Managing Strategy, Operations, and Partnerships

This project report evaluates the business environment, strategy, and operations of Leon Restaurant in the fast food industry. It analyzes the industry environment, evaluates the strategy and operations of the restaurant, and discusses the vision and sustainability of its operations.

Managing strategy,
operations and
partnerships

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The below project report summarises the business environment of a fast food chain which is
Leon Restaurant. Models such as Porter’s five forces, Pest analysis, VRIN analysis and Value
chain analysis is used to analyse the environment and issues existing in that environment for the
organisation. Strategies and operations of the selected organisation are identified and then
evaluated from which it has been found that this organisation is a sustainable organisation which
make efforts to fulfil its vision to produce healthy and tasty food products.

Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.............................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
Critical evaluation of environment of the industry in which the Leon’s Restaurant operates4
Critically evaluating strategy of Leon’s Restaurant...............................................................5
Critically evaluating operation of Leon’s Restaurant.............................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFRENCES.................................................................................................................................11
APPENDIX....................................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Strategy is defined as high level plan which is used to achieve one or more vision or goal
in the uncertainty situation. Fast food industry is operating in the business environment which
has high influence on the operations and it is important that analyses of same is done on time so
that accordingly actions can be taken on time (Brown and Bessant, 2013). Organisation taken for
this report is Leon Restaurant which is operating in fast food industry. It is founded by John
Vincent, Henry Dimbleby and Allegra McEvedy in 2004. Its headquarter is situated at London
United Kingdoms. The vision of company is to offer healthy and good quality food to customers.
This report aims to do the evaluation of environment, strategy and operations of respective
industry. It will also explain about different issues which impact at different points in firm's
value chain and areas related to potential vulnerability faced by respective restaurant.
MAIN BODY
Critical evaluation of environment of the industry in which the Leon’s Restaurant operates
For a company, it is essential to conduct environmental analysis because it will help them
in developing effective strategies and plans which help in attainment of goal (Hussain, 2011).
There are various method or tools which can be used by company, from which some major are
given below which are used by Leon Restaurant:
PESTLE Analysis
 Political: There is high and strict role of government in the fast food industry. Range of
laws are made in order to maintain and resolve the issue of health and safety of the
customer. This has great impact on the daily operations of Leon Restaurant as it has to
maintain the quality standards set by the government. It has to ensure that whatever
products are used by the production department are fresh and fit for health. It creates an
issue of maintaining the right stock of raw material as excess of same will increase total
cost. (Gallear, Ghobadian and Chen, 2012).
 Economical: Increased spending by consumer has given option to the Leon Restaurant to
bring variety in the menu as it can target different income customers and this way the
overall revenues can be increased.
 Social: Social life or standard of living at United Kingdom is high and it also have huge
population who consume high fast food which provide opportunity for respective

restaurant that it can conduct business successfully by offering variety of food range
according to demand and expectation of customers.
 Technological: The fast food industry in UK is highly based on IT and science (Iossa
and Martimort, 2012). Use of high end technology in processes and systems for
delivering services to customers provides an opportunity to restaurant in gaining
competitive advantage.
Emerging mega trends and identify those that apply to the restaurant trade
There are various emerging trends which a restaurant can adopt in order to attract more
customers and sustain at marketplace (Lop and et.al., 2017). Some of the major emerging trends
which Leon restaurant may adopt are given below:
 In today's time, social media like Instagram and other applications are used for sharing
pictures of dishes and for that restaurants make special dishes as well as cocktails. So by
adopting this trend Leon restaurant will be able to attract youth.
Strength of porters
After doing the detail analysis of porters for fast food industry it is found that strength for
Leon Restaurant is that it has low barging powers of suppliers and also the threat of new entrant
is moderate. It shows that it has many option to choose best supplier for its business which offers
most profitable deal to it. This would help in controlling the overall cost of the business. Apart
from this by fulfilling the expectations of the customers the referred to organisation can run safe
and remain unaffected by the new entries in the industry.
Summarising the industry environment
To attain success in the industry of fast food, the most important element which must be
acquired by an organisation is uniqueness as consumers always wants something to experience
and eat. Organisations in fast food industry must make sure proper health and safety measures
and regularly update their menu which can attract customers (Chemweno, 2012). The future fast
food industry will be far changed as the marketing of these fast food chains will rely upon only
social media sites as the mega trend states that youth tends to highly update their food pictures
on social media platforms.
Critically evaluating strategy of Leon’s Restaurant
Resources

Leon’s Restaurant is a fast food chain which is based in United Kingdom. Not likely to other
famous fast food chains, this restaurant chain believes and is based on serving naturally healthy
food. Resources of this restaurant which helps to effectively operate are technology and
employees.
Capabilities
Unlike resources, capabilities are the most strategically important basis from which an
organisation is able to acquire competitive advantage over their rivals. Leon Restaurant’s
capabilities which assist them in effectively competing are economies of scale and ability to
serve healthy meals (Njoroge, 2013).
VRIN Analysis
This is a framework which helps in analysing the value and importance of capabilities and
resources of an organisation. VRIN analysis includes four elements which are Valuable, rare,
inimitable and non substitutable. All these elements help in judging the value of resource and
capabilities in order to determine their advantage over winning competitive edge. VRIN analysis
of Leon’s Restaurant is conducted below:
Valuable Rare Inimitable Non
substitutable
Economies of
scale
✓
Ability to
serve healthy
meals
✓ ✓
Technology ✓ ✓ ✓
Employees ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Valuable:
 Economies of scale – This capability of Leon Restaurant is valuable for them as it allows
them to produce similar food products in bulk which saves their costs and time.
 Ability to serve healthy meals – This capability helps in maintaining the quality of food
in the eyes of consumers due to which it is considered valuable.

 Technology – Leon Restaurant uses advanced technology which helps in them in
producing oil and cholesterol free food because of which this resource is valuable for the
organisation.
 Employees – These are the human force of the organisation which conducts all the
operations and activities at every level, due to which this resource is most valuable for
Leon Restaurant.
Rare:
 Ability to serve healthy meals – Leon Restaurant operates in fast food industry, where
most organisations believes in serving tasty but unhealthy food. This capability of Leon
Restaurant is rare among the competitors (Basrawi, Yamada and Obara,2014) .
 Technology – Technology used by Leon Restaurant is expensive and requires skills due
to which only few fast food chains uses this technology which makes it rare.
 Employees – Workforce of Leon Restaurant is well trained and skilled due to which they
are rare.
Inimitable:
 Technology – Technological machineries and equipment used by Leon Restaurant are
customised according to the requirements of this restaurant which makes it inimitable as
no other rival can copy this equipment.
 Employees – Staff of Leon Restaurant is trained by highly professional individuals and
the skills developed by these employees cannot be imitable by any organisation.
Non substitutable:
 Employees – Workforce of Leon Restaurant is highly suitable for operations of this
organisation due to which skills, knowledge and suitability of these employees cannot be
substituted by any other individual or machineries.
Above analysis effectively evaluates resources and capabilities of Leon Restaurant which
helps them to attain competitive advantage.
Comparing sustainable resources and capabilities with the industry success factors
including consideration of the impact of megatrends
The capabilities and resources of this organisation are different from the capabilities and
resources of industry. Megatrends of fast food industry impact this organisation as social media
should be considered as key aspect for marketing. But the selected organisation focuses on

developing healthy fast food and not marketing through social media which results in deviation
in capabilities of the industry and the capabilities of the restaurant.
Critically evaluating operation of Leon’s Restaurant
Vision of Leon Restaurant
Vision of this restaurant is to serve food that both tastes good and does you good. The
vision is based on creating and develop a fast food chain which can serve naturally fast food.
In order to fulfil this vision, Leon restaurant undertakes various operations which are
assessed below by Value chain analysis.
Value chain analysis of Leon Restaurant
Operations of Leon Restaurant includes producing and serving healthy fast food. This
operation involves various activities. These operations are classified as primary and supporting
activities.
Primary activities of this restaurant includes logistics, operations, marketing and service.
In logistics, Leon procures raw material such as spices, sauces, vegetables, breads and fluids
from well recognised suppliers which further assist in next activity that is operation. In
operations, staff of Leon cooks and assembles all the food items in their menu as per
requirements (Chinomona and Dubihlela, 2014). Another operation of Leon Restaurant which
helps them to deliver their vision is marketing sales. This restaurant makes efforts by which their
brand name is marketed and customers are attracted towards their restaurants. These operations
include advertisements using television ads, billboards, social media marketing etc. by which
sales of this fast food chain increases. Service is the most important primary operation of this
restaurant in which employees are first trained on how to serve their customers.
Supporting operations of Leon Restaurant includes maintaining the infrastructure of all
the restaurants of this chain. Management of this organisation make sure that their restaurants
has everything which can be needed by their consumers. Human resource management is another
supporting activity which does not produces the goods but manages the people who produces the
food products. Technology development and procurement are other supporting activities of Leon
Restaurant which allow the management of the firm to develop and procure technology of
equipment and machineries of this restaurant.

(Source: Value chain analysis, 2018)
Operation supports the delivery of the vision
Vision of Leon Restaurant includes serving health fast food for which variety of operations
are required to conducted which are discussed above. In order to develop or cook healthy food, it
is important to have cooking equipment which absorbs less oil and bake the food products
without removing its nutritional values (van Hillegersberg, Moonen and Dalmolen, 2012). The
operations of Leon Restaurant include technology development and procurement by which
management of this restaurant effectively develop and procure equipment which are suitable to
cook healthy food. Other operations such as marketing and service ensures that those healthy
products are in reach of their consumers. By this connection of operation and vision, it can be
said that operations of Leon Restaurant support effective delivery of their vision.
Sustainability extend of the operations
Operations of Leon Restaurant are highly sustainable as suitability strategy of this
restaurant is developed by an environmental group. This strategy has made various changes by
which operations of this restaurant became highly sustainable. Menu of this restaurant has
increased number of plants, energy which is used to cook food products is a renewable energy

and use of plastic is also reduced in this organisation. All these measures in operations of Leon
Restaurant ensures that operations of this organisation are highly sustainable (Amachree and
et.al., 2017).
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been found that every organisation has various environmental
issues which must be first identified and then controlled by them by using various management
models and theories. The purpose of this report was to analyse the internal and external
environment of Leon Restaurant along with evaluating their strategies and operations. This
purpose is fulfilled above by using models of Porter’s five forces, PEST analysis, VRIN model
and Value chain analysis. Findings from the above report are summarised, from which it can be
stated that Leon Restaurant works in a competitive environment for which they have developed
capabilities of economies of scale and ability of producing healthy food by which a competitive
edge in fast food industry of UK is achieved. It has been also found from the above report, that
there are various areas in which this organisation is vulnerable. These areas are identified as,
buyers power is high as there are ample number of competitors in market and there is high
competitive rivalry.

REFRENCES
Books and journals
Amachree, T.T. and et.al., 2017. Inventory Management Strategies For Productivity
Improvement In Equipment Manufacturing Firms. International Journal Of Scientific &
Technology Research. 6(08).
Basrawi, F., Yamada, T. and Obara, S.Y., 2014. Economic and environmental based operation
strategies of a hybrid photovoltaic–microgas turbine trigeneration system. Applied
Energy, 121, pp.174-183.
Brown, S. and Bessant, J., 2013. Strategic operations management. Routledge.
Chemweno, P., 2012. Strategic management process and SWOT analysis for adoption of
maintenance strategies for wind turbine gearbox.
Chinomona, R. and Dubihlela, D., 2014. Does customer satisfaction lead to customer trust,
loyalty and repurchase intention of local store brands? The case of Gauteng Province of
South Africa. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 5(9), p.23.
Gallear, D., Ghobadian, A. and Chen, W., 2012. Corporate responsibility, supply chain
partnership and performance: An empirical examination. International Journal of
Production Economics. 140(1). pp.83-91.
Hussain, M., 2011. Modelling the enablers and alternatives for sustainable supply chain
management (Doctoral dissertation, Concordia University).
Iossa, E. and Martimort, D., 2012. Risk allocation and the costs and benefits of public‐‐private
partnerships. The RAND Journal of Economics. 43(3). pp.442-474.
Lop, N.S.B. and et.al., 2017. Factors Affecting the Operational Performance of Public Private
Partnership (PPP) Projects: Cases in Malaysia. International Journal of Academic
Research in Business and Social Sciences, 7(11), pp.1394-1409.
Njoroge, S.G., 2013. Operations stratergies in Kenya’s real estate sector. Unpublished MBA
Project. Nairobi: University of Nairobi.
van Hillegersberg, J., Moonen, H. and Dalmolen, S., 2012, March. Coordination as a service to
enable agile business networks. In International Workshop on Global Sourcing of
Information Technology and Business Processes (pp. 164-174). Springer, Berlin,
Heidelberg.
Online
Value chain analysis. 2018. [Online]. Available through: <http://higherstudy.org/value-chain-
analysis-in-strategic-management/>
Political and Economic Analysis of the Food Industry. 2019. [Online] Available through<
https://pestleanalysis.com/pestle-analysis-of-the-food-industry/ >.
Social and Technology Analysis of the Food Industry. 2019. [Online] Available through<
https://pestleanalysis.com/pest-analysis-example-for-the-food-industry/>.
Associated British Foods Plc Porter Five Forces Analysis. 2019. [Online] Available through <
http://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/porter5/lse/196-associated-british-foods-
plc.php>.

APPENDIX
PEST Analysis
Factors Citations
Political: Food industry is a huge industry in itself and as it is
associated with eth health of general public there is high
interference of the political factors. There are wide regulations that
re imposed by the government which are related to the maintenance
of hygiene in the commercial kitchen, minimum standard
maintenance in the food products. This makes it very complex to
operate a restaurant as there are chances of failure in the fulfilment
of all the set laws and in case of failure strict actions are taken
against the guilty. This increases the pressure on Leon's Restaurant
management to keep a close monitoring on its operations. It has to
update its staff with all the modifications that are made in the
industry so that they are adopted in the firm on time.
Political and Economic
Analysis of the Food
Industry, 2019.
Economical: with the increase in standard of living trend of
visiting restaurants among the different class people is also raising.
This is a positive shift or the fast food industry. the overall sales
have raised up because people are now having more disposable
income. Apart from this with the increase in the knowledge of
market now the restaurant owners know how to attract the
customers by giving heavy discounts and offers. Apart from this as
there are many option in the market for the labours of restaurants it
has resulted into high rise in the cost of labour which has greatly
affected the total revenues of the restaurant. This has brought a
great change in the overall treads in the food industry.
Political and Economic
Analysis of the Food
Industry, 2019.
Social: Today the market is more of customer oriented and not
what the producer wants. People becoming more health cautions
and give a deep attention on how the food is being prepared and
Social and Technology
Analysis of the Food
Industry, 2019.

using what material. Organic food is more demanded and has
become a part of lifestyle. People do appreciate those restaurants
who does the use of environment friendly resources and criticize
those who do not fulfil their social responsibilities. This again put
pressure on the fast food industry to fulfil the demand of customer
accordingly.
Technological – Applications are used in various operation of the
food joints like in production packaging storing of food products.
With the enhancement in the demand for this sector there is
continuous improvement in the tool and techniques of kitchen
material and other. It has facilitated the restaurants with speed but
has also added much cost to same. It is important for Leon's
Restaurant to remain updated with all the new technology that is
launched into market so that the competitive advantage can be
achieved. Apart from this automation of many process like billing
and ordering is done which needs proper training to the employees.
it has added more burden to the management as now they have to
make sure that they are adopting these changes on time else they
can be substituted by other brands.
Social and Technology
Analysis of the Food
Industry, 2019.

Porter's five Forces Citations
Bargaining power of supplier (Low): There is huge demand of
raw material in the fast food industry and that too on daily basis.
This has attracted many people to become a part of supplying
sector for the fast food business hence the power is distributed
among many. This shows that the bargaining power of supplier is
low in this business as they have to negotiate as per the demand of
the clients.
Associated British Foods
Plc Porter Five Forces
Analysis, 2019.
Bargaining power of buyer (High): Buyer is the king of market.
according to the current trend everyday a new person is coming up
a food business in the market although the scale of operation does
vary. It gives immense power to customers to choose from the
various options which are available to them. comparison is done by
them on different aspects like on the basis of quality taste cost etc.
and then they take the most favourable decision for them. it shows
that the barraging power of buyer is high and fast food industry
work according to the customers.
Associated British Foods
Plc Porter Five Forces
Analysis, 2019.
Rivalry among industry (High): As discussed above there are
number of business operating under the fast food industry. this
makes the competition among them tough as any change made by
one unit is adopted by the other in no time if it is profitable.
Almost similar products are offered by all the restaurants and this
makes rivalry for Leon's Restaurant very high. it has to remain
updated with the trends of other food joints too so that it does not
miss out on any opportunity in the market.
Associated British Foods
Plc Porter Five Forces
Analysis, 2019.
Threat of new entrants (moderate): This is another factor which
has mixed results. The threat of new entrant is considered low and
high both because as it offers great chance of success many people
are attracted towards same but the establishment cost of restaurant
is high which restricts the entry of new candidate. It depends on the
Associated British Foods
Plc Porter Five Forces
Analysis, 2019.

scale at which the food joint is brought into the market as very big
brand do not affect the business of small restaurants much because
their target customer is unaffected by the new entry. Leon's
Restaurant is operating at a medium scale and attracts a mix crowd
that attracts different class people. Threat of new entry is moderate
for same as any new restaurant coming with the same concept can
affect to its revenue to a great extent.
Threat of substitutes (high): As the food industry offers
maximum scope of profit to the entrepreneur more and more
people attracted towards this sector. Depending upon the budget of
an individual a new fast food centre is opened every day which
increases the threat of being substituted for the establish business.
It shows that threat of substitute is high in the fast food industry
and it is crucial for Leon's Restaurant to maintain the standards and
quality as any error or small mistake can bring it out from the
customers list of preferences.
Associated British Foods
Plc Porter Five Forces
Analysis, 2019.