It needed a domestic avenue for growth. Alessio had persuaded Porcini’s senior executives to consider opening limited-menu outlets, Porcini’s “Pronto,” to serve interstate highway travelers. Most competitors serving this market were fast-food or low-end outlets. Alessio believed that Pronto could offer a quality difference that travelers would value, but the challenges were substantial. Could Pronto’s profitably provide a limited selection of Porcini’s standard menu at moderate prices without jeopardizing the company’s reputation for excellent food? Could it maintain Porcini’s famously high service standards?
Could it profitably break into a market occupied by established competitors? Food and service quality were only two aspects of the challenge. Porcini’s—a slow-growing, privately held enterprise—would need to roll out its new restaurants quickly in order to establish itself as a powerful brand. With limited capital and access to prime real estate sites, however, that seemed unlikely unless it adopted either a franchising or a syndication model of ownership. The first risked the company’s quality reputation; the second might produce a pace of growth that the company was ill-equipped to handle.
Working with VP of Operations Kurt Jensen, HR director Wanda Halloran, and Chief Chef Mariana Molise, Alessio had sketched out tactics for facilitating Pronto’s quality goals. These included an innovative process for selecting, appraising, and rewarding employees, and the use of wireless technology to eliminate time from customer billing. Meanwhile, Chef Molise had begun formulating menu items for “great Italian cuisine without the wait. ” In Alessio’s mind, all parts of the Pronto concept—service quality, food quality, pricing, branding, location, and ownership form—had to be coordinated and mutually supportive.
The Term Paper on Food and Agricultural challenges
“ Food is our body’s fuel and without fuel it will be shut down” Food is indeed the elixir of life. Food, presently, has become one amongst the most common and imperative needs of a living being along with shelter and clothing. In other words, it has befallen to be one of the most common needs of a living being. As people improved their standard of living, they resort to newer trend in food too. ...
Copyright © 2011 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www. hbsp. harvard. edu. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the permission of Harvard Business School. 4277 | Porcini’s Pronto: “Great Italian cuisine without the wait! ” Company Background Porcini’s, Inc. , had begun in 1969 as a family-owned restaurant in Boston’s North End—a largely Italian-American neighborhood.
Over the next two decades it opened new Porcini’s restaurants in Hyannis, Massachusetts, Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, and Hartford, Connecticut. In 1989, the family (the Ventolas) sold a controlling interest in the enterprise to a group of private investors. The new management expanded to a number of downtown and shopping mall locations in the northeastern United States, competing with equivalently priced full-service restaurant chains. Except during the recession of 2008–2009, Porcini’s had increased revenues and earnings every year. By yearend 2010, Porcini’s, Inc. , operated 23 locations, employed 954 eople (many part-time), and generated $94. 3 million in revenues. Its profit margin had risen to 4% from less than 3% the year before. Even as many competitors were suffering, Porcini’s was doing well. The company’s senior executives attributed Porcini’s success to uniformly high-quality food and service at each location. That quality could be traced to the long experience of individual restaurant managers, supervisory personnel, and chefs, a relatively stable workforce, and to the recipes of Chef Mariana Molise, who had won the coveted James Beard award while running the kitchen at New York’s Catania Grille.
The Term Paper on The Determinants of Service Quality
The determinants of service quality: satisfiers and dissatisfiers Robert Johnston University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Introduction There appear to be five major debates taking place in the service quality area. One debate concerns the similarities and differences between the constructs of service quality and satisfaction (see e. g. Anderson and Sullivan, 1993; Bolton and Drew, 1991; Cronin and ...
On joining the company in 2006, Molise applied her culinary principles to Porcini’s less-pricey menu and personally trained each outlet’s chef in her “flash cooking” techniques. Her signature vitello ala Mariana and pan-seared scallops with mushrooms had become favorites throughout the chain. “Twenty-three restaurants,” one restaurant critic told readers, “and each makes almost everything from scratch, using fresh ingredients and artful presentations. ” And yet the average entree cost only two or three dollars more than those of Olive Garden’s, a near rival.
As management saw it, attention to quality differentiated it from Olive Garden, and from more formulaic competitors such as Unos, Bertucci’s, and Buca di Beppo. Also, each Porcini’s created the ambiance of a unique, family-owned restaurant—in keeping with its North End roots—unlike the “Italian theme park” atmosphere of many competitors. Customers valued the difference and made Porcini’s a powerful regional brand. Table service matched the food in quality; in 2010 a prominent New England restaurant guide gave Porcini’s its “Best Chain Service” award for the fourth consecutive year.
