Poor Management

Poor Management

A certain hotel cafe in Singapore serves Taiwan Porridge Buffet Dinner from 6 pm to 1 am nightly.

As the charges are economical, the cafe is usually packed, with advanced bookings of about a fortnight.

Went there last night. Discovered they have a new rule.

Dinner buffet will end at 10 pm and the supper seating is at 10.30 pm. No bookings are allowed for supper. And I was there at 9.20 pm.

So the waiter and the supervisor gave their instructions: If you want to eat dinner, you have to vacate by 10 pm. Otherwise, you will till 10.30 pm, stand outside and queue.

I tried to ask to be seated while I wait for supper, then they said, if you are seated, we will charge you dinner prices, and then supper price again.

Between waiting almost an hour and paying twice, I walked off.

I finished dinner at 10.15 pm and came home.

If a particular buffet were so saleable, the easiest thing to do is to enforce seating times. You can do this by allowing diners two hours (or an hour and a half, depending) to consume their dinner. They can be issued count-down timers or given time chits stating their end time. Of course, they can go beyond the time, but that would incur additional charges, depending on the number of dining sessions used.

In this case, you can have a constant flow for dinner, you can take in a constant stream of customers and you never have to keep people waiting for too long, not knowing when the next table will be freed up.

Isn't this a better idea than to make famished diners waiting for dinner either leave half-way into dinner or starve till the next available seating?

Singapore service standards have a long way to go indeed!