Restaurant Review: Webers

Posted by Melanie in Business, Free, Restaurant Reviews | 2 comments

We were heading to Muskoka on Saturday and we ended up on highway 11 to Gravenhurst.  We stopped by Webers in Orillia for lunch.

We were impressed by the quick greeting we got from a staff member taking our order.  We needed to check some food allergies and they brought out some very useful food sheets that made ordering easy.  They took our order and our money and we waited in line.

As we moved inside, it seemed the line was moving a bit slow.  The line outside continued to grow.  I started to look around for what was holding up the line.

I have been doing some work in Continuous Improvement this year and part of this is identifying the bottleneck or area most in need, that once improved, will help the system function better as a whole.  In this case it was the hamburger grill.  As I watched the whole operation, they were always waiting for the burgers to be done and the guy on the grill didn’t seem to understand that there should always be a full grill of burgers as long as the line was out the door.  I watched as he sometimes would fill half the grill at once and sometimes would have the grill almost empty.  It didn’t matter that they had 2 runners taking money and multiple people at the counter waiting to get the burgers to the customers, the grill guy was the bottleneck.  He didn’t seem to understand his context in the whole or that he was the bottleneck.  When I looked at the size of the grill, it is possible that the grill is always the bottleneck–that wasn’t clear.  It seems like some experiments might be helpful to determine whether the grill is the bottleneck or training for the staff member grilling is the  bottleneck.

I am guessing Webers often has a line out the door.  I imagine the grill is the primary impediment to maximum income.  The longer the line is, the fewer people will stop and stand in line.  They will see the line as they are driving by and keep on going.   Focusing on the grill is at least the first experiment to try.  If the target condition is to never wait for a burger, resolving the grill issue might then cause the next bottleneck to emerge.  Until that first target of never wait for a burger is met, all resources (management, training, etc) should be expended to try to remove the burger bottleneck.  It really doesn’t matter how many people take orders or money because they have no direct impact on the bottleneck.  Orders don’t need to be taken any faster than the burgers can be cooked.

We eventually got our burgers and fries and they were delicious.  The setting was amazing.  Our discussion of efficiency and restaurant bottlenecks was fun.  It was a great lunch.

Webers

Highway 11, Orillia ON

Tel: (705) 325-3696

I give it 5 stars.

Double Cheeseburger