Motivation / Marketing

Today's class started with an overview of the concept of price per square foot of space -- in NYC and any urban area, each square food is costly, and each square foot must be made to pay. Depending on concept and menu, the kitchen is typically 1/3 of the space, though to minimize the kitchen could lead to a more profitable restaurant. A place like Per Se is over 50% kitchen, which makes one wonder if they actually make money over there, despite the high prices.

The first half of the class was a continuation of the discussion of Equal Employment Opportunity law, which I will not parrot here. We discussed an interesting case of a group of men who sued Hooters for discrimination -- they wanted to be servers, but lacked the boobage. Hooters won -- They proved that being a woman for the position of Hooters Girl is a BFOQ -- Bona Fide Occupational Quality. Being that they had a history of discrimination and it was written into their concept from the beginning, from a time before these laws, they were in effect grandfathered in. They also showed that men had other opportunities at Hooters: bartenders were predominantly male, as was....management! Which seems like another case for discrimination against women, but what do I know. Gender, race, disability and religion are protected classes -- beauty is not. Yep, Hooters can not hire you based on your bra size or if you're just fugly.

Next we reviewed our marketing plans to improve sales at the Juicy Rib, for which we will give presentations tomorrow. I'm working on a silly and hopefully humorous PowerPoint that I'll try to post up on in here, y'all.

To end the class, we got further into the supervision book, about motivation. There are various theories of motivation, including but not limited to:

• Motivation through Fear: Threaten to influence behavior. Good in small doses, but does not work in the long term, like the boy crying wolf. While some people do need an occasional kick in the pants, long term this generates hostility, resentment and revenge.
• Economic Person Theory: People are economic units that are plugged into the business. Self fulfilling prophecy -- if you treat people like the only reason they are there is for the pay check, they'll act it.
• Human Relations Theory: People who are happy will be motivated to work. Hello, benefits and insurance!
• Maslows Hierarchy of Needs: Just like marketing theory, same goes for motivation. From the base of the pyramid to the tip, it's physiological (pay), safety (benefits, pension), social (friends at work), ego (job title) and self-fulfilment (a challenge).
• Theory Y & Motivation: Work is as natural as rest and play, and should be a motivator unto itself.
• Herzberg's Motivation-Hygiene Theory: This says that for a worker to be motivated, first there must be a standard of 'hygiene', or maintenance, in place -- fair company policy, safe working conditions, fairly compensated staff and helpful supervision. If that is in place, then the following motivators can improve productivity: recognition, responsibility, achievement and work itself.