Business Research Method: Restaurant Problem and Hypothesis Report

This report presents a business research proposal addressing a service problem in a restaurant setting. The author, a waiter/waitress manager, identifies the issue of prolonged order delivery times as a key challenge. To address this, the report proposes an associative hypothesis suggesting a correlation between the waiter-to-table ratio and service delays. The research further identifies independent variables such as the number of dishes prepared by a chef per hour, the time taken by waiters to serve tables, the table-waiter ratio, the ratio of used and unused tables, and the average number of customers per hour. The dependent variables include the time taken to fulfill an order and the type of food prepared. The report aims to investigate and offer solutions to improve service efficiency and customer satisfaction. References to supporting research are included.

Running head: BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD PROPOSAL
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Business Research Method Research Proposal
Name
Course
Lecturer
Date of submission

BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD PROPOSAL
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Introduction
As a restaurant waitress and waiter manager, I have been facing some challenges in my
workplace environment which have given me a hard time to cope and be a productive staff
member of our organization. I, therefore, have sought to resolve the problem to change my
current state. I have opted to a research-based method to seek on how to solve the problem by the
formulation of hypotheses among other procedures. (Hicks, 2009)
Problem at the workplace
Through a survey conducted in the past few weeks, involving different stakeholder in our
restaurant, i.e., the staff members that include the waiters and waitress as well as our customer, it
was clearly identified that it takes an average of about 10 minutes to serve all the occupied tables
by our present customers. This means, from the moment a customer makes an order on a certain
food or beverage, the customer has been waiting for the ordered food of beverage delivery for a
period not less than 10 minutes. This is a challenge to be a waiter and waitress manager since;
it’s supposed only to take a maximum period of 3 or 4 minutes to deliver an order to customer’s
tables as per the restaurant set standards
Hypothesis
In this case, the most considered effective hypothesis to help to solve the current situation is the
Associative hypothesis. The choice of the type of hypothesis has been contributed by the fact
that this type of hypothesis gives the relationship that exists between two variables unlike other
types of hypotheses. Considering that, the speculated hypothesis is that if the long-serving time
being experienced in the restaurant is being contributed by an existing unbalanced waiter
table ratio. This means that there may be some delay in delivering customer order within the
expected 3 to 4 minutes due to fewer waiters serving a large population. (Wright, 2006)
To further investigate and come up with a solution to the exiting time challenge and
hypothesized reason to the current situation, there is a need for further investigations by the use
of both in depended and depended variables. Some of these that will help in the problem solving
include the following:
In depended variables
 The mean number of dishes that a single chef prepares within an hour
 The time a waiter takes to move from the kitchen and serving bay to the customer's tables
 The existing ratio between the tables and the waiter
 The ratio of used tables and the unused ones within an hour
 The average number of customers who attend the restaurant within an hour
Depended variable
 The time it takes to take an order from a customer, respond to it by serving the food and
delivering the order to that customer's table.
 The food that is being prepared in that restaurant.

BUSINESS RESEARCH METHOD PROPOSAL
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References
Hicks, T. (2009). Seven Steps for Effective Problem Solving in the Workplace. Mediate : The
Business Journal of Sonoma/Marin., 78.
Wright, D. B. (2006). Causal and associative hypotheses in psychology: Examples from
eyewitness testimony research. Psychology, public policy, 12(2), 190.