estimate as to when they could furnish the item, This information they were expected to got from the cooks, The cooks sometimes fatly refused to give a time and were generally reluctant to make an estimate. When they did give a time, they nearly always ran considerably beycnd it. Incidentally, time seems 6 be used as a weepon in the resteurant, It is well known that customers feel and complain that they wait for a table or for service far longer than they actually do. Waitresses, es we observed them, estimated their waiting time on orders 2s much as 50 to 100 percent more than the actual time. While they were not conscious of what they were doing, they could express impatience with the service-pantry girls more eloquently by saying, “T've been waiting 20 minutes for that order,” than by giving the time a 10 minutes. In. the front of the house, time is used to put pressure on people. In the back of the house, the cooks try to use time to take pressure off themselves. They say that an item will be done “right away,” which does not tell when it will be done but announces that they have the situation well ia hand and that nobody should bother them about it. Giving. a short time tends to have the same effect, It reassures the runner, who reassures the service pantries. When the time runs out, the pantry runners begin again to demand action, but it may take a few minutes before the pressure gets back to the cooks, and by that time the item may really be ready for delivery. Furthermore, the cook's refusal to give a time turns the pressure back on runners and other parts of the house—a result that she is not able to accomplish in any other way. In the case of some of the inexperienced cooks, it may be that they simply did not know how to estimate cooking time, but that would hardly explain the persistent failure of all the cooks to cooperate with the runners in this matter,Chandler's Resteurant | 65 ‘The management was quite aware of this problem but had no real solution to offer. One of the pantry supervisors instructed a kitchen runner in this way “You have to give usa time on everything that is going to be de- layed. That is the only way we can keep things going upstairs. On our blackboards we list all our foods and how Jong it will take to get them, and most of the time we have to list them “indefinite” That shouldn't be. We should always have a definite time, so the waitress can tell the guest how long he will have to wait for his order, We can't tell the guest we're out of a certain food item on the menu and that we don't know how long it will take to replace it, They'll ask what kind of a restaurant we're running” The runner thought that over and then went on to question the supervisor. "But sometimes we can't get that information from the cooks. ... They won't tell us, or maybe they don’t know,” “Then you should always ask the food-production manager. She'll tell you, or she'll get the cook to tell you.” “But the cooks would think we had squealed.” “No, they wouldn't. And if they did, all right, is the only way they'll ever learn, They've got to learn that, because we must always ave a time on all delayed foods.” “Yes, surely we couldn't tell on them if they refused to give the information.” "Yes, you could. You have to, They'll have to learn it somehow.” The efficiency of this system depended upon building up a cooperstive rucen cooks and runners. For runners to try to get action by appealing to the boss to put pressure on the cooks is hardly the way to build up such a relationship. It is clear that, considecing thelr low status in relation to the cocks, runners are not in a position to take the lead in smoothing out hurian-relations difficukies. Some of the runner's problems arise out of failure to achieve efficient eortinator aad sanininieatien Wevees Waots For seangle ov one 66 ‘casfon one of the upstairs Moors put in a rush order for a pan of rice. With some diffcalty, the kitchen runner was able to ll the order. Then, 15 Iinutes later, the pan came back to the kitchen again, still almost full, but apparently no more was needed for the meal. The cooks gathered around the elevator to give vent to their feelings. This proved, they said, that the rice had not been needed alter all. Those people upstairs just didn't know what they were doing. After the miéal was over, the kitchen runner went up to check with the pantry runner. The pantry man explained, “I ran out of66 | Chandler's Restaurant: A Case of Strategie Choice creole, and there wasn’t going to be any more, so Thad no use for any more rice.” This was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but it did not reach the cooks. As 2 rule, the cooks had little idea of what was going on upstairs. Sometimes there would be an urgent call for some food item along toward the end of the meal-time, and it would be supplied only aiter a considerable delay. By the time it reached the service pantries, there would no longer be a demand for it, and the supply would shortly be sent back. This would always upset the cooks. They would then stand around end vow that next time they would not take it seriously when the upstairs people were clamor- ing for action. “In the service pantries,” one of the cooks said, “they just dor’t care how much they ask for. That guy, Joe [pantry runner], just hoards the stuff up there. He can’t always be out of it like he claims. He just hoards it” A kitchen runner made this comment: Joe will order something and right away helll order it again. He just keeps calling for more. Once or twice I went upstairs, and I saw he had plenty of stuff up there. He just hoards it up there, and he has to send a lot of staff downstairs. He wastes a lot of stuff After I caught on to the way he works, I just made it a rule when he called for stuf and the first floor was calling for stuff at the same time, I divided it between them. On the other hand, when Joe was rushed and found that he was not getting quick action on his orders, his tendency was to make his orders larger, repeat the orders before any supply had come up, and mark all his orders rush. When this did not bring results, he would call the kitchen on the phone. If all ese failed, he would sometimes run down into the kitchen himself to see if he could snatch what he needed. This kind of behavior built up confusion and resentment in the kitchen. When orders were repeated, the kitchen runners could not tell whether ad- Citional supply was needed or whether the pantry runners were just getting impatient, When everything was marked rush, there was no way of telling how badly anybody needed anything. But most serious of all was the re- action when the pantry runner invaded the kitchen. One of them told us of such an incident: One of the cooks got mad at me the other day. I went down there to get this item, and boy, did she get mad st me for coming down there. But I got to do something! The waitresses ard the pantry girls keep on yelling at me to get it for them. Well, I finally got it, or somehow it got sent upstairs. Boy, she was sure mad at me, though,Chandler's Restaurant | 67 Apparently the cooks resented the presence of any upstairs supply man che kitchen, but they were particularly incensed against Joe, the runner they all suspected of hoarding food. One of them made this comment That guy would try to come down in the kitchen and tell us what to do. But not me. No sir. He came down here one day and tried to tell me what to do. He said to me, “We're going to be very busy today.” 1 just looked at him. “Yeah?” I said, “who are you? Go on upstairs, Go on. Mind your own business.” Can you beat that! “We're going to be very busy today!” He never came down and told me anything again. “Who are you?” I asked him. That's all Thad to say to him. Here the runner's remark did not have_any effect upon the work of the cook, but the implication was that he was in a superior position, and she reacted strongly against him for that reason. None of the cooks enjoy having the kitchen runners criginate action for thern, but, since it occurs regularly, they make some adjustment to it. They are not accustomed to any sort of relationship with the pantry runners, so when they come down to add to the pressure and confusion of the kitchen, the cocks feel free to slap them down. Jt was not only the pantry runners who invaded the kitchen. The pantry supervisors spent a good deal of time and energy running up and down. When an upstairs supervisor comes after supplies, the kitchen reaction is the same as that to the pantry runners—except that the supervisor cannot be slapped down. Instead, the employees gripe to ench other. As one kitchen runner said, I wish she would quit that I wonder what she thinks she’s doing, running down here and picking up things we're waiting for. Now like just a minute ago, did you see that? She went off with peaches and plums, and we'd never have known about it if I hadn't seen her. Now couldn't she have just stepped over here and told us?... She sure gets mad a lot, doesn't she? She's always griping. I mean, she's probably a nice person, but she’s hard to get along with at work—she sure is! ‘There were other pantry supervisors whose presence in the kitchen did not cause such a disturbance. The workers would say that so-and-so was really all right. Nevertheless, whenever a pantry. supervisor dashed into the litchen to look for supplies, it was a sign to everybody that something was wrong—that somebody was worried—and thus it added to the tension in the atmosphere and disturbed the human relations of the regular supply system—such as they were.68 | Chandler's Restaurant: A Case of Strategie Choice In this situation, the kitchen ruaner was the man in the middle. One of the service-pantry girls we interviewed put it this way: ‘Oh, we certainly are busy up here. We don’t stop even for a mo- ment. I think this is the busiest place around here. It's bad when we can't get those foods, though. We get delayed by those supply people downstairs all the time. I could shoot those runners. We can be just as busy up here—but down there it's always slow motion. It seems like they just don't care at all. They always take all the time in the world. On the other hand, the cooks blamed the inefficiency of the runners for many of their troubles. They felt that the runners were constantly sending ‘up duplicate orders just through failure to consult each other on the progress of their work. Actually, according to our observation, this hap- pened very rarely, but wherever a runner was caught in the act, this was taken as proof thet duplication was common practice. The failure of the runners to coordinate their work efficiently did annoy the cooks in another way, as they were sometimes asked for the same order within a few seconds by two different runners. However, while this added to the nervous tension, it did not directly affect the flow of supplies. Such were the problems of supply in one restaurant where we were able to give them close attention. However, as it stands, this account is likely to give a false impression. The reader may picture the restaurant as a series of armed camps, each one in constant battle with its neighbor. He may also get the impression that food zeaches customers only intermittently and after long deleys. To. us it seemed that the restaurant was doing 1 remarkable job of production and service, and yet, in view of the frictions we observed, it is only natural to ask whether it would not be possible to organize the human relations so as to make for better teamwork and greater efficiency. According to one point of view, no basic improvement is possible be cause."you can't change human nature” Bat is it all just personalities and personal inefficiency? What has been the situation in other restaurants of this type (operating on several floors) and in other periods of time? Unfortunately we have no studies for other time periods, but we do have the testimony of several supervisors whe have had previous experience in restaurants facing similar problems, and who have shown themselves, in the course of cur study, to be shrewd observers of behavior in their own organizations. Their story is that the friction and incoordination we ob- served were not simply a war-time phenomenon. While increased business and inexperienced help made the problem much more acute, the friction came at the same places in the organization—between the same categoriesNote | 69 cof people—that it used to. The job of the kitchen runner, apparently, has “ihuays been a “hot Spot" in such an organization. This, then, is not primarily a personality problem. It is a problem in unnan relations. When the organization operates so as to stimulate con- fact benveen people holding certain positions within it, then we ean expect trouble, SUMMARY, The preceding has been a quotation taken from Whyte's observations of the resturant supply function. The student is asked to describe the underlying or basic causes of what Whyte describes as human relations problems Wiiste also asks the question as to whether there is not a better way of organizing the human relations so as to be satisfying to the participants and more efficient in terms of service to the customers and food resources that are wasted. How would you intervene in the system? Would you cthe task, the structure, the information system, or the human system? Is there more than one way to solve the problem? How many different ways can you think of NOTE 1.W.F, Whyte 1018, Human relations in the restaurant industry, New Yorks MeCraw wil Drawn from: Organization design Jay R. Galbraith, Addison-Wesley Publishing Compary