MKS RESTAURANT AND BISTRO

On 7th December 2011, we went to MK Caf and Bistro that is located at Parit Raja and was welcomed by the MK supervisor, Miss Nooraishah Ngadirin. The surrounding was quiet and peaceful gave us excitement to start the interview. Our interviewed was starting with some introduction by Miss Nooraisha because the Manager of MKs Caf and Bistro, Mr. Mohd Khanafi Bin Ali Jannal, was not there yet for another meeting. Miss Nooraishah is being a supervisor of MK Caf and Bistro for two years and she moved to Parit Raja outlet recently when the new MK outlet is open. For Mr. Mohd Khanafi, he has 17 years working experience as manager of MK Sdn Bhd since the first MK outlet was opened in Pontian. Before this, the first MK Caf and Bistro was opened at Pontian before they moved to Batu Pahat. However they had to close that outlet in Pontian a few years later because of business did not run good. Few months after that, they decided to open new outlet in Bukit Pasir at Batu Pahat and operated the MK Caf quite a long time. As the business was growing so well they decided to open new outlet at The Summit, Batu Pahat and few years later they opened another outlet at same place because there was a lot of good feedback from customers. Few years later, they opened new franchise MK Caf and Bistro at Batu Pahat Mall also in Batu Pahat and recently they opened new MK Caf and Bistro at Parit Raja on 24th April 2011. MK was decided to open new outlet in Parit Raja because they see potential in Parit Raja as there is so many development such as there is university and colleges in Parit Raja. They also added that Parit Raja will be expanding in few years time so now it is perfect timing for them to open new outlet at Parit Raja. So until this recently MK Caf and Bistro have 4 branches all in Batu Pahat. MK Caf and Bistro is not a family business but it is fully owned by MK Sdn Bhd. After got some introduction with Miss Nooraishah, Mr Mohd Khanafi, the manager, was coming and we started our interview with him. According to him, MK is focus on responsiveness rather than efficiency. MK has their own factory at Taman Nira, Batu Pahat and it is so near to the four outlets. This is made them easier to deliver foods to all four outlets in a short time. Before the factory in Taman Nira was existed, they had factory in Pontian but they moved to Batu Pahat to become more responsive by located its center near to the outlets. At the MK factory, everything has been prepared earlier. Means by that, the foods are already cooked and well prepared that is why when customers order food, the food will come no later than 5 minutes or so. This made the waiting time of customers decreased and cost of serving customer increased. Moreover, the foods are then transported from their central factory in the early morning to four outlets start at The Summit branch, then BP Mall and at Parit Raja. The quantity of foods delivered will be according to each outlets target sales per day because they do not want any food wasted if they delivered tons of food to the outlets. When the foods arrive to the outlets, the staffs are no need to cook them again as they are already cooks at central factory. They just need to heat the foods before serve them to customers. However, if the food in menu were not enough, the outlet will contact central factory to send that particular foods to that particular outlet but only those foods that finished will be replenished. Rather than using a lot of lorries or vans to the different outlets, they only use one big lorry full with prepared foods to the four outlets once a day by using only one single way from The Summit first, then BP Mall and the last stop is at Parit Raja. If necessary, the central factory will straight away go to the particular outlet to supply food that need to be replenished. MK staff also will check the food quality every 1 or 2 hours to make sure the foods are in good condition. If there is get some damage of the food, they will replenish them as soon as possible.

Figure 1 For supplier part, MK is using outsource raw material to get the food supply such as rice, egg, chicken, meat and many more. However they do not use only one supplier for the particular material like rice. They have back up supplier for rice and other raw materials too. But first of all of course they will compare the price of raw material among the suppliers and choose the best one. If the other suppliers offers a lower price compared to the usual suppliers, they will buy from the supplier with lower price instead but of course with good quality one. Like others restaurants, MK also have short term agreement or contract with suppliers for about 1 month or so to avoid extra money spend if they want to change supplier. This is because some suppliers might have lower price of raw material and if they stick to the only one supplier that gives high prices, they might had to bear for more cost rather than saving them. MK has two types of raw materials suppliers. The first one is the daily supply which is consists of vegetables and meat. The second one is weekly supply which is consists of groceries like rice and onions. From this, we could see that MK has fewer inventories because the demand has become more certain so supply is more predictable. All these while, we had talked about the supply chain inside MK restaurant and the company itself. How about the strategies that MK has been build all over the years to maintain their business? Regarding what Mr. Mohd Khanafi told us, we could see they used both push and pull strategy. With pull strategies, once staff gets the orders from customers, they will serve them with the foods and drinks they ordered. This shows that MK is initiated in response to customers orders. For push strategy, MK operates in anticipation of customers orders. MK was not used much promotion to promote their restaurant either in newspaper or facebook ads. Instead, they used banners and flyers that were distributed around. Most of their customers are the regular one and those customers are the one who indirectly promote the restaurant to outsiders by telling them about the restaurant. As mention before, MK used both pull and push strategies and also processes in their supply chain process. Before the customers orders arrive, it starts at push process that is from procurement process to manufacture process and to replenishment process. This process has been done without the actual demand. The goal of the process cycle is to ensure product availability when the customer order arrives. Hence, MK Restaurant responds to speculated, forecasted demand rather than the actual demand. Next is, customer order cycle in pull process because it reacts to the customer demand. MK restaurant will serve the food and drinks that customers order earlier which is an actual demand of customers.

Pull processes Customer order arrives

Push processes

Figure 2 Furthermore, beside banners and flyers, they also do some promotion by promote new menu for events such as during festive season like Hari Raya and Christmas. The menu is called Test Menu. If the menu is acceptable by customers and customers demand them a lot, that temporary menu will add permanent to the menu list. For example, Nasi Ayam Panggang menu was introduced by MK as Test Menu and they served them for two weeks. Now Nasi Ayam Panggang is already being their permanent menu as that menu has been customers favourite. Besides that, during the festive season also they will prepare extra stock as the number of customers will increase and it makes both demand and supply increase too. The cost that being incurred by MK Caf and Bistro operation are rental, transportations, salary, raw materials and maintenance. As we know, there is only one factory that MK has and the factory is the place where all the supply of raw materials is gathered. They also have fewer inventories in the factory because if they order so many raw materials, it will so costly because raw materials are not last and they might have to throw them away since some of them will rotten. In addition, they also have some challenges to deal with. One of the challenges is the MK staff has to make sure the freezer is functioning properly to ensure the freshness of food. They also have to face competition with other restaurant in Parit Raja area since there are still has other choices such as Chicken Delight and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). Hence, MK needs to maintain the quality they having now by being responsive to customers in order to be competitive. However, MK has its own style and thats make MK different to other restaurants. One of the attractions they have is live acoustic band singing to entertain the customers while having dinners. Besides that, they have cheaper price compare to other restaurants that have same concept in food and it is a common thing when price becomes a significance factor in customer choice. That is why they have regular customers come to their restaurant.