Market Segmentation / Supervision

OK, OK, I'm bad -- I kind of dozed off during a lot of today's class. The subject matter was actually pretty interesting, it's just that I've been burning both ends of the candle, at one end is helping manage a soon-to-be-opened restaurant, the other end is a wife in the 3rd term with our first child. So here is what I can recall...it's all a bit of a dream...

We shot out of the gate with analysing a case study of market segmentation for a fictional restaurant named the Juicy Rib. Based on census data and in house polls, we extrapolated what age groups we were doing well in, which were underrepresented, and based on projections who we'd want to focus on to stay profitable in the future. By looking at a year of sales of what menu items sold the most and least at what times, overlaid by the nearby sources of customers, told a lot about what could be done to increase sales, what didn't need pushing, etc.

The second part of the class was dedicated to outlining some major theories of management. Scientific Management is breaking it down into rigid structures, demanding obedience to the machine, and generally juicing the worker out of every cent of productivity. Hello, McDonalds and most fast food! Boring drones, they.

Human Relations Theory says that you make the worker happy, you get them to produce. Hello, Google! Hello, Microsoft!

Participative Management has the worker participate in designing the systems that they will use to complete their tasks, which usually gives the worker more interest and satisfaction (and more productivity) in their job. The manager who solicits advice from their workers AND actually acts on it, hello!

Richard described Humanistic Management as a melange, particularly in a restaurant. In the kitchen, a fascistic Scientific method might be best, but if the servers are going to be the first line on the ground giving feedback on what the customers want and say, a participative method might be more effective. Because you don't want the line cook giving his own funk to the chef's dishes, and you don't want a server acting like a robot!

I haven't done the readings, haven't had time, but hopefully this weekend I'll have time and expound here on the juicier details.