Describe the eight steps in the decision-making process.

Case Study: Taco Bell 4-lane drive-through in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota

You may doubt that isn’t this restaurant concept will go the way of the dinosaur once when the pandemic ends,
and everything goes back to normal? I'm here to tell you that taco bell is playing a much bigger game than what
you think

Step 1: Identify a Problem

Every decision start with a problem, and a problem usually happens when the existing products are not in their
best condition => which lead the manager to make choices

But you may ask, most of my daily life problems don’t come with a visible red flat and you may have to try and
try again to see a problem.
Then why the manager be able to make a critical choice that might financially damage the cooperation?
Well, although not all identify of a problem ever made are 100% correct, managers often noticed their
companies’ problem by carefully look at the sales, their social media reputation, their appearances in the
newspapers or journals and they have to take the responsibility for their research as an adult) so I like to call this
stage, a lot of brain cells was lost. In addition, a great manager has to be very sensitive in differentiating
between problems and their symptoms.
* There's been a huge shift towards a more contactless fast-food experience over the past year due to Covid and
it's turned everything on its head for instance people are less likely to eat outside at the restaurant but make
digital orders on a third-party app like Uber Food, Grab Food, Now, etc
Step 2: Identify Decision Criteria
Once a manager has identified a problem, he or she must identify the decision criteria. What are decision
criteria, you may ask, it can be simply put at factors that cause the problem. And interestingly, every decision-
maker has criteria guiding his or her decisions even if they’re not explicitly stated
* Taco Bell wants to give their customers the contactless experience that they desire but to be able to do so, it
must list some decision criteria, and here is my interpretation of some of them
• Serving time for customers
• Drive-thru customers
• Structural alterations
• Third-party apps
• Serving hour
Step 3: Allocate Weights to the Criteria
If the relevant criteria aren’t equally important, the decision-maker must weigh the items in order to give them
the correct priority in the decision. How? A simple way is to give the most important criterion a weight of 10
and then assign weights to the rest using that standard
Serving time for customers 10
Third party apps 8
Drive-through customers 7
Serving hour 6
Structural alterations  5

- For Taco Bell, reduce the Serving time for each customer is a must since shorter wait time equal more
satisfied customer and increase the number of customers for the company as well, it is a win-win situation

- Third-party delivery apps are booming, and it is a double-edged sword sure it brings more

customers to the restaurant but it can come at a steep cost (which often is 30% of the total revenue).

- Next taco bell need to increase its drive-through customers because a customer who orders a burger in
the drive-through is more valuable to the restaurant than a customer who sticks around and enjoys their
hamburger in the dining room it costs money to clean the dining area each day, it costs money to lease that
extra square footage each month, the dining room needs air conditioning and lighting and décor .

- Serving hour: The ultimate goal for a franchise restaurant is to run its full capacity for 24/24 hours. However,
in reality, all restaurants face problem with unequally costumers numbers throughout the day

-Structural alterations: (make the building smaller) since renting an area is expensive in the situation when
people are no longer dining out Taco bell go mobile locations which do away with the dining room all together
resulting in a building that's 47% smaller than a traditional restaurant

Step 4: Develop Alternatives

The fourth step in the decision-making process requires the decision-maker to list viable alternatives that could
resolve the problem. In this step, a decision-maker needs to be creative, and the alternatives are only listed—not
evaluated just yet.

Criteria Possible Solution

Serving time for customers Reducing the number of items offered on the
menu or, turning to digital menu boards that
collect data on customer behavior and then
use that to predict what they going to order
Third party apps Developing its own delivery app
Drive-through customers Opening more drive-through stops along the
side roads. Open a 4-lane drive-through
restaurant
Serving hour Taco bell's lowest performing time of day is
breakfast to hedge against this they could
team up with a restaurant that does perform
 well in the morning like starbucks or krispy
kreme that the way the restaurant can run it
full capacity morning, noon, and night
Structural alterations  Opening ‘mobile-friendly” locations which
do away with the dining room all together
resulting in a building that's 47% smaller
than a traditional restaurant

Step 5: Analyze Alternatives

Once alternatives have been identified, a decision-maker must evaluate each one. How? By using the criteria
established in Step 2.
Sometimes a decision-maker might be able to skip this step. If one alternative scores highest on every criterion,
you wouldn’t need to consider the weights because that alternative would already be the top choice.

As we can see in Step 4, Open a 4-lane drive-through restaurant is the best choice. Since it has 4 lanes,
serving time for customers is reduced by 4 and this model fits perfectly to drive-through customers and
therefore reduces the structural space. In addition, it can flexibly collaborate with other restaurants (each lane a
restaurant), shippers would be able to pick up multiple orders on one trip through the same drive-through.
Besides, with the huge revenue from efficiency, Taco Bell and start developing its app and skip third party
delivery.

Step 6: Select an Alternative

The sixth step in the decision-making process is choosing the best alternative or the one that generated the
highest total in Step 5. However, since I have already discussed the best choice, we can skip this step.

Step 7: Implement the Alternative

In Step 7 in the decision-making process, you put the decision into action by conveying it to those affected and
getting their commitment to it. We know that if the people who must implement a decision participate in the
process, they’re more likely to support it than if you just tell them what to do
* That is why Taco Bell publicly stated its idea as “so different that it has never been constructed anywhere
before”

Step 8: Evaluate Decision Effectiveness

The last step in the decision-making process involves evaluating the outcome or result of the decision to see
whether the problem was resolved. If the evaluation shows that the problem still exists, then the manager needs
to assess what went wrong.

*When it opens in the summer of 2022, the new location will be Border Foods’ 230th Taco Bell restaurant and
the 82nd Taco Bell restaurant it helped construct, the announcement said.

"Partnering with our franchisees to test new concepts is a huge unlock of learning for us," Mike Grams, Taco
Bell’s president, and global COO said in a statement. "What we learn from the test of this new Defy concept
may help shape future Taco Bell restaurants."

Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbuoZYZLipc

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/taco-bell-restaurant-4-lane-drive-thru