Quality Makes Money?

What is the most important critical success factor (CSF) for a food joint/restaurant/cafe?

Is it the ambience? Location? High human traffic? Pretty waitresses and handsome waiters? Half-dressed and on roller-skates waitresses? Wi-fi availability for your PC?

I believe all the above factors may have their contribution to the success of an eatery. But the most critical would be the Quality of the food!

How do you define the "food quality"? If the customers like (or enjoy) the taste, then it is quality food (according to them ... well, the Customer is King, right?)

I had a sea-food tom yam noodle soup at an eatery a week ago. Although the price was twice that of the normal that I pay at a small stall, it was very tasty and had more prawns and squid.

So what did I do next? I gave the eatery free advertising. Word-of-mouth advertising or marketing. Sent an sms to a good friend about the nice soup. Told the missus to try the delicious soup.

The missus tried the soup last week. She thought it was the best tasting tom yam soup she had ever tasted. She was thinking of asking the chef for the recipe. She was even contemplating being an apprentice to the chef! She was raving about the soup all week.

This week she said she had a craving for the best tasting tom yam soup in the world. The eatery was closed on Saturday, so she postponed her craving to this Sunday.

We drove, some 25 km away, to satisfy her craving. At the first spoonful, she knew something was not right. It did not taste like last week. There was no sweet and sour taste. It tasted bland, and slightly bitter. But because she was very hungry, she still ate some of it. Because it was not tasty, her generosity genes made her give the soup to our son, who loved the soup as well ... last week. One spoonful of the soup, and he immediately rejected it, saying that "it was not tasty". Completely different from last week when he was enjoying every drop of the soup. I tasted the soup. One taste was good enough ... to stop! Last week, the soup bowl was completely empty - the missus had slurped every drop of it. This week it was half full.

Do you think that this particular eatery will have a bright future if such variation in the taste of its food continues? Why does McDonald or Kentucky Fried Chicken prosper? Is it because of their nutritious menu? No (many people consider them as junk food)! But the food (well, there are divided opinions as to whether this term is correct, but be a good-sport ... just play along with me, ok?) taste is great, and it tastes the same - whether this Sunday or next Sunday, whether in Kuala Lumpur or Stockholm.

I remember that in my younger days, I would would also drive 25 km to a sea-food restaurant so that I would eat its speciality - baked crab. So, distance or location is "no object".

Similarly, my friends and I would always stop at a particular roadside eatery (a small stall in the small town of Chukai or Kemaman) every week-end for some rice and hot chicken piece. The chicken was always hot from the wok. The floor was the dusty earth. Seating was a "long chair" made of a piece of plank. There were always customers at any time of the day. Was it because the price of the rice and chicken was cheap? I don't think my friends and I would have stopped every week-end if it was merely because of the price (well, we were not that well-off working for an oil company, but we were not that poor-off either). Was it because of its ambiance? I don't think so. It was because its chicken was tasty - and we wanted to eat! Simple?

The moral of the story? If you are in the food business, ensure that the quality of your food is there. Not once, but consistently! How? Have a proper quality control system in place. It could be as simple as ensuring that all the ingredients (condiments etc) for the soup are available or sufficient every day (not just one Sunday, or only six days a week). Or perhaps the chef himself could taste a small spoonful of the soup, before it leaves the kitchen (known as self-inspection in Quality Management).

Could Food Quality be the critical success factor for an eatery? The difference between losing money ... or making money?

I wish you Success in your undertakings, and Good Health and Wealth to you and your family. Take care!

P.S. To be fair, the tom yam soup eatery did provide excellent value-for-money for two other dishes that were ordered. But still, would you patronise an eatery when one dish out of three disappoints you? That would be a 33% defect rate, in Quality Management terms.

P.P.S. Three weeks after the first taste, the missus ordered tomyam soup noodles again to determine whether the second one was an inadvertent mistake. If the first time the taste was given 10 points (world class), the second time was 2, and this time it is 3 (not to be recommended to her best friend ... to an enemy, maybe). But the good news? I learnt that if your customer does not finish the meal he/she ordered, the amount left is inversely proportional to the food quality (i.e. the more food left-over, the more 'poor quality' is the food!).