Quality Control at Restaurant Franchises

We were horrified to experience quality control at its worst at a local franchised restaurant recently. Six out of seven of us ordered what sounded like the best item on the menu – pepper encrusted seared tuna and wasabi mash for a not-so-cheap R89. Well, the food itself didn’t look as good as the menu description sounded but nevertheless we were hungry and we all know that looks can be deceiving so we dug in. It didn’t take too long before we made the discovery that our mash potato was in fact the camping convenience version – Smash. Now Smash is all very good and well but when the menu says mash potato then for crying in a bucket serve mash potato! We actually confronted the manager about it and he didn’t try and deny anything and didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it either. His reason was that Smash was much easier to make, well DUH but we are not camping buddy!!

This is where many restaurants fail because if they don’t get it right the first time, many people will never go back. Perhaps a couple of nice, friendly people will give them a second chance but this is really the minority. We will never go back and eat there again! We actually wrote a letter of complaint to the head franchisor and they subsequently gave us a R500 voucher for any of their franchised stores but to be totally honest we don’t really want to go back even if it’s free! The head franchise office mentioned that they had strict quality control (really?) and that serving any mash potato substitute was not acceptable. Their response was much appreciated.

Enforcing these quality control measures is difficult though because the head franchisor will often only find out when there has been a complaint and by that time it is usually too late –the customer has been lost to some other restaurant! So if you own a franchise or have just bought a franchise, the lesson is to serve what’s on the menu, don’t take short cuts!