Skip to main content

Faculty & Research

Hospitality Leadership Through Learning
Faculty & Research

Restaurant Capacity Effectiveness: Leaving Money on the Tables

Share

Vol 7 No 7
By: Gary M. Thompson Ph.D.

author-image

Executive Summary: In fall 2005 The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) at Cornell University released the Restaurant Table Mix Optimizer (or RTMO), which I developed. This tool identifies the best mix of tables for a restaurant, based on a variety of inputs. The tool itself is web-based, with the CHR storing users' data anonymously in a database. As of mid March 2007, a total of 1,543 people had registered to use the RTMO. However, not all of those registrants created a valid table-mix scenario. With unusable scenarios eliminated, the final study analyzed the table mixes of 68 restaurants. While eight of the restaurants had the actual optimum table mix for peak operating times, the other 60 restaurants were leaving some money on the table. That is, most restaurants could improve their table mix. On average, the restaurants in this sample could increase their peak revenue by almost 15 percent by implementing a more effective table mix. Almost one-fifth of the restaurants in this sample could improve revenue by more than 20 percent just by having the appropriate mix of right-size tables.

Restaurant operators may be lulled into thinking they are doing as well as possible at peak times when they have full tables and guests waiting, but if that restaurant has empty seats, even at an occupied table, the mix of table sizes probably could be adjusted to seat more diners, even at peak times. Table-mix optimization shows what that mix should be.

Your Comments Please

If this CHR Report made a positive impact on your management approach or business operations, we welcome your commentary. We would like to post your comments on our website. Please submit your comments to js372@sha.cornell.edu and rohit.verma@cornell.edu.

Download The Report
To view the whole report, please click on the link below

If you have trouble downloading a report, and are able to install software on your computer, try upgrading to the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to see if that allows you to read it.

Other Reports or Articles You May Find of Interest

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