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Restaurant overview
Taco Bell, a fast food restaurants chain of the United States headquartered in Irvine, California, was founded by Glen Bell in 1962 at Downey, California. Taco Bell has its own subsidiary of Yam Brands Inc. The restaurant chain has its outlets all over the world including Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Japan. Taco Bell has earned reputation for serving an array of Tex- Mex cuisine linked foodstuffs including tacos, quesadillas, nachos, burritos, gordita, chalupas, and other specialty items. The restaurants food chain also presents a variety of “Value Menu” for its customers such as Fresco, Cantina Power Menu and Dollar Carvings which are very popular among the Taco Bell customers all around the globe.
Taco Bell restaurant chain has more than 6,500 restaurant outlets all over the world, mostly in America and each year it serves more than 2 billion Taco Bell customers. Most importantly 80 percent of Taco bell restaurants has been owned and run by self-governing franchisees. For an average Taco Bell restaurant it requires nearly 2000- 3000 square feet area and a seating capacity of 100-120 customers. In case of restaurant’s menu a variety of foodstuffs can be found in Taco Bell including Cantina Power Chicken Bowl, Cantina Power Steak Burrito, Fresco, grilled, spicy, crunchy, melty fourth meal and Freezes in case of beverages. All the menu items are specially designed for the customers who have the tendency to eat something out of the box stuffs in case of taste, quality and nutritious value.
Restaurant’s Central Commissary
As one of the leading restaurants chain Taco Bell has a central commissary that has very impressive mass production of industrial taco and presented under a fiberglass assignment bell (Bernstein & Newcomer, 2009). It is very essential for a fast food restaurant to serve the meal at rate of knots. The central commissary of any restaurant chain is a very essential part of business and there is no exception in case of Taco bell. The central commissary of Taco Bell immensely helps the restaurant business to run at a very fast rate by serving to the customers as early as possible. In the central commissary of the restaurant tacos, quesadillas, nachos, burritos, gordita, chalupas are prepared so that it saves precious time to get attention from the clients.
The amount of customers served by Taco bell is not so easy to maintain. So for a new unit the central commissary can prove to be a very integral part of business. The central commissary can certainly allow Taco Bell to set up the business on a new location sooner than later. For a new Taco Bell unit it is important to maintain the cuisine quality and nutritious value at the same level. Here the central commissary can play a critical role for a newly opened outlet. At the same time it is equally important to serve the customers with the same time boundary as it has been done on others. So the benefits of central commissary of Taco Bell to open a new unit are very influential to say the least.
Purchasing Technologies
There are a number of purchasing technologies to be followed for a new Taco Bell outlet to produce best possible service to the customers. At the same time the purchasing technologies will certainly help to develop the purchasing procurement of the unit. Here three purchasing technologies are presented as follows (Durnford, 1997).
Inventory Tracking: Inventory tracking can be considered as an important purchasing technique as it allows tracking the inventory record of a restaurant. Inventory can be an important factor for a restaurant business as it can control the purchasing subsequently. By using inventory tracking management can make perfect decisions about what to buy and how much to buy for a particular day. By tracking inventory cash money can be reserved significantly and the same time purchasing procurement can be improved significantly.
Storage Management: Storage management is also an important purchasing technique. Maintaining a list of storage can allow not having excess stocks of a particular product. Also according to preferences storage can be handled. As per the requirement of storage purchasing can be made. A data of storage deliveries can be maintained in a computerized system to check the storage regularly for a unit of the restaurant business.
Product ordering: In case of ordering products it is very essential to follow a number of things such as inventory and customers’ choice. The management must track the inventory data before ordering new products needed for the restaurant. In such cases central commissary of the restaurant chain can be useful for a new outlet to run swiftly. Basically on basis of customers’ preferences inventory should be maintained and new purchases can be made.
Forces affecting distribution systems
Now there are few forces affecting the distribution systems of the restaurants chain such as economic force, technological force, political force and ethical force (Jang, Prasad & Ratchford, 2012). In case of economic force it is important to know how prices can affect the distribution system on a serious note. In the distribution system there are many payments to be made as per the contracts that can sometimes act negatively affecting the distribution. Whereas technological failures can cause huge disrupt to the distribution system. A restaurant chain like Taco Bell political forces can bind to come and as a result it can also impact of distribution of products. Finally some unwanted ethical forces may affect the system undoubtedly. In order to tackle the affecting forces the management needs to have resources that can deal with the circumstances as soon as possible.
Ways to follow the purchasing process and major objectives
Here are five processes needed to be followed to develop purchasing procurement of a new unit of Taco Bell such as:
Assigning a person in purchasing department.
Establishing the specification of products it is important to determine which products need to be purchased.
Make an estimation of how much to purchase and how often to order.
Selecting purchasing methods on basis of need of the unit.
Selecting proper suppliers.
Below section major purchasing objectives has been explained.
Sustaining continuity of supply: Purchasing process must ensure supply of essential products can be maintained in a constant basis (Steinhart, Mazursky & Kamins, 2013).
Protecting standard quality: The purchasing procurement must protect the high quality so that service standard can be ensured.
Maintaining competitive place of the restaurant business: Purchasing procurement must ensure company’s competitive position in the market can be with held.
Building up substitute resources of supply: If the purchasing process can develop substitute resources of supply it can increase the bargaining power in purchasing.
Protecting company’s reputation: in the purchasing management it must be noted that purchasing agent must keep the company’s reputation in mind of the dealers.
Conclusion
Finally at the very end of the paper it is important to mention that developing purchasing process for a new outlet of taco Bell is very important to run the business as it helps operating the purchasing system efficiently. By following the purchasing methods Taco Bell can successfully run its new outlet with its reputation. The new unit of restaurant chain business of Taco Bell needs to be followed a number of specific points to run a purchasing procurement as per the recommended to bring out the best effect.
References
Bernstein, P., & Newcomer, E. (2009). Principles of transaction processing. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Durnford, T. (1997). Redefiningg Value: For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls. Cornell Hotel And Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 38(3), 74-80. doi:10.1177/001088049703800318
Jang, S., Prasad, A., & Ratchford, B. (2012). How consumers use product reviews in the purchase decision process. Marketing Letters, 23(3), 825-838. doi:10.1007/s11002-012-9191-4
Steinhart, Y., Mazursky, D., & Kamins, M. (2013). The process by which product availability triggers purchase. Marketing Letters, 24(3), 217-228. doi:10.1007/s11002-013-9227-4
