In order to success with this global procedure strategy, Hard Rock and roll Café has made good respond to the ten procedure management decisions.
First, their design of goods and services has taken their restaurants a unique, captivating appearance that differentiates them well with other brands. Hard Rock and roll Café introduces the idea of "experience" to its businesses. As customers dine at a Hard Rock Café's restaurant, what they can gain isn't only a custom meals from the menu but also an unforgettable event with unique aesthetic pleasure from various rock and roll memorabilia and thrilling music from a number of music activities. This kind of design has brought Hard Rock Café a razor-sharp border to its competitiveness as "there's nothing like an originator" (Hard Rock's marketing director, Steve Glum, 2003). Other brands may find aspiration in its special notion; however it has something that can't be easily copied, music and its $30 million-worth of historically precious rock and roll paraphernalia (Matt Haig, 2004, p. 233). Their retail merchandises, which take up to 48% of the sales, also bring heavy rock characteristics like Hard Rock and roll Monopoly, Hard Rock and roll Calendar, guitar case and other rock and roll items.
To follow the "experience notion", Hard Rock Café doesn't concentrate its quality managing effort on only some dishes or services but the 'experience' that its customers get as a whole. Food quality is important, but more important is the grade of visuality and auditory. Hard Rock and roll Cafe attaches much importance to customers' views in valuating quality such as their "experience theory", maximum value is exactly what perceived by the clients. Hard Rock gives out surveys frequently with the ratings ranking from 1 to 7, also to keep up with the restaurants' reputation of high quality, if the report is not 7, the service is considered a failure (Jay Heizer & Barry Render, p. 56).
About process and capacity design, Hard Rock and roll Café provides continuing training to its staff in order that they remain highly experienced, skillful and passionate about the primary theme rock 'n' move. The restaurants are embellished by buying and exhibiting musical objects which are sometimes expensive and require much effort in preservation. Hard Rock and roll also holds music events in which the number of followers participating may go over 100, 000 people.
The locations of Hard Rock's restaurants are carefully chosen. According to Oliver Munday, Hard Rock's vice leader, they have to "look at political risk, money and communal norms" Generally, almost all of these restaurants are located where travel and leisure is developed and in places where each restaurant itself has a great rate of publicity. For example, the Hard Rock Café in Atlanta separates from major hotels and downtown sights like Georgia Aquarium, Centennial Olympic Recreation area for only a small walking distance. This location can be called a 'platinum position' as visitors may easily find and choose Hard Rock Café as their eating destination easily without much work. Another example, Hard Rock's hottest restaurant in Japan is open up at Universal CityWalk Osaka. These entertainment and retail districts are an integral part of the huge General Studios Japan theme playground, a famous travel and leisure destination that experienced welcomed 11 million tourists in its first calendar year of operation and so become one of the most successful theme parks ever sold ("Universal Studios Japan Welcomes 11 Millionth Visitor", PR Newswire, 2002). The restaurant is also located in a "gold position", at the Konohana park site, only 10 minutes by rail away from JR Osaka train station. Thanks to this location, starving tourists getting out of the train station will be wanting to stop at Hard Rock Café for a little enjoyable 'experience' before carrying on on their travels.
The layouts of Hard Rock's restaurants cannot be found anywhere else on earth. Each colorful structure is like a museum of musical record in the shell of an restaurant. The wall surfaces of the restaurants are adorned with memorabilia. Occasionally, large television monitors bombard the senses of guests with views from rock videos. There exists a great deal of space as a Hard Rock restaurant is usually large enough to carry a great number of car seats and support live concerts and shows. Many of these create a distinctive Hard Rock atmosphere that no other restaurant can possess. Not just that there are some dissimilarities between each location. In Florida, the lavish exterior features an old car motivated through the building and the designs make one think of a historical damage. In Prague, a 5-meter crystal electric guitar is clinging down from the ceiling, creating a rock 'n' roll atmosphere appealing to all rock admirers. These distinctions in design allow Hard Rock's customers to obtain truly unique aesthetic experience as they visit its restaurants at many locations around the world.
Up to 2010, Hard Rock's personnel has reached 20, 000 employees (http://www. hardrock. com). These employees play an indispensable part in keeping the 'experience market' concept alive. Hard Rock's restaurants have beautiful designs, interesting music and unique memorabilia; however, what has truly close the bridge between these lifeless items and the clients is the staff's passionate frame of mind. Hard Rock's employees are not only skilled in their careers but also quite proficient in rock 'n' move. In Hard Rock and roll Café, waiters and waitress satisfaction themselves on having the ability to recognize every piece of musical paraphernalia, and the personnel will enthusiastically take part in conversations with the guests to present the things to them or encourage them to go around and discover the excitement by themselves. In order to ensure their employees to meet the above standard, Hard Rock and roll Café compensates much focus on their human learning resource strategy. They may have created a dynamic working culture that gives much surface to personal development and personality. Beside incentives like high pay rates and advertising opportunities, Hard Rock gives its staff continuing specific training and promotes them to be positive and self-motivated surrounding the core 'Hard Rock and roll Value'.
To reduce the source cost and ensure the new express of its materials, Hard Rock and roll Café takes advantages of local source whenever it can. For example, the restaurant in Honolulu purchases fresh seafood from the fish auction near Honolulu Harbor. This action allows the restaurant to have a fresh, always available food source, and also help them to provide their special dish: fresh catch of your day (http://www. hawaiimagazine. com).
Hard Rock and roll Café's inventory involves over 60, 000 unique objects that once belonged to famous rock and roll legends like Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Adam Dark brown etc They range from lyric mattress sheets and rare metal discs to even worn clothes and guitars. Packed with these items, each restaurant becomes a 'living museum' of rock and roll 'n' roll history. In Hard Rock Café's restaurants, there are also many large even screen televisions constantly play rock and roll videos and concert footages. This sort of inventory becomes one of the brand's durability. They've got "something people can hook up to, music and memorabilia" (Hard Rock's marketing director, Steve Glum, 2003).
As Hard Rock and roll Café constantly grows up all over the world with numerous rock concerts and incidents, its schedules are firmly supervised both in permanent and short term, large scale and individual range. For a big event, a plan is made several months prior to the event day. The closer it gets to the function day, the tighter the program is managed. For instance, the arranging for the Rockfest event is done within a good 9-month horizon, where it is kept up to date monthly in the first 3 months, weekly within the next 6 months and twice weekly within the last month (Jay Heizer & Barry Render, p. 128). To be able to pull off such a tight schedule, Hard Rock Café's managers must have good project management skills and good supportive software. The schedule of an employee is more flexible. Since 70% of its friends are tourists (Jay Heizer & Barry Render, p. 82), Hard Rock and roll Café must have adaptable schedules in their restaurant to answer the needs of tourism. For instance, in Orlando, a famous visitor location, café personnel has program of 15-minute intervals to adapt to the seasonal and daily changes of this tourist environment (Jay Heizer & Barry Render, p. 56).
The special rock-theme of Hard Rock Café requires it to make huge maintenance initiatives. The assortment of musical items are distributed and rotated among restaurants from time to time (Matt Haig, 2004, p. 233). This sort of maintenance is quite costly as moving these priceless musical items require not only travelling fee but also special cover and preservation. However, in doing so, the visual experience of a going back customer can remain unique as there are always new pieces of memorabilia to show.
As of 2010, Hard Rock Café has already exposed a restaurant in Vietnam. This restaurant located at 39 Le Duan block, Region 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Hard Rock Café still does not have any restaurant in Hanoi though. The opening of such restaurant will generate both businesses management opportunities and challenges for Hard Rock.
In standard view, Hanoi is a potential market in Vietnam. Even though she does not have as many entertainment site as Ho Chi Minh City, her cultural buildings, beautiful parks and traditional celebrations can usually catch the attention of quite a few tourists. According to the figures of Vietnam Standard Figures Office, in the first 8 month of 2010, Hanoi has received about 6 625 000 tourism visits and expected to have a human population of over 6 610 000 people. With these statistics, Hanoi will be a good choice for Hard Rock Café to open a new restaurant here.
The first concern Hard Rock Café will meet in opening a fresh restaurant in Hanoi might be where to find a good location. There may be many cultural sightseeing places all around the old city; however, both tourism activities and local entertainment activities are busiest in Hoan Kiem district, especially around Hoan Kiem Lake and the old quarters. This region has seen the appearance of many large restaurant brands. KFC has a restaurant at the most beautiful position available, beside Hoan Kiem Lake. BBQ has found a good location in the busy Trang Tien Neighborhood. Lotteria has a so-so but nonetheless sufficient location right on the medial side of Hanoi Train Station. With Hard Rock and roll Café's tradition of positioning its restaurants in visitor locations with high vulnerability rate, the 'platinum position' is without a doubt here. It will not be no problem finding a location large enough to hold a Hard Rock restaurant here though, as this area has a higher density of buildings where all business are packed together in a tiny space. A whole lot negotiation will have to be made and quite a huge sum of money should be invested as the price of land in this field is however highest in the country. There is certainly of course the option of renting a huge part or event a complete floor in a building like Highland Café did with Hanoi tower. However, with its 'noisy' feature of rock and roll music culture, this will not be very natural. Choosing a spot in more distant regions of Hanoi will be easier, but the forfeit of travel and leisure attraction must consist with tons of advert and promotion methods.
For a difficult Rock and roll Café in Hanoi, there won't be the necessity to put too much work in creating a special menu. Hard Rock's menu is often greatly affected by the local elements. Hanoi doesn't really have any special substances while her inhabitants are wanting to have Traditional western food as a change, and so its menu can carefully stick with its traditional bowls of burgers and chickens. Local supply is abundant with cheap prices because Hanoi has many satellite television towns and provinces as her source of supply for poultry, pork and meat meats. However, this OM opportunity also includes a challenge. The above mentioned source of source may be cheap and easy to access, but additionally it is notorious for bad food hygiene and safety. Even though Hanoi administration has given a great deal of food security standards, administration and inspection activities are weak, which results in materials with bad quality floating on the market. To be able to protect its high quality requirements, Hard Rock Café must explore the neighborhood environment to search for trustable suppliers for long-term relationship.
Vietnam's strength in appealing to investment also is based on cheap labor forces. In Hanoi, Hard Rock and roll Café will get all sorts of labor with all types of education background. A couple of people who have only high school education level eager to find jobs. There's also university students seeking for part time jobs to earn some money to support their own studying and living. This kind of labor force is cheap and easy to displace. These employees usually don't possess much need and can concur easily to low bonuses. As a area aspect, a little bonus may be enough to boost their morale greatly. Because of this, Hard Rock and roll Café won't have a hard time in hiring staff and preserving them. However, the true hardship in human being resource management is how to keep this type of personnel true to the "Hard Rock Café value". In Vietnam, the education style is quite not the same as that of Eastern countries. Vietnamese students are trained in a unaggressive environment where personality doesn't have much important as the collective awareness is highly prompted. And in Hanoi, this unaggressive characteristic continues to be very heavy. People in Ho Chi Minh City tend to be more dynamic and adaptable with an increase of open-minded thinking method. But because of its delicate but slow-moving culture, Hanoi's townsmen tend to be unaggressive and rigid with more close-minded thinking method. The idea of "self-motivated", "individualistic" and "creative" attitude may be quite unfamiliar to the employees that Hard Rock and roll Café can hire in Hanoi. As a result, even though the price tag on labor may be low, the price of training will be relatively high.
In Hanoi, the maintenance attempts should not be limited to Hard Rock's special choices of musical items also for the personnel itself. To keep up a high quality standard, the personnel must also be 'taken care of' carefully. The quality of a Vietnamese personnel in the restaurant field tends to deteriorate little by little if the managers don't pay enough attention. One of the main reasons is that except cooks, not many people will consider a position in a restaurant to be the stable foundation with their careers. The situation of Mega Superstar can be taken to see this matter more clearly. Even though Mega Celebrity is a cinema brand, its movie theater groups often come with large junk food stalls, and Hard Rock may as well pull a couple of lessons out of this brand in working with a Vietnamese staff. In their first months of businesses, Mega Superstar quickly won above the heart of the customers with five-star services. Their employees were highly professional with positive behaviour, always ready to answer every question from customers. However as time pass, because of several reasons, the lack of adequate continuously training, the reduced incentives, the insufficient number of personnel, the come-and-go aspect of the work force, the grade of their staff falls, and for me, falls terribly. Slightly searching the internet, we can find quite a lot of grievances from Mega Star customers. Many people, including me myself, skip the old days when we were greeted with smiles from the first steps into the cinema group rather than being motivated crazy with the frame of mind "I-don't-know-but-somebody-may-know" almost whenever we searched for for help. In Hard Rock and roll Café's case, Hard Rock and roll places a great deal of importance in their real human learning resource strategy and their workers also play an indispensable role in applying the 'experience economy' concept the truth is. Extra efforts like more training, better reward will never be unnecessary to be able to keep the high quality of the staff.
In fact, according to the formal website of Hard Rock and roll Café, next to the restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City another Vietnam-based restaurant is prepared to open in 2011 in Hanoi. I'm looking forward to this new beginning and can't wait around to see how much successful will Hard Rock Café be in Hanoi.
