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A Mystery Diner Consumer Service Audit

INTRODUCTION

Lieve exist over 20 years in Amsterdam. One menu and three different styles of

dinning, you can enjoy under one roof. Take your time, choose what suits you best!

You can find here Belgium in Amsterdam, variety of Belgium beer and smoking area.

Lieve team turns passion into good quality of food, at a fair price and in a personal

ambience. The mission of the restaurant is to make guest feel like at home. Lieve is

inspired by Belgium diversity, by carefully selecting our ingredients; they invent and

compose beautiful dishes.

Every season they have a different menu, with homemade products like typical

Belgium pates, pies and parfaits. They use traditional Belgium products such as

parsnip, purslane and chicory back on the menu.

They also embrace the rich culture of Belgium beers. As a reward for their ability to

combine beer and their amazing food, they had the honor to receive “Beer en

Gastronomies Award 2009’’ a national award for restaurants that combine different
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beers with good cuisine. Every time they review their menu to make it an effort to

find the perfect combination.

Now we will present three ambiences, and everyone can find which fits to them

mostly.

Gastronomical:

Exclusive dining

If you are looking forward to a lovely, long evening of dining and enjoying:

Gastronomic is your pick. You can choose your own four or five course dinner. For an

even more custom made dinner, you can choose a wine of beer selection. For a

celebration … The five course Gastronomical ambiance is € 33,- p.p.

Living room:

Feel at home

It’s like the old days. This is the traditional a la carte dinner: starter- main course-

dessert. You can decide to just have a main course or an extensive meal, perhaps even

combined with a w wine or beer selection. It’s your choice, with a lot of

possibilities…. The Living room three course ambiance is €27,-p.p. Of course it is

also possible to just choose a main course.

Belgian Barok

Experience our Belgian cuisine

Belgian Baroque is famous and it sure is at Lieve. The basics are simple@ together

with your table companions you will choose the dishes which are presented on

étagères. You will share, taste and experience all the different dishes. It is very social,
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interactive and most of all very tasty event. Very Burgundi! It’s beautiful to share a

good meal with good people… The three course Belgian Barok ambiance is € 33,-p.p

Consumer auditing tool

For assessing how a restaurant performs towards a casual consumer, a mystery

consumer assessment tool is to be prepared as it can be used to assess criteria of

service in terms of how the excellence of service is? & how the service has been

delivered? Thus, how the tool should be modified as criteria of service is very

significant, because the more fitting & wide-ranging detailed the tool is, the better the

auditing result is, it is also simple to discover problems of service based on

comprehensive contemplation of service.

The main purpose of this tool is to assess the standards of service & how it has been

carried. R. Johnston& G. Clark (2001) suggested that questionnaire is an important

tool in assessing consumer’s satisfaction by containing a extensive variety of service

excellence aspects. Service excellence is defined by Fitzsimmons & Fitzimmons

(2006) as a intricate topic & are clarified by using SERVQUAL model, it has five

dimensions, which are reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy & tangibles.

The feedback form we have developed is based on SERVQUAL. Reliability means

the ability that can make service accurate & reliable. As in the case of restaurants, it

refers to whether food & drinks is able to deliver in exact time & right place.
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Responsiveness is about whether the employees are willing to help consumer &

response speedily when consumer has difficulty. For this aspect, we consider about

the employees eager to give suggestion & advice of food & drinks. Assurance is about

knowledge & self-confidence of employees in their job area. In this aspect,

employee’s knowledge toward its own services, what should be the components &

taste, what should be assessed as well as their service attitude. Empathy means, how

much attention has to be put on consumers. It can be calculated by taking in

consideration, for example, whether employees is aware enough to understand that

when consumer finishes meal or need something. Tangibles is the most easily

measured dimension, it is referred to physical services, tools, employees &

communication resources. The aspects that we regard as for this dimension are

relatively more exterior, like restaurant decor, menu, price of food & drink, site of

restaurant, ambience, & appearance of food etc. We used 5 dimensions & subdivide

into 20 questions to outline a means in order to judge their service fineness.

Before consumer arrives & being served up in restaurant, they actually have an

expectation of how the restaurant is or the standard of overhaul services & food can

be done by attaining information by either word of mouth, commercials or review on

the internet or newspaper (Robert Johnston& Graham Clark, 2001). Obviously, there

are space between consumer’s hope & the fineness of service that is being delivered

to the consumer. Therefore, how the restaurant can fill the space as much it is

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important as it is the way to please its consumer & be pleased about the restaurant,

also, it is the way in which preserves the consumer base & gain earnings. On the other

hand, fail to filling the space is a means of a delivery of poor service fineness & it will

push consumer away from restaurant. The further impact of failure of satisfying

consumer is that the excellence of service of restaurant will be spread by consumer,

who had past experience in the restaurant, & the potential consumer around them may

make negative decision by following their comment, namely, restaurant may lose the

most important bargaining chip in its competitive business environment. Thus, the

awareness of gaps is vital for restaurant surviving in its business area & it is what we

need to know to judge whether each factor is able to meet consumer’s expectation in

order to achieve high consumer satisfaction.

Parasuraman et al (1985) made a “gap model of excellence” & it shows that there are

two gaps between consumer’s expectation & perception of service. The space of gap

determines the level of consumer’s satisfaction. The first gap is between consumer’s

expectation & service delivery, & the second gap is between service delivery &

perception of service, both of which result the level of satisfaction. The detail of

aspects in the two gaps has identified above & there are five level of measuring

criteria in our questionnaire. What the mark will be given is based on how much the

excellence of service is able to meet or exceed our expectation, which influence by

aspects such as price, advertisement, word-of-mouth, & how well it delivers service to

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us.

Assessment & finding

Price of Lieve belgish restaurant

As all people can regarded that price level in restaurants is an essential considerate

factor whether they are going to consume in a restaurant. There is a simple argument

is that higher excellence goods are more expensive to make & therefore sell at a

higher price. Yet more situations show that price is related to different aspects of

excellence in different ways depending on the circumstances. The price in Lieve

belgish restaurant is basically based on its service standard & offering food. The food

of starters has a relatively low price between € 3 & € 6 which are acceptable price

level to the majority of consumers. However, main courses dishes in a restaurant can

reflect that if the price level is suitable or not, because consumers usually are more

likely spend more money on their main food. At the same time, the hospitality

managers focused on some strategies to make profits in main course food sale as well.

The menu main course of Lieve belgish restaurant offered people more than sixteen

dishes for main food & the price is from €7 to €16. All the food is in a moderate price

according to our evaluation, because food price in Lieve belgish restaurant is medium

when we compare with other similar range restaurants.

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Booking tables

As most restaurants are developing in a mature stage today, Lieve belgish restaurant is

convenient for consumers who want to book a table. For the investigation, we booked

a table from Lieve belgish restaurant’s home page on website. Alternatively, Lieve

belgish restaurant also accepts book a table by telephone. That is to say, the restaurant

is not difficult to be recognized & it is easy to communicate between consumers &

Lieve belgish restaurant. In addition, there is vivid red billboard where Lieve belgish

restaurant sites on, which makes the restaurant impressive.

Delivery time

The old saying "Time is money" means that time is a very valuable thing, especially

in hospitality services. The main dimension we evaluated is delivery time in Lieve

belgish restaurant. There is no denying that all people want to get their meal fast when

they have ordered a dish. According to delivery time measurement in Lieve belgish

restaurant, the time of delivery for starter food, drink & wines is only approximate

less than 5 minutes. It is obviously an excellent acceptable time for most of

consumers. However, the time of delivery for main course manifests a little bit longer.

The time-consuming is about 20-30 minutes, even more, it is not rush hour & we are

the only consumers who are consuming in Lieve belgish restaurant. So main food

deliver time is not satisfied to consumer & the referenced time may be 15- 20minutes.

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The experienced employees

We can only evaluate one employee in Lieve belgish restaurant because there are few

people when we were coming. Waiters guided us to a table & give us suggestions

chief feature dishes in the restaurants, so we have a general acknowledge of the food

& consumers are easily to choose their favorable dishes. The food knowledge of

employees is quite good & consumers are not spend time on “menu research”.

Additionally, the menu is designed well which categorized range of food clear, people

can find their ideal food immediately; it is also an important aspect of food service

standard.

Environment of Lieve belgish restaurant

Basically, decoration is designed by classical style & the lay out of the room makes

people comfortable & peaceful. Furthermore, the lighting in the room seems a little

gloom & dark. The entire ambience reflects a sense as if consumers are really staying

in a belgish restaurant. The things in Lieve belgish restaurant manifest Belgish culture

as well, for example traditional tables & chairs, pictures & mirrors on the wall, even

the wearing style of the waiter & employees. Therefore, the ambience in Lieve belgish

restaurant is according to successful restaurant criteria

Other choices

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●Lieve belgish restaurant are more than happy to help consumers with a favorite meal

of theirs that is not listed on our menu. Although it is not an innovation of some

restaurants, it is a good attempting to small size restaurant.

●Lieve belgish restaurant also help consumers calling a taxi service when they are

going to leave, & the service is not for most of restaurants, especially for small

restaurants.

In sum, what Lieve belgish restaurant has done for people is to make the maximum

satisfaction of their consumers. Only if the more service criteria the restaurant

achieved, the more profits they will gain.

Restaurant website analysis

Restaurant depends on the food & service otherwise it will lose consumers.

Marketing is also a vital part of growing restaurant business & website

design is one of the important part of marketing. The menu of Lieve belgish

restaurant on the website has an eye-catching design which represents its

establishment & its character. Indeed, it increases our expectations prior to visit Lieve

belgish restaurant. The first impression is the last impression & it applies to

any restaurant. The menu on the website gives you detailed information

about how much dishes are prepared, how many details are taken care while

preparing food? It’s important when the consumer is reading the menu when
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deciding what to eat or not. There are some advantages that we evaluate from the

menu on the website. Firstly, it has a good layout. It subdivides the menu in a great

way. Moreover, it has professional looking layout, setting the ambience & develop the

image of Lieve belgish restaurant. Secondly, this menu has the right groupings & lists

of menu items such as beverages, desserts, entrees, & appetizers, so that consumers

can clearly differentiate between sections of food being served. It’s a good way in

order to make consumers much easier to read. Thirdly, it also uses descriptions when

highlighting dishes. By using descriptions in menu, it can make consumers to order

something that they had not tried before. Having food description may increase the

number of consumers in this restaurant. However, this menu has some drawbacks.

Firstly, there are too many choices on each page. This will distract consumers.

Secondly, rather than ading images of widely eaten or speciality stuff next to the

description of the menu, it would be nice, if it makes flyers that include daily specials.

Which can be changed whenever new dishes are added to the menu.

(http://www.restaurantlieve.nl/,2011)

Operational issue

In the third part, we show our designed evaluation criteria of the restaurant & describe

details on each point. In this part, the issues may be result in different standards of

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restaurant operation will be discussed. The excellence of the restaurant operation is

determined by many aspects. Generally speaking, there are environmental factor,

service factor, feedback factor & management factor. These aspects play an important

role on the restaurant operation. The following will be described:

1. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR

The environmental factor is external aspects of affecting the restaurant operation

success.

1) Restaurant location

The catering is different with other industry, it is need attract consumers to the

restaurant to consume, rather than delivery the product from production to the

consumer consumption. Therefore, the excellence of location choice has a great

influence on restaurant operation. Choose a good location is a prerequisite for birth &

development of restaurant.

2) The environment

The excellence of the internal environment also affect restaurant business. Because

everyone is willing to has a warm & comfortable dining environment.

 Menu content & information should be clear, & the design of menu cover need to

gives customs a novel sense.

 Cleanliness of the environment requires the restaurant tables & chairs to be neatly

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placed, the restaurant walls, accouterments, floor & table to be clean & dust-free.

The style of employees uniforms must the same with the restaurant. Distinctive

uniforms not only can heighten the ambience, but also play a promotion role. Elegant

design tableware will add fun & artistic beauty on dining.

3. The service factor

The catering industry is one of service industry, service is the lifeblood of the

restaurant. Only those employees with high caliber training can provide good service

to customs. Good waiter should know how to quickly & effectively provide services

to consumers.

1) The excellence comparison

Evaluation of the excellence of food & beverage products, the traditional approach is

from the color, smell, taste, shape, excellence, tableware & nutrition to evaluate. In

the process of the restaurant actual operation, the operator must take seriously the

evaluation of consumers. Because any kind of product only to get consumers

recognition & praise, that is the real good excellence.

2) Comparing the number of product　　

This is talk about the portion of food.

Western dishes mainly consider every consumer can full. Therefore, the portion

design for different consumer groups is an important component.

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 3) The value comparison

Value means the relationship between prices & quantities on dishes, the restaurant

dishes should be value for money. Restaurant food & service should worthiness of the

consumer payment.

3. The feedback factor

The feedback is Consumer evaluation of the restaurant. This directly affects the

interests of restaurant, because consumer’s evaluations direct impact on the number of

consumer. In addition, the employeess can obtain feedback through direct talking with

consumer. In fact, any employeess of restaurant can ask consumers advices after

dining, & underst& the consumer evaluation of restaurant service.

4. The Management Factor

Because there are many operational parts in this kind service industry, what’s more,

strong arbitrary & more manual works. It’s more difficult to manage restaurant, if

appear slightest mistake, it will directly affect the profits of the restaurant.

Ensure excellence of service & product is the core of each manager, the degree of

service excellence reflects the management level of a restaurant.

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Recommendation & conclusion

There are only two aspects need to be improved. The first one is the design of menu.

The price & the environment makes people feel that Lieve belgish restaurant is a

medium to high standard restaurant, however, the design of menu, which is two pieces

of paper combined food & drinks, looks so cheap & has a greatly reduce excellence

on its image. The menu should be designed appropriate to fit its standard, for

example, a old style style book with picture of its food. The website design has the

similar problem; the restaurant gives consumer a image of modern style & high

excellence. However, the decoration of restaurant is old style style, which may lead to

disappointed of consumers & make them felt being cheated. Thus, the website should

be re-designed to fit the style of restaurant.

Totally speaking, Lieve belgish restaurant is a good Belgium restaurant with wide

range of food & drinks, especially wines, & cheerful employees & nice old style style

environment will accompany you through dinner. People who love to have nice wine

& traditional Belgium food, & enjoy old style ambience, the Lieve belgish restaurant

is a right place to go.

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REFERENCE

1. James, A. Fitzsimmons & Mona, J. Fitzimmons (2006). Service Management:

Operations, Strategy, Information Technology, fifth edition. McFraw-

Hill/Irwin, New York

2. http://www.restaurantlieve.nl/ –assessed 03/04/2011

3. Nigel, slack. Stuart,Chambers &Robert, Johnston(2011). Operations

Management,sixth edition Pearson education limited, UK

4. Parasuraman A., Zeithaml V.A&Berry L.L (1985) A Conceptual Model of

Service Excellence & Implications for Future Research. Journal of

marketing,Vol.49, Fall

5. Robert, Johnston & Graham, Clark (2001). Service Operations Management.

Pearson education limited, UK

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Appendix

excellent good Average fair poor

How is the

location of

the

restaurant
how easily to

be recognized
How is the

restaurant

decorated
How is the

ambience
How is the

degree of

clean
The attitude

of employees
How is the

food menu

design
How is the

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range of food
How is the

range of drink
How is the

drink menu

design
How is the

price of food

& drink
The food

knowledge of

employees
Food & drink

were

delivered on

time
Does

employees

present

well(giving

suggestion,

answering

question,

service on

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time)
Are the

employees

helpful
How is the

portion of

food
How does

food look like

How is tasty

of food
Is it

convenient

on payment
Does it have

promotion or

consumer

loyalty action

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