Girirajan an unemployed youngster from Kumbakonam, Tamilnadu, visited Singapore

Analyse the following caselet and answer the questions that follow:

Girirajan an unemployed youngster from Kumbakonam, Tamilnadu, visited Singapore where his school friend worked as software engineer. In Singapore, Girirajan realized that there were a lot of Tamils in "Little India" area. He soon assessed that there were very few restaurants serving authentic Tamil food and decided to set-up a restaurant "Giri’s" in "Little India" serving authentic Tamil food in traditional banana leaf. Customers loved the food. Very soon word spread about the good quality food served in the traditional way. Girirajan expanded operation recruiting 10 employees, all Tamils.

Six months later, Girirajan realized that a lot of Kannadiga and Telugu customers started visiting the restaurant along with their Tamil friends. One day, a Kannadiga customer looking for Devangere Benne Dosa suggested that it may not be a bad idea for Girirajan to serve Karnataka and Andhra cuisines along with Tamil.

With time, the popularity of the restaurant kept soaring. As a result, a lot of Malays, Indonesians and Chinese started visiting the restaurant. His software engineer friend advised to cater to customers of all nationalities. Despite his desire to go grand, Girirajan realized he did not have enough money to get extra space anywhere in Singapore and banks were also reluctant to lend.

One day, while assessing the business, he realized that the restaurant had 90% occupancy rate during peak hours and 40% during the non-peak hours. Both figures were increasing with time.

1. Which of the following options would be most suitable for the growth of the business?

  1. Include Karnataka and Andhra cuisines in the menu.
  2. Include Indonesian and Chinese in the menu.
  3. Keep the focus on Tamil food only with an increased focus on quality improvement.
  4. Expand to include either Karnataka and Andhra cuisines or Indonesian and Chinese cuisines.
  5. Include Karnataka and Andhra cuisines as well as Indonesian and Chinese.

2. Girirajan started analyzing his quarterly customer data to assess growth opportunities. He discovered that 20% of his customers are Kannadigas and many of them were requesting for a few Karnataka dishes. He was not sure if it was a good idea to serve Karnataka food. He wanted to experiment before taking the final call. Which of the following options will be worth experimenting in the next fortnight?

  1. Introduce a Karnataka food day every week to please the Kannadiga customers.
  2. Recruit a few Kannadiga waiters to interact with Kannadiga customers.
  3. Rename a few Tamil dishes as Karnataka dishes.
  4. Serve Karnataka dishes as and when requested by customers without the menu displaying these dishes.
  5. Add a few Karnataka dishes to the cuisine and display these in a separate menu.

3. Giriraja experimented with Karnataka food for a fortnight. He collected sales data for Karnataka food along with the trend of overall sales for the last seven days. Which of the following datasets, IF TRUE, will give Girirajan greater confidence to continue serving Karnataka food? (Figures below represent Karnataka food sales as percentage of total sales.)

  1. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, with total sales trend increasing by 0.4%.
  2. 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, with total sales trend increasing by 0.4%.
  3. 50, 47, 44, 40, 47, 45, 40, with total sales trend remaining same.
  4. 45, 44, 43, 42, 41, 40, 39, with total sales trend remaining same.
  5. 20, 50, 10, 45, 43, 13, 36, with total sales trend coming down.

Answers

  1. C
  2. E
  3. A

As the restaurant had 90% occupancy rate during peak hours and 40% during the non-peak hours and both figures were increasing with time, including new cuisines would not be the most suitable option.

In the third question, option A is best because of increasing trend of Karnataka food sales and increase in total sales trend.