Title: Time taken to complete a meal: a distinctive study of full-service restaurants in India

Authors: D.P. Sudhagar

Addresses: School of Professional Studies, Garden City University, Bangalore-49, India

Abstract: The present study aims to investigate the relationship between the number of people dining in a table and time taken to complete the meal in three different dinner settings in five-star hotel restaurants. For the purpose of the study, two five-star hotels which has a dinner setting with an all-day dining restaurant, speciality restaurant, and a rooftop restaurant were selected for the study. The customers of the selected restaurant were unobtrusively observed by the experts. Age and sex of the restaurant customers were not recorded. A significant positive relationship associated with the number of people dining in a table and the time taken to complete the meal in all the dinner setting. The time taken to complete the meal was longer in the rooftop restaurant and moderate in the speciality restaurant, whereas in all-day dining restaurant was a shorter one. The serving style of the food, ambience of the restaurant had an influence on the time taken to complete the meal. The results will enlighten the restaurant managers to understand the dining time relationship and the associated factors. The study results will help the waiters in planning up the service time of the food and beverage served in the restaurant. This is the first study conducted in the Indian context particularly in the five-star hotel restaurants. The valuable findings will help to formulate and to amend the existing meal serving technique to ensure the promptness of the service and to maximise the revenue generation.

Keywords: five-star hotel; meal duration; all-day dining restaurants; speciality restaurants; rooftop restaurant; group size; ordering type; ambiance; service style.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBFMI.2018.088625

International Journal of Business Forecasting and Marketing Intelligence, 2018 Vol.4 No.1, pp.1 - 12

Received: 08 Jan 2017
Accepted: 02 Jun 2017

Published online: 13 Dec 2017 *

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