Chapter 3 — Exercises

Thirty-seven problems, graduated from recall through applied judgment. Items marked with a dagger (†) have worked solutions in the Answers to Selected Exercises appendix — try them before you look.

Most of these have arithmetic in them, and that is deliberate. This is the chapter most likely to be read as a chapter about feelings. Do the calculations by hand or in a spreadsheet; a designer who cannot be argued with in numbers will win every argument, and you will pay for all of them.

A. Recall and definitions (1–8)

1. Define brand and brand identity in one sentence each, and state which one you can directly control.

2. † List the six jobs a name has to do. Which two of them does a name that people cannot spell after hearing it actually fail, and which of the two costs more?

3. Name the five checks in the clearance stack from §3.2. For each, state in one clause what it establishes and what it does not.

4. Define atmosphere (servicescape) and list five of its elements that can be stated as a number rather than an adjective. Give the unit for each.

5. What is a touchpoint? Identify three from Figure 3.5 with a "cost to fix" of $0, and explain why calling them free is misleading.

6. Define design language and state, in one sentence, the specific operating problem it solves in month eighteen.

7. What does this chapter mean by the menu as brand artifact, and how does that differ from what Chapter 10 will cover?

8. † Define brand drift. Name the Chapter 1 concept it is the analogue of, and state the one structural feature the two share.

B. The room, computed (9–15)

9. † A dining floor measures 1,240 square feet. How many seats does it hold at 15, 19, and 23 square feet per seat? What is the seat difference between the tightest and the most generous, and what would that difference be worth in annual revenue at one additional turn a night, two nights a week, on a $48 average check?

10. A 48-seat dining room has a 240-minute peak seating window. Average dining time is 82 minutes and the reset takes 8. At 85% seat utilization, how many covers can it produce on a capacity-constrained night?

11. † Take the restaurant in problem 10. A $16,000 acoustic project is proposed. It is expected to raise average dining time to 92 minutes (reset unchanged) and to raise the average check from $41.00 to $44.50. The room is capacity-constrained on two nights a week; on the other three it serves 54 covers a night regardless.

(a) Compute revenue per constrained night before and after. (b) Compute the weekly net effect. (c) Compute the simple payback period in months.

12. For the project in problem 11, solve for the break-even check lift — the increase in average check at which the project neither gains nor loses. Then state, in one sentence, what an operator should do with that number before signing the contract.

13. † A two-top eight feet from the entrance runs five to eight degrees cold from November through March. A vestibule and air curtain would cost $3,450 installed. Average check is $52. On how many winter service-nights would you have to sell those two seats to pay for the fix? Is that a good deal, and what does your answer depend on?

14. A restaurant burns 30 real candles per service, six services a week, at $0.55 each. Compute the annual cost. A rechargeable LED alternative requires 34 units at $21, replaced every 30 months — compute its annualized cost. What is the annual saving, and what is it as a percentage of $1,900,000 in sales? Then state the argument against making the change.

15. † A tabletop package — plate, glass, flatware — costs $14,200 at opening. Breakage and loss run 38% of the package annually. Compute annual replacement cost, then total replacement spend across a five-year lease term, and express that total as a multiple of the original package. What does that multiple imply about how you should choose plateware?

C. Naming and identity (16–20)

16. Take any restaurant name you like — yours, or one in your neighborhood — and score it against the eight-criterion scorecard in §3.2. Write one sentence for every score below 4 stating what you would do about it.

17. † Four weeks before you order signage, you discover a fifteen-year-old restaurant using your chosen name in a town forty miles away. It has no trademark registration of any kind. Walk through what you would do, in order, and state which of the five clearance checks would have caught this.

18. Cost out a name change in year two, using these figures: signage $14,500; menus, cards, and print $2,200; uniforms $1,900; branded plateware $3,600; domain, email, and listings $800. What is the hard cost? Given that number, what is the maximum you would rationally have spent on a screening search before opening, and why is the true answer higher than the arithmetic suggests?

19. Run the naming funnel in Figure 3.2 for a small-format concept — a truck, a pop-up, or a ghost-kitchen brand. Which gate becomes more important for a small format, and why?

20. Your chosen name scores 2 of 5 on spellability. Write the five-item remedy list, with a cost beside each item, totaling under $500. Then state which single item you would do first if you had only one afternoon.

D. The journey and the menu (21–26)

21. Map a sixteen-step guest journey for a fast-casual restaurant. Which steps from Figure 3.5 disappear entirely, which change owner, and which new ones appear that a full-service journey does not have?

22. † A designed menu costs $1,150 per print run of 400. A protein contract renews and one item's plate cost rises $0.85; the item sells 190 times a week. How many weeks of delay in repricing consume the entire "saving" from not reprinting? What does that tell you about the relationship between print cost and food cost?

23. Write six menu descriptions — two appetizers, three entrées, one dessert — in the design language stated in the Chapter 3 checkpoint: plain, specific, unadorned, naming the ingredient and the fire. Then rewrite two of them badly, in the voice the design language forbids, and say precisely what changed about the restaurant they describe.

24. † A restaurant's menu has been unchanged for fourteen months while three plate costs moved: item A up $0.70 selling 130 a week; item B up $1.45 selling 85 a week; item C up $0.35 selling 240 a week. Compute the weekly contribution lost and the annualized figure. Then name the design decision that most plausibly caused the delay.

25. Adapt the 4:45 walk in §3.6 to a bar-driven concept open until 1:00 a.m. Which stations change, which are added, and what would you check at 10:30 p.m. that you would not check at 4:45?

26. You have $9,000 to spend improving an existing restaurant's atmosphere. Of the last 55 reviews, 18 mention noise (16 negatively), 7 mention lighting (all negatively), and 22 mention slow service (14 negatively). Allocate the $9,000 and justify each allocation in one sentence. State explicitly what you would spend nothing on, and why.

E. Diagnosis and judgment (27–32)

27. A partner proposes $46,000 for a custom plateware line made by a small local pottery. Apply the three questions from §3.7. For question three, name the only two mechanisms by which custom plateware could plausibly move a number, and say how you would test either one.

28. † Below is the atmosphere-attributable portion of a restaurant's other-operating detail, years one and two. Sales were $1,550,000 in year one and $1,720,000 in year two. Find the leaks — there are three, and one of them is a line that went down.

State each line's percentage change, express the total as a percentage of sales in both years, and write the three questions you would ask the general manager on Monday.

29. A consultant proposes a full rebrand — new name, mark, menus, signage, and uniforms — in year two, on the grounds that the restaurant "isn't landing." Evaluate the proposal using this chapter's framework. What evidence would make it right? What is the far more likely diagnosis?

30. † A designer specifies finishes that will put the dining room at approximately 84 dBA at peak, arguing that energy sells and that the concept's competitive set is louder still. Servers and bartenders will work five-hour shifts in it. Argue both sides in a paragraph each, then state what you would actually do and what you would measure to know whether you were right.

31. † Build the schedule to a target. Your guest journey requires a host at the door whenever the room is open. The restaurant serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday, 5:00 to 10:00 p.m., and brunch Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Assume the host is scheduled fifteen minutes before open and fifteen minutes after close.

(a) Build the week's host schedule and total the hours. (b) Cost it at $17.00 an hour fully loaded, weekly and annually. (c) Express the annual figure as a percentage of $1,550,000 in sales. (d) The plan's total labor line is roughly $500,000. What share of it does the host stand consume? (e) A partner proposes cutting the host at 8:30 p.m. and letting servers seat. Name three things from Figure 3.5 that would degrade, and state what you would measure before and after.

32. The chef-partner's design language says "no televisions, not one." The bar partner argues that four screens would produce Saturday afternoon business the room currently does not have. Frame the decision quantitatively: what would each side have to believe, what would you measure, and what is the smallest reversible experiment that would settle it?

F. Writing and the Business Plan (33–37)

33. Write the one-page design language document for your own concept, using the nine-row format in the Chapter 3 checkpoint. Include the row "the one thing we will not do," and make it a real constraint that costs you something.

34. † Write the 200-word description of your intended room that a landlord's leasing agent would read — the one that has to make a warehouse shell sound like a tenant worth giving concessions to. Then write the 200-word version for your contractor. Note every place where the two documents say the same thing in different units, and explain why the second one is the useful document.

35. Business Plan extension. Build your own version of Figure 3.7 for your concept: every atmosphere-attributable line, with a capital cost and an annual carrying cost. Total both. Express the capital as a percentage of your project cost and the carry as a percentage of your planned sales and per cover. Then identify the single line you would cut first if you were $30,000 short, and say what you would lose.

36. † Business Plan extension. The Chapter 3 checkpoint rests on several assumptions that cannot be verified before opening. Identify the three most likely to be wrong. For each, write the specific measurement that would settle it, name the chapter in which you expect the evidence to arrive, and state what you would do if the measurement came back against you.

37. Write the one-page memo introducing the 4:45 walk to a management team that has never done one. It has to survive a manager who thinks it is busywork and a short-staffed Friday. Include what gets checked, who signs, what happens when a defect is found, and — the hard part — what happens when the walk is skipped.