Faculty & Research
Dedicated or Combinable? A Simulation to Determine Optimal Restaurant Table Configuration
By: Gary M. Thompson Ph.D.
Executive Summary: Using a computer simulation, one can determine what the optimum table arrangement would be for restaurants of various sizes that accept walk-in customers only and take no reservations. At issue is whether the restaurateur can gain more revenue when its tables are dedicated to seating parties of specific sizes (for example, parties of one and two people would be served at 2-tops, while parties of one to four people would be served at 4-tops) or whether the restaurant should use tables that can be combined as needed according to party size. The simulation predicted that combinable tables would prove most useful in a small restaurant with a small average party size. Combining tables in that situation increased revenue per available seat hour by about 2 percent compared to having only dedicated tables. In a large restaurant or any restaurant with a large average party size, the simulation found that dedicated tables were superior to combinable tables. A loss in productivity occurs when some number of tables are held out of service until adjacent tables become available (so that the tables can be combined to seat a large party). The simulation found that the most efficient approach is for a restaurant's table-size mix to match its customer partysize mix, since doing so increases the restaurant's effective customer-service capacity. However, that customer mix cannot always be known before a restaurant is constructed, and that mix might change during different dayparts. Moreover, the simulation makes certain assumptions that may need further examination, and it does not take into account such aethestic factors as customers' reactions to a particular restaurant layout.
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About Gary M. Thompson Ph.D.
Gary M. Thompson is a professor of operations management in the School of Hotel Administration, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in operations management. Previously he spent eight years on the faculty of the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. He holds a BS with first class honors from the University of New Brunswick, an MBA from the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD in operations management from The Florida State University. His current research focuses on optimizing restaurant table mixes, on optimizing conference schedules to improve attendee satisfaction, on course scheduling in post-secondary and corporate training environments, and on the effects on customer service of labor staffing and scheduling decisions. His research has appeared in the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Decision Sciences, the Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, Naval Research Logistics, Operations Research and other journals. He has consulted for several prominent hospitality companies and is the founder and president of Thoughtimus, Inc., a small software development firm focusing on scheduling products.
For more information visit http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/facultybios/faculty.html?id=84
