Early Bird & Night Owl Evaluation Tool (EBNOET) v2015

The early bird and night owl restaurant tool found in the accompanying Excel file provides an estimate of the effects of offering off-peak special menu prices. Unlike the classic back-of-envelope calculation, the tool includes the effect of anticipated cannibalization of full-price covers and seeks to optimize table use. The tool also considers the revenue from new customers attracted by the early bird or night owl promotions, as well as the level of increased business needed to achieve the net monetary value target for the promotion.

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.

Predicting the performance of passenger ships using computer simulation

When designing a new passenger ship or naval vessel or modifying an existing design, how do we ensure that the proposed design is safe from an evacuation point of view? In the wake of major maritime disasters such as the Herald of Free Enterprise and the Estonia and in light of the growth in the numbers of high density, high-speed ferries and large capacity cruise ships, issues concerned with the evacuation of passengers and crew at sea are receiving renewed interest. In the maritime industry, ship evacuation models are now recognised by IMO through the publication of the Interim Guidelines for Evacuation Analysis of New and Existing Passenger Ships including Ro-Ro. This approach offers the promise to quickly and efficiently bring evacuation considerations into the design phase, while the ship is "on the drawing board" as well as reviewing and optimising the evacuation provision of the existing fleet. Other applications of this technology include the optimisation of operating procedures for civil and naval vessels such as determining the optimal location of a feature such as a casino, organising major passenger movement events such as boarding/disembarkation or restaurant/theatre changes, determining lean manning requirements, location and number of damage control parties, etc. This paper describes the development of the maritimeEXODUS evacuation model which is fully compliant with IMO requirements and briefly presents an example application to a large passenger ferry.