MGMT20144 Management and Business Context: Fast Food Restaurant

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of a fast-food restaurant startup named "The Best Meals" in Queensland, Australia. It outlines the company's vision, goals, and strategies for entering the competitive food industry, including market testing, quality management, and affordable pricing. The essay discusses the functional organizational structure best suited for the business and examines the impact of external factors such as political stability, economic conditions, social trends, and technological advancements. Internal forces like corporate management, human resources, and internal pressure are also considered. The analysis identifies societal and economic risks, such as diversity-related conflicts and changing consumer preferences for healthy food, and proposes business practices to mitigate these challenges, including employee engagement, empowerment, and performance-based rewards. The essay also categorizes the personnel and human resources according to their functions—marketing, operations, human resources, and finance—emphasizing the importance of each function in enhancing the restaurant's performance and growth. Ultimately, the essay concludes that effective implementation and management of all functions and processes are crucial for a new business startup to navigate the adverse impacts of external and internal environmental factors.

Running Head: MANAGEMENT 1
Management and Business Context

MANAGEMENT 2
Brief Introduction about Business
Starting and owning a fast food restaurant is a small business idea with different expansion
options. This business has to be one of the challenging businesses to enter into, as food industry
is very competitive (Sanders, 2016). So, there will be need of an effective research before getting
started. For this essay, business start-up that is chosen is a fast food restaurant, named as The
Best Meals. It is a small scale organization, which will be Queensland State of Australia. It will
offer different fast food products, like; burgers, French fries, cookies, drinks and some other
breakfast items. First, the company will operate its business in fast food industry in Australia,
and then it will plan to expand its business to expand the business in its neighboring nations, like;
New Zealand and Indonesia (Business Victoria, 2016).
The vision statement of the company is “to become one of the top food organizations in Australia
with its super tasty and delicious variety of foods”. Becoming a premier fast food organization
does not mean becoming the biggest but it means being the best in terms of customer service,
value and estimated growth. Before launching the business, the company will set goals and
objectives and implement effective strategy to attain them (Fleisher & Bensoussan, 2015). Under
its strategy, the company will open its first outlet as “market tester” that can be become a model
for increasing the number of its fast food outlets in the near future. The major focus of the
company will be on managing the quality and creating strong recognition in the domestic market.
It will execute an effective pricing strategy, which will make the food affordable for the people
of all the classes of people. In addition to this, it will offer variety of foods, which are not
provided by other existing players in the industry. By implementing these strategies, the
company will be able to approach its predetermined vision and mission (De Kluyer, 2010).
Analysis of Organization
The Best Meals will establish this start-up as a company, which will fulfill all the formalities and
requirements to become a company (Okpara, 2007). It will follow a specific organizational
structure to run for managing all the operations and duties of its people. Organizational structure
is a systematic structure that includes implicit and explicit policies, which are designed to define
how the tasks and responsibilities of its organizational staff are allocated and coordinated. For
The Best Meals, functional organizational structure will be best suited for this business start-up
(Hill, 2015). Under this organizational structure, it will categorize the departments according to

MANAGEMENT 3
the functions, like; human resources, marketing, food order system, production etc. The
functional organizational structure for this start-up is given below;
When any organization operates its business, it may face some internal and external forces,
which effects its growth and success in competitive food industry. There are some external and
internal forces, which will be impacting The Best Meals in Australia. External factors include
political, economic, social and technological factors. The political stability will in Australia will
contribute to the growth in food industry. Apart from this, the government has created some
policies related to food that is affecting the consumption of fast food products. By looking this,
the company will introduce a new segment with the healthy and nutritious food (Lam and
Harker, 2015). Furthermore, there are some economic factors, like; the economic situation and
unemployment rate in the country can affect the business operations of The Best Meals
Restaurant. In the near future, the company will have the opportunity to grow, but very slowly
under stable Australian economy. In today’s world, people are becoming very much concerned
about their health and fitness, so they generally avoid eating fast and prefer to consume healthy
food items (Hahn, & Powers. 2010). It will impact the sales of The Best Meals in Australian food
market. In the Australian fast food industry, there are some players, which are already well-
established, so they will pose competition to The Best Meals.

MANAGEMENT 4
Apart from these external forces, some internal forces will affect the growth of The Best Meals
in Australia, such as; corporate management, human resources, internal pressure etc. In the
beginning, it will pay lower salaries to the employees; it can increase the employee turnover
(Wisdom, 2014). Effective corporate market will assist in managing the operations and processes
and organization will be able to make appropriate decisions. It will enhance the restaurant’s
brand image among the population of the country. If the company will be providing limited
menu offerings, then it will have less option to modify their food menu. It will also limit the
customer base for The Best Meals (Lee, Hallak and Sardeshmukh, 2016).
With gaining the opportunities and benefits, the company may face some risks and challenges,
operating the business in fast food industry. One of the major risks at fast food restaurant is the
societal risk, which is related to diversity (Kew & Stredwick, 2017). At The Best Meals, the
human resources will be from different groups and religions, which can develop the situation of
conflict in the workplace environment. Moreover, the lifestyle of people is changing and they
prefer to adapt healthy lifestyle, so they prefer to eat only healthy and nutritious food (Berg,
2010). It will be affecting the business of the organization in the near future. Unemployment is
decreasing in the country that can make the recruitment more difficult and expensive. It drives
the wages to become higher and it can enhance the employee turnover at restaurant. Thus,
societal and economic risks are the major risks, which may impact the fast food business and its
growth in the Australian industry (Posthuma et al, 2013).
To deal with the risks and challenges, The Best Meals will adopt different business practices,
which will enhance and promote the organizational performance. Human resources will play an
important role at The Best Meals, so it is very significant to manage them. For managing and
motivating them effectively, this organization will execute employee engagement (Hill, Jones &
Schilling, 2014). By engaging the employees, the firm will be able to motivate them to work
with zeal and enthusiasm. It will provide great customer satisfaction, improved productivity and
increased profits to the company, which will in turn enhance the overall performance of The Best
Meals. In addition to this, the organization will provide the power to middle level and lower level
employees to involve in decision making process related to their jobs and quality of work
(Riordan, Vandenberg & Richardson, 2005). At The Best Meals, the middle level and lower level

MANAGEMENT 5
employees will be very close to the customer and they will have face to face contact with the
customers.
Due to this, they will be able to understand the needs and demands of customers, thus it can
assist the organization in making decisions regarding its food menus and other facilities at food
outlets. Furthermore, it will offer effective rewards and bonus on the basis of their performance.
The company will implement this business practice, because it may have huge impact on the
performance of employees. Employees will feel more motivated by getting variable pay and
eventually it will increase the productivity of The Best Meals (Chen, and Perez, 2015). It will
conduct training and development program for the fresher candidates, so that they can improve
their skills and abilities towards their work and responsibilities. By using these business
practices, the organization will be able to increase its performance and position in the Australian
fast food industry. These business practices will assist the organization in creating positive
attitudes of employees and establish a better image in the fast food market in the country
(Scarborough, 2015).
To perform the business practices and operations, each and every company needs to categorize
its personnel and human resources according to their functions, like; marketing, human
resources, finance and operations. The above given organizational structure indicates the most
important functions at The Best Meals restaurant, like; marketing, operations, human resources
and finance functions (Needle, 2010). The operation function will include different departments
at The Best Meals, like; production, purchase, supply of raw materials etc. The people, who will
be engaged under this function, will focus on enhancing back office operations and processes. It
will consist of different activities and processes, from converting the raw material into finished
product, which can be served to customers (Riordan, Vandenberg & Richardson, 2005).
For any business start-up, marketing plays a significant role, under which it will promote and
advertise its services. So, The Best Meals will focus on marketing function to promote its
services among Australian population. It will include conducting the market research and
understanding the needs and preferences of customers regarding the food items (Lee, Hallak and
Sardeshmukh, 2016). It will develop the marketing and promotional strategies, which will assist
the organization in approaching its target customers, i.e. food lovers. It will use different media

MANAGEMENT 6
sources, like; online media, events, print media, promotional campaigns etc. which will help the
restaurant in enhancing its brand image.
Human resources are the important part for a restaurant business, like; cook, waiters, cleaner, as
they have direct contact with their potential customers and play an important role in offering
services (Untaru & Ispas, 2013). At The Best Meals, the human resource will include handling
the people and keeping the records regarding their tasks and responsibilities. Furthermore,
finance function will make the organization able to manage the financial resources and allocate
them according to the processes and activities (Price, 2007). The Best Meals will make a budget
for dividing the funds for different organizational activities. All of these functions relate to the
performance and growth of this new start-up, as successful management of these functions will
improve the service delivery and productivity of the organization. Managing and training the
human resources will assist the organization in offering the food services in an effective manner
that will increase the customer base (Scarborough, 2015). Thus, all these important functions will
eventually enhance the performance of The Best Meals.
From the above essay, it can be concluded that a new business start-up should effectively
implement and manage all its functions and processes, so it can deal with the adverse impact of
external and internal environmental factors.

MANAGEMENT 7
References
Berg, H.P. (2010). Risk Management: Procedures, methods and experiences, Risk: Analysis &
Theory, Vol. 1, No. 2 [17], pp. 79 – 95.
Business Victoria. (2016). Setting up a Business, Retrieved from
http://www.business.vic.gov.au/setting-up-a-business/business-structure.
Chen, Y. and Perez, Y. (2015). Business model design: lessons learned from Tesla Motors.
In GERPISA International Conference.
De Kluyer, C. (2010). Fundamentals of Global Strategy: A Business Model Approach, Business
Expert Press, Sterling Forest, U.S.
Fleisher, C. S., & Bensoussan, B. E. (2015). Business and competitive analysis: effective
application of new and classic methods. FT Press.
Hahn, W. & Powers. T.L. (2010). Strategic plan quality, implementation capability, and firm
performance. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 9(1), 63-81.
Hill, C. W., Jones, G. R., & Schilling, M. A. (2014). Strategic management: theory: an
integrated approach. Cengage Learning.
Hill, C.W. (2015). International Business: Competing in the Global Market, McGraw-Hill, New
York, N.Y.
Kew, J. & Stredwick, J. (2017). Business Environment: Managing in a Strategic Context. Kogan
Page Publications.
Lam, W. and Harker, M.J. (2015). Marketing and entrepreneurship: An integrated view from the
entrepreneur’s perspective. International Small Business Journal, 33(3), pp.321-348.
Lee, C., Hallak, R. and Sardeshmukh, S.R. (2016). Innovation, entrepreneurship, and restaurant
performance: a higher-order structural model. Tourism Management, 53, pp.215-228.

MANAGEMENT 8
Needle, D. (2010). Business in Context: An Introduction to Business and Its Environment.
Cengage Learning.
Okpara, F.O. (2007). The Value of Creativity and Innovation in entrepreneurship. Journal of
Asia Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, Vol 3.
Posthuma, R.A., Campion, M.C., Masimova, M. & Campion, M.A. (2013). A High Performance
Work Practices Taxonomy: Integrating the Literature and Directing Future Research,
Journal of Management, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 1184-1220.
Price, A. (2007). Human Resource Management in a Business Context. Cengage Learning.
Riordan, C.M., Vandenberg, R.J., & Richardson, H.A. (2005). Employee Involvement Climate
and Organisational Effectiveness, Human Resource Management, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp.
471–488.
Sanders, E.G. (2016). Starting a Restaurant Business Book: How to Start, Finance and Marketing
an Opening Restaurant. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Scarborough, N.M. (2015). Entrepreneurship and effective small business management. Pearson
Higher Ed.
Untaru, E., & Ispas, A. (2013). Why do young people prefer fast-food restaurants? An
exploratory study: Journal of Tourism, (15), 27-34.
Wisdom, J.P. (2014). Innovation Adoption: A Review of Theories and Constructs. Adm Policy
Ment Health, 41 (4).

MANAGEMENT 9