Chapter 3 — Quiz

Twenty-five self-check questions. Answer from memory first; the key is collapsed at the bottom.

Multiple choice

1. A restaurant's brand is best described as: - (a) its logo, name, and color palette - (b) the accumulated experience of its concept, as held in a guest's mind - (c) the advertising it runs - (d) the personality of its owner

2. According to §3.1, marketing can fix: - (a) a room that is too loud - (b) a concept no market wanted - (c) a shortage of attention, but not a defect in the room - (d) a check average that is too low

3. Which of the following is not one of the six jobs a name has to do? - (a) spellable by someone who has only heard it - (b) clearable in the classes you will operate in - (c) durable through a second location and a retail product - (d) inexpensive to register

4. In the United States, federal trademark registration is administered by: - (a) the Small Business Administration - (b) the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - (c) the Secretary of State of the state where you operate - (d) the county clerk, through a fictitious business name filing

5. Registering your business name with a state's filing office: - (a) grants you exclusive commercial use of the name nationally - (b) grants you exclusive commercial use within that state - (c) establishes an entity, and says very little about your right to use the name commercially - (d) is the same as a trademark registration

6. Common-law trademark rights arise from: - (a) a federal registration - (b) actual use in commerce in a geographic market, with no registration required - (c) a domain name purchase - (d) a sign permit issued by the city

7. A dining room measuring around 80 dBA at peak is best characterized as: - (a) comfortable — a four-top can talk across the table - (b) quiet enough that a half-full room reads as empty - (c) loud — conversation is one-to-one and menu descriptions do not land - (d) within the range where beverage attachment typically improves

8. Lamping at roughly 2700K reads as: - (a) warm and candle-like - (b) clean and contemporary - (c) commercial, and unflattering to food - (d) daylight-neutral

9. Moving a dining room from 19 square feet per seat to 15 square feet per seat: - (a) adds seats with no other consequence - (b) adds seats, adds noise, and puts the check average the concept was built on at risk - (c) reduces both revenue capacity and noise - (d) has no effect on turn time

10. A faster-turning, louder room produces more revenue: - (a) on every night of the week - (b) only on nights when capacity, rather than demand, is the binding constraint - (c) only at brunch - (d) only when the average check is above $50

11. The annual carrying cost of a restaurant's atmosphere lands mostly in: - (a) cost of goods sold - (b) prime cost - (c) operating categories below prime cost, which are reviewed far less often - (d) occupancy

12. In Figure 3.7, the capital cost of the room is approximately what share of the $620,000 project? - (a) 6% - (b) 19% - (c) 33% - (d) 47%

13. A menu that is expensive to reprint most directly threatens: - (a) beverage attachment - (b) labor cost - (c) food cost, because repricing gets delayed - (d) occupancy cost

14. Brand drift is most closely analogous to: - (a) Chapter 1's undercapitalization - (b) Chapter 1's cost drift - (c) Chapter 1's cash timing - (d) Chapter 2's concept-market fit

15. Playing music in a U.S. dining room from a consumer streaming subscription: - (a) is fully licensed as long as you pay the subscription - (b) generally does not convey the public performance rights a commercial venue requires - (c) requires a license only if there is dancing - (d) is licensed by the restaurant's liquor license

16. The chapter argues that the highest-return touchpoint in the guest journey is: - (a) the lighting package - (b) the first eight seconds at the door, which costs nothing - (c) the plateware - (d) the acoustic treatment

Short answer

17. State the three questions every atmospheric line item must answer in §3.7.

18. A dining floor measures 1,100 square feet. How many seats does it hold at 20 square feet per seat? At 16? What is the difference?

19. A 56-seat dining room has a 240-minute peak seating window and an 85-minute cycle per cover (dining plus reset). At 85% utilization, how many covers can it produce?

20. Why is "warm and lively" not a specification? Rewrite the same intent as four numbers with units.

21. Name three of the five items in the clearance stack, and for each state what it does not establish.

22. A restaurant spends $18,000 on new lighting and its reviews do not change. Give one supply-side explanation and one measurement-side explanation.

23. A restaurant's atmosphere carries $25,160 a year and the plan forecasts 24,700 dinner covers. What is the carry per cover, and why does the chapter insist on expressing it that way?

24. Nine of the sixteen touchpoints in Figure 3.5 cost $0 to fix. Explain the chapter's argument that this makes them the expensive ones.

25. A tabletop package costs $11,500 at opening and runs 40% annual breakage and loss. Compute annual replacement and the five-year total, and state what that total implies about how plateware should be specified.

Answer key — try all twenty-five first **1.** (b) — Brand is the output held in a guest's mind. The logo and palette are *brand identity*, which is an input. **2.** (c) — Marketing is demand-side. A loud room, a bad concept, and a low check are supply-side problems, and advertising into them buys first visits the restaurant cannot convert. **3.** (d) — Registration cost is real but trivial; it is not one of the six jobs. The six are sayable, spellable, findable, clearable, fitting, and durable. **4.** (b) — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which maintains a free public search of registered and pending marks. Restaurant services occupy a specific class; packaged food occupies others. **5.** (c) — An entity filing establishes an entity. Two states can register the same name to different businesses, and neither filing settles trademark rights. **6.** (b) — Use in a geographic market creates common-law rights with no registration at all, which is why a search that finds no registration has not found nothing. **7.** (c) — 78–84 dBA is the "loud" band: one-to-one conversation only, descriptions do not land, wine service gets materially harder. **8.** (a) — Roughly 2400–2700K reads warm and candle-like; 3000K reads contemporary; 4000K and above reads commercial and makes food look grey. **9.** (b) — Density is a trade. You gain seats — worth real money on capacity-constrained nights — and you buy them with noise and with the check average that belonged to the quieter room. **10.** (b) — On a demand-constrained night the seats were going to sit empty regardless, so faster turns convert into nothing while the lower check still costs you. Seat-hours are perishable inventory only when there is demand to perish against. **11.** (c) — Linen, breakage, plants, licensing, uniforms, and lamps sit in operating categories below prime cost, which most operators review monthly at best. That is precisely why atmosphere costs drift unnoticed. **12.** (b) — $116,920 ÷ $620,000 ≈ 18.9%, call it 19 cents of every capital dollar. **13.** (c) — The menu did not raise food cost; it made lowering it inconvenient, which is the same thing running slower. A $900 print run is consumed by roughly six weeks of delayed repricing on a single item. **14.** (b) — Both are made of individually trivial decisions, none of them a scandal, aggregating over months into a material loss that nothing announces. **15.** (b) — Public performance rights are administered by performing rights organizations (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GMR among them). A commercial background-music service typically bundles the licensing — and locks the playlist, which solves a drift problem at the same time. **16.** (b) — A guest who was ignored for twenty seconds at the door will not register $14,000 of acoustic treatment or $18,500 of lighting. **17.** What does it cost to buy (capital, once)? What does it cost to keep (annually, forever — replacement, maintenance, cleaning, licensing, and the labor it consumes every service)? And what does it change — turn time, check average, or labor? **18.** $1{,}100 \div 20 = \mathbf{55}$ seats. $1{,}100 \div 16 = 68.75 \rightarrow \mathbf{68}$ seats. A difference of **13 seats**, which is worth nothing on a demand-constrained night and quite a lot on a full Saturday. **19.** $56 \times 240 = 13{,}440$ seat-minutes; $13{,}440 \div 85 = 158.1$ theoretical covers; $158.1 \times 0.85 = \mathbf{134}$ covers. **20.** Because nobody can build it, maintain it, or tell you whether the room has drifted away from it. A contractor cannot bid an adjective and a Tuesday manager cannot check one. The same intent as a specification: **2700K** color temperature, **63–70 dBA** mid-room at 8:15 on a Saturday, **18–20 square feet** per dining seat, **68–72°F** at every table. **21.** Any three of: *entity name registration* — establishes an entity, not a right to use the name commercially. *Fictitious business name / DBA* — lets you trade under the name, but is a registration rather than a right. *Trademark registration* — grants rights in specified classes, but does not tell you about unregistered users. *Common-law rights* — exist from use alone, so a clean registry search does not mean the name is clear. *The name on your licenses* — issued under its own process and timeline, and in some jurisdictions a later change means re-filing. **22.** *Supply side:* the lighting was not the binding defect — the room may have been failing on sound, temperature, or the greeting, and fixing a non-binding constraint changes nothing. *Measurement side:* reviews are lagging, low-frequency, and self-selected, so a real improvement may take a full quarter to appear, and coding them by theme (Figure 3.6) would detect it long before the star rating moves. **23.** $\$25{,}160 \div 24{,}700 = \mathbf{\$1.02}$ per cover. Per-cover framing is what makes the number arguable: "twenty-five thousand for the room" invites a fight about taste, while "a dollar and two cents a cover" invites the only useful question — does the room return more than a dollar a cover in price tolerance and return visits? **24.** Because the free ones are *behaviors*, and behaviors revert. A $14,000 acoustic ceiling stays fixed once installed. An eight-second greeting has to be re-purchased every shift through hiring, training, staffing, and management attention — which is recurring spend in labor, the half of prime cost that moves this week. **25.** $\$11{,}500 \times 0.40 = \mathbf{\$4{,}600}$ a year; over five years, $\mathbf{\$23{,}000}$ — **twice the original package**. The implication: specify from ranges a manufacturer has carried for a decade, because you are not buying a set of plates, you are buying a ten-year supply relationship, and discontinuation is the failure mode that actually gets you.