Business Capstone Essay: Accommodating Children's Needs In Desirable Restaurant.

Discussion

Describe about the Business Capstone Project for Desirable Restaurant.

While discussing and analyzing the features of a desirable restaurant, people tend to focus too much on the importance of tasty food that is being served, the standard of the quality of the food, great consumer service, and effective business management. However, what the restaurant owners often tend to overlook is the importance of considering the children’s demands and their needs in a restaurant (Kwok and Yu 2013). While a huge number of Indian restaurants are repulsing the consumers, by banning children, or by implementing “No Screaming” edict, it would be a discreet idea to adopt necessary methods that can help the Indian restaurant Spice Market, accommodate the needs of the children. The culture of India is essentially collectivist, and as a result, the families usually prefer to visit the restaurants with their entire family, and hence, introducing a child-friendly atmosphere in the restaurant can help the restaurant gain competitive advantage over the rival organizations (Ferrell and Hartline 2012).        

Offering Food Items Meant for Attracting the Kids:

While marketing the food products in India, the demands of the children should ever be overlooked. The greatest giants in the service industry, such as McDonald’s is engaging the children, as the organization is well-aware of the fact that an organization that can appeal to the children, can easily attract the attention of the parents (Poti et al. 2014). The organization not only offers Happy Meals, meant for the young consumers, but also offers a variety of gift items. The outlets of the company located in India, offers tasty food items, such as Big and Juicy Burger, the very name of which delights a child (Hobin et al. 2016). The mouth-watering food items offered by the company, are also accompanied by catchy names, that can easily draw the attention of the kids. However, at the same time, it should be remembered that a normal child eats two or three times less than an adult, and as such his food-intake capacity should also be taken into consideration. While the adults will be busy enjoying the heavy, full-course meals, such as rice, chicken or noodles, the children may often encounter trouble in digesting over-spicy Indian dishes. As such, light and less spicy meals, tasty meals such as cakes, snack products, delicious cookies can be introduced, to serve the needs of the kids. KFC, for example, has already introduced food items, solely meant for serving the children. The food items offered by the company include Zinger burger, desserts, and tasty sandwiches (Hobin et al. 2014). Similarly, introducing a kids meal, offering fast food, such as cold drinks, small to medium size burgers, chicken nuggets, dessert items, sandwiches, small size pizzas, popcorn and ice-creams (Sliwa et al. 2016).

Offering Food Items Meant for Attracting the Kids

However, one of the chief disadvantages of introducing a kid-friendly meal is that the foot items mainly include junk food that has very few nutritious ingredients. At present, the parents all over the world have become very health-conscious, and hence may prevent their children from consuming junk food that increases their risk of getting affected by gastrointestinal problems, tooth decay and weight gain (Gaena et al. 2012). As such, the food items offered by the restaurant may ot be sufficiently consumed by the consumers. Further, it is to be noted, that international, branded organizations have been able to gain sufficient recognition among the masses, and are very popular among the Indian kids. Consequently, for an Indian restaurant, it might be difficult to gain public recognition for serving international food items, such as pizzas or nuggets. Until and unless the restaurant is able to offer dainty food, it might be difficult for the restaurant to set itself apart from the rival foreign organizations (McEvoy et al. 2012).

According to recent research reports and latest studies, gift marketing is the most efficient method of marketing that helps in building a loyal relation between an organization, and its consumers. In India, the consumers are easily fascinated and tempted to buy and try a product, if it comes with an assurance of providing the consumer with a gift at free of cost (Zamora et al. 2016). As a result, any kind of product, such as products of daily care and personal use, or even the electronic devices, are sold in the Indian market, by adopting the gift-giving strategy. A recent study claims that although the Indian consumers are highly value-conscious, they are also emotional as consumers, and hence gift marketing can easily create a loyal consumer base. Although the kids in India do not have the selling power, and as such they will not play an important role in facilitating the business growth of the restaurant, yet it should be noted that if they are offered a variety of attractive toys and other gift items, they will tend to persuade their parents to visit the same restaurant (Laran and Tsiros 2013). Offering soft toys, small, cheap yet colorful remote-controlled toys, or attractive t-shirts carrying the name and the logo of the company, can easily cheer and delight the children (George 2015).

The gift marketing strategy should not only be seen as a mere marketing plan, but it is to be noted, that it is also a way by which the kids coming to visit the restaurant can be engaged for the time-being (Ball et al. 2015). The kids are likely to get tempted after receiving their gifts, and may not bother the parents, while they enjoy the quality time. However, it should be noted that the gift giving strategy involves a huge expenditure, and the invested amount of money will bring profit only after the restaurant gains sufficient recognition among the masses. Hence, offering gifts during the festive seasons would be a better idea, rather than distributing the same throughout the year (Zellweger et al. 2015).

Offering Gift Items for the Children

As far as the kids are concerned, it is not sufficient to offer tasty food, but the restaurant authority should also ensure a fun, interactive ambience that can easily fascinate the children. Apart from ensuring child-friendly staffs and hygienic food, the restaurant must have interesting table mats, and crayons to keep the children busy. Considering the height of the kids, the restaurant should arrange high level chairs that can help the kids feel valued (Ohri et al. 2015). The ambience not only helps in attracting the attention of the adults, but also helps in the process of tempting the children (Semnani et al. 2016). Decorating the restaurant hall with colorful balloons, painting the pictures of the walls with various popular cartoon characters, preferably the cartoon characters of the Indian cartoon shows, opening up a large open space of greenery before the restaurant, and buying comfortable, fun and soft, furry furniture, meant only for the children, can easily attract the attention of a child. Besides, while speaking of the kids, it should be remembered that often parents come to visit the restaurants with their kids, and they find it difficult to sit on the chairs with the young kids. Hence, choosing the table on the mezzanine floor will be able to help the mothers sit with their kids on the floor with greater comfort (Scourboutakos and L'Abbe 2014). The children are usually attracted by the all-you-can-eat facility offered by the buffet, and thus offering buffet service, will help the kids enjoy their sumptuous meal with great delight and excitement. The management authority of NTUC Food Fare attach great importance to the needs of the kids, and hence offers a small, green playground for the children, that not only keep them engaged, but also help them enjoy their personal time. The authority of the organization claims that in the fast life of today’s world, it is difficult for the children to go out, and enjoy in the park and the garden. Hence, offering an opportunity to the children to go out and bask in the warmth of the greenery (Anzman Frasca et al. 2014).

It should be noted that creating a kid friendly atmosphere can add to the Unique Selling Point of the organization, and yet it should be remembered that re-painting the walls, buying the new furniture and maintenance of the parks and the garden, can involve a huge and recurrent expenditure on part of the restaurant (Kirkpatrick et al. 2014). Secondly, if the restaurant will be emphasizing overmuch on the needs and concern of the children, it may fail to attach importance to the adult consumers. It should be remembered that the buying power lies in the hands of the adult consumers , and hence attaching sufficient importance to the same, is highly important. It is indeed a good idea for a restaurant to offer delicious food for the children, or even to conjure up an ideal environment for the children to enjoy, and yet it would be very indiscreet if the organization tends to overlook the concerns of the consumers, in the process (Henry et al. 2015). The child friendly staff or the child friendly menu may be highly advantageous for the growth of the restaurant, but the restaurant authority must also pay sufficient attention to the choice and the needs of the consumers. Besides, the extent to which the authority will pay attention to the demand of the consumers will be determined by the kind of consumers who visit the restaurant.  In case, the restaurant is visited by a huge number of families, then greater attention is to be paid to the creation of a child-friendly ambience. Otherwise, this might bring a financial loss to the owners of the restaurant (Chen 2014).

Introduction of a Kid-Friendly Atmosphere

Indian parents are highly emotional, when it comes about family ties and bonds. Not many mothers in India are willing to give up the responsibility of their child to a baby sitter while dining out with family. Hence, offering child-care facility to the customer can not only help in gaining the trust of greater number of consumers, but can also help parents to enjoy themselves, while their children are being taken care of, in the same restaurant (Ben-Isahai et al. 2014). Keeping into consideration the family-oriented culture of the country, it is advisable that an Indian restaurant provides child care for the dinner patrons at free of cost, or at least at discounted prices. Usually, the mothers with kids aged between 1 to 5 years, often find it inconvenient and troublesome to eat out, owing to the unavailability of the baby-sitters. While some women complain that they are unable to find a bay-sitter for their kids, a huge number of Indian mothers claim that they fail to trust the nanny available for service. This is high time, that the ordinary restaurant meant for serving the adult consumers start transforming itself into a fine-dining restaurant for kids (Natale et al. 2014). The restaurant can introduce art and craft activities, whereby the small children can be kept engaged in building blocks, or arranging puzzles. Often the children are boisterous, and once their meal is finished, they tend to annoy their parents, who in the process fail to experience quality time.  However, hiring at least four workers, and asking them to take care of the child, play with him, keep him engaged till the parent is ready to leave, not only keeps the parents happy, but they also feel secure as they can see their children being taken care of, under the very same roof. A small part of the restaurant can be utilized as a playroom, and the children can be kept engaged with the help of colorful storybooks, puzzles and videogames, and costumed characters (Freij et al. 2014).

As it has already been discussed, this   kind of huge transformation would undoubtedly imply a huge expense on part of the restaurant authority. The restaurant in order to provide, child care service, must hire new workers, who will be child experts, ready to devote time to the children with utmost care and patience. This would not only imply a huge investment on part of the authority, but would also imply the importance of assuring high quality child care service. Unlike ordinary restaurants, with no child care service, the restaurants with such amenities will be judged by not only the quality of the food items offered, but also by the quality of the child care service offered by the restaurant. Hence, the organization will have to ensure that the implementation of the service takes place in an effective, systematic and organized way (Batada et al. 2012).

Sliwa et al. (2016) stated that for many parents preparing or buying healthy foods for their children is pretty easy but getting the child to actually eat those nutritious food is tough past. It makes mealtimes frustrating. It leads parents to think whether their children are getting enough nutrients from their foods or not. There are some special foods that every child will like. They are discussed below.

Flaxseed 

Flaxseed is a nutty plant food, which is full of Omega-3 fatty acids. Batada et al. (2012) stated that Omega-3 fatty acid is highly required for optimal brain development of children. Restaurant can use ¼ cup of flour in children’s Apple Upside-Down Cake, pancake, bread or muffin recipe to add healthy boost to baked products.

Tofu       

Sliwa et al. (2016) argued that most of the children do not even like to touch Tofu during their launch. However, Tofu can act as a kid-pleaser if it is provided in a creamy base in desserts and smoothies. Batada et al. (2012) mentioned that Tofu can be a good source of iron, calcium and protein. According to Sliwa et al. (2016) all these nutrients are essential for proper growth and bone health development.

Sweet Potato

Sliwa et al. (2016) stated that, it is one of the most notorious and inexpensive vegetables. It is enriched with Vitamin A that keeps the eye healthy and act as an antioxidant for the body. Hence, restaurants can try to develop baked sweet potato for Children as side dish.

Yogurt

Batada et al. (2012) stated that yogurt consists of good bacteria that are also known as probiotics. It can help to keep the stomachs of children healthy. Restaurants should not serve plain yogurt, Greek yogurt to children. Instead they can dress up yogurts with spoonful of honey and sprinking food that will make yogurt more attractive for children. 

Special furniture for Children consists of some specific qualities. They have to be child friendly and the safety of the furniture has to be ensured. Chen (2014) stated that traditional safety procedures and safety signs used in general furniture cannot be used in children’s furniture. It has been found that the safety railings used in children’s furniture have to be three times more than normal furniture (Natale et al. 2013). According to Chen (2014), the railing heights used in children’s furniture should be minimum 16-26 centimeters.  There are some special sets of furniture can be used in restaurant only for children. For example, PHIL is a gymnastic climbing bar can be mounted side of a wall. Chen (2014) stated that, this furniture is like a dream come true for those children who love to climb. There is also furniture named Robby (hanging table) can be place within a restaurant where children can play while enjoying their meals. In addition, restaurants can use back and armrest sets for children. They can be converted from bed to comfortable couch where children can enjoy their meal time comfortably.   Chen (2014) stated that, this furniture can be adjusted with PHIL to increase fun and safety feature.

Conclusion:

It should be noted that Spice Market, as an Indian restaurant operates in an essentially family-oriented culture, and consequently, the organization may flourish if it can successfully manage to accommodate the needs of the children in its day-to-day business operations. Once the kids are engaged, it helps not only the parents to enjoy their food in a hassle-free way, but also keeps the childfree people away from any kind of noise, clamor or disturbance. However, the availability of this facility should be accompanied by the effective promotional strategies, that can attract the attention of the children, and at the same time promote the rather unique, less known concept of kid-friendly restaurant culture.

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