FRESH: A Food-service Sustainability Rating for Hospitality Sector Events

This report presents a metric called FRESH (for Foodservice Impact Rating for Environmentally Sustainable Hospitality Events). FRESH can be used to evaluate the performance of any foodservice meal period or event in the hospitality sector with regards to its sustainability, based on seven measurements. These measures are: a (post-consumer) food-waste indicator, a no-show indicator (when unexpectedly few people show up), an over-show measure (when too many people show up), a planning indicator (measuring intentional overproduction), a portion-size indicator (measuring per-guest consumption against expectations), an economies of scale indicator, and a post-event indicator (which depends on disposal approaches). FRESH can help managers, authorities, and potential guests evaluate the sustainability of food production in any establishment.

Authentic Leadership and Behavioral Integrity as Drivers of Follower Commitment and Performance

The literatures on both authentic leadership and behavioral integrity have argued that leader integrity drives follower performance. Yet, despite overlap in conceptualization and mechanisms, no research has investigated how authentic leadership and behavioral integrity relate to one another in driving follower performance. In this study, we propose and test the notion that authentic leadership behavior is an antecedent to perceptions of leader behavioral integrity, which in turn affects follower affective organizational commitment and follower work role performance. Analysis of a survey of 49 teams in the service industry supports the proposition that authentic leadership is related to follower affective organizational commitment, fully mediated through leader behavioral integrity. Next, we found that authentic leadership and leader behavioral integrity are related to follower work role performance, fully mediated through follower affective organizational commitment. These relationships hold when controlling for ethical organizational culture.

Shift Scheduling in Services When Employees Have Limited Availability: An L. P. Approach

This paper compares two linear programming (LP) models for shift scheduling in services where homogeneously-skilled employees are available at limited times. Although both models are based on set covering approaches, one explicitly matches employees to shifts, while the other imposes this matching implicitly. Each model is used in three forms—one with complete, another with very limited meal break placement flexibility, and a third without meal breaks—to provide initial schedules to a completion/improvement heuristic. The term completion/improvement heuristic is used to describe a construction/ improvement heuristic operating on a starting schedule. On 80 test problems varying widely in scheduling flexibility, employee staffing requirements, and employee availability characteristics, all six LP-based procedures generated lower cost schedules than a comparison from-scratch construction/improvement heuristic. This heuristic, which perpetually maintains an explicit matching of employees to shifts, consists of three phases which add, drop, and modify shifts. In terms of schedule cost, schedule generation time, and model size, the procedures based on the implicit model performed better, as a group, than those based on the explicit model. The LP model with complete break placement flexibility and implicitly matching employees to shifts generated schedules costing 6.7% less than those developed by the from-scratch heuristic.

The Influence of Table Top Technology in Full-service Restaurants

The use of tabletop technology continues to grow in the restaurant industry, and this study identifies the strengths and weakness of the technology, how it influences customers, and how it can improve the bottom line for managers and business owners. Results from two studies involving a full-service casual dining chain show that dining time was significantly reduced among patrons who used the tabletop hardware to order or pay for their meals, as was the time required for servers to meet the needs of customers. Also, those who used the devices to order a meal tended to spend more than those who did not. Patrons across the industry have embraced guest-facing technology, such as online reservation systems, mobile apps, payment apps, and tablet-based systems, and may in fact look for such technology when deciding where to dine. Guests’ reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, with 70 to 80 percent of consumers citing the benefits of guest-facing technology and applications. The introduction of tabletop technology in the full-service segment has been slower than in quick-service restaurants (QSRs), and guests cite online reservation systems, online ordering, and tableside payment as preferred technologies. Restaurant operators have also cited benefits of guest-facing technology, for example, the use of electronic ordering, which led to increased sales as such systems can induce the purchase of more expensive menu items and side dishes while allowing managers to store order and payment information for future transactions. Researchers have also noted the cost of the technology and potential problems with integration into other systems as two main factors blocking adoption.

Pooling Restaurant Reservations to Increase Service Efficiency

This paper examines whether restaurant reservations should be locked to specific tables at the time the reservation is made, or whether the reservations should be pooled and assigned to tables in real-time. In two motivating studies, we find that there is a lack of consensus in the restaurant industry on handling reservations. Contrary to what might be expected based on research that shows the benefits of resource pooling in other contexts, a survey of 425 restaurants indicated that over 80% lock reservations to tables. In two simulation studies, we determine that pooling reservations enables a 15-minute reduction in table turn times more than 15% of the time, which consequently increases service efficiency and enables a restaurant to serve more customers during peak periods. Pooling had the most consistent advantage with higher customer service levels, with larger restaurants, with customers who arrive late, and with larger variation in customer arrival time.

Authenticity in Scaling the Vision: Defining Boundaries in the Food and Beverage Entrepreneurship Development Cycle

The October 2015 Food and Beverage Entrepreneurship Roundtable brought together over 30 food and beverage industry leaders, entrepreneurs, faculty, and students at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. Discussion topics covered entrepreneurship in the food and beverage industry, including development, intrapreneurship, operational efficiency, beverage product development, and technology. The roundtable began with the presentation of a five-point framework on food and beverage venue development. The first three phases focused on the launch of a venue, including how to define the guest experience; the creation of operational functionality by strategically planning out the design, flow, and efficiency of a defined space; and development capacity. The remaining two points of the framework focused on post-opening considerations, including operating systems and culture development. Participants discussed the importance of culture in the growth of a business. They suggested that intrapreneurship needs to be fostered in the culture of an organization and in an educational curriculum for those who are preparing to enter the industry. Participants also discussed the fine balance between setting expectations for an experience and subsequently being able to maintain this experience in a fast changing environment. In particular they considered what it means to say no to customers. A discussion on the beverage industry focused on how to distribute products in a crowded marketplace. One method to ensure that the product gets into the hands of the consumers is face-to-face sales. Finally, in the technology session, the group discussed technology adoption, specifically focusing on the point at which technology detracts from the guest experience, how to minimize operational risk from technology, and how to maximize consumers’ adoption rates.