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The purpose of this study is to assess the evolution of restaurant locations in the city of Hamilton over a 12‐year period (1996 to 2008) using GIS techniques. Retail theories such as central place, spatial interaction and principle of minimum differentiation are applied to the restaurant setting.

A database of restaurants was compiled using the NZ yellow pages and contained 981 entries that consisted mainly of location addresses and types of cuisine. This paper focuses on locational patterns only.

A process of geo‐coding and clustering enabled the identification of two clustering periods over 12 years for city restaurants, indicating locational patterns of agglomeration within a short walking distance of the CBD and spill over effects to the north of the city.

The data do not allow statistical analysis of the variables causing the clustering but offer a visual description of the evolution. Explanations are offered on the possible planning regimes, retail provision and population changes that may explain this evolution.

The findings allow identification of land use patterns in Hamilton city and potential areas where new restaurants could be developed. Also, the usefulness of geo‐coded data in identifying clustering effects is highlighted.

Existing location studies relate mostly to site selection criteria in the retailing industry while few have considered the evolution of restaurant locations in a specific geographic area. This paper offers a case study of Hamilton city and highlights the usefulness of GIS techniques in understanding locational patterns.

The extant gastronomy literature has rarely examined a connection between authentic gastronomic experiences and destinations. Specifically, ethnic enclaves, which are unique gastronomic and cultural destinations providing ethnic cuisine and cultural experiences to visitors, have been under-researched. Thus, this study aims to address this knowledge gap.

Using a 2 (history: long vs short) × 2 (location: Central Business District vs rural; main street vs alleyway) × 2 size/ownership type (big vs small; chain vs independent) between-subjects design, two experiments were conducted using a sample of 557 British consumers to test the effect of history, location and size of ethnic enclaves and ethnic restaurants on consumers’ authentic cultural and gastronomic experiences in a UK context.

In Study 1, ethnic enclave’s size affected consumers’ authentic cultural experiences. In Study 2, restaurants’ history and ownership type positively influenced consumers’ authentic gastronomic experiences. Both studies consistently reported the positive relationship between authentic experiences and behavioural intentions.

For ethnic enclaves, the management team may consider expanding the size of ethnic enclaves to increase consumers’ authentic cultural experience. For those ethnic restaurants within the ethnic enclave, any independent or old ethnic restaurants should actively promote both characteristics in their marketing materials to create a feeling of offering authentic gastronomic experiences to customers.

This study identified important ethnic enclave-related factors and ethnic restaurant-related factors forming consumers’ authentic cultural and gastronomic experiences.

Operations management involves utilizing given resources as efficiently as possible to deliver services to customers and meet business goals. Developing efficient business operations requires a hospitality organization to design efficient service environments, as part of its mission. This chapter articulates the key design and planning strategies for the development of a successful hospitality organization. The first section covers the process of location selection, as the most important factor leading to the success of a hospitality organization. The second section discusses strategies for estimating the number of users (service employees and customers) during peak and idle times to justify a costly financial investment. The third section concerns the readers with the topic of layout planning, with the goal of service optimization for a targeted number of customers. The fourth section deliberates workflow conditions, and finally, the last section addresses the ambience and design of the physical hospitality environment, which is crucial for customer evaluation of a hospitality organization as it creates a first impression.

Few studies to date have explored factors contributing to the dining experience from a visitor’s perspective. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether different restaurant attributes are critical in evaluating the restaurant experience in online reviews for visitors (non-local) and local guests.

In all, 100,831 online restaurant reviews retrieved from TripAdvisor are analyzed by using domain-specific aspect-based sentiment detection. The influence of different restaurant features on the overall evaluation of visitors and locals is determined and the most critical factors are identified by the frequency of their online discussion.

There are significant differences between locals and visitors regarding the impact of busyness, payment options, atmosphere and location on the overall star rating. Furthermore, the valence of the factors drinks, facilities, food, busyness and menu found in the reviews also differs significantly between the two types of guests.

The findings of this study help restaurant managers to better understand the different customer needs. Based on the results, they can better decide which restaurant aspects should receive the most attention to ensure that customers are satisfied.

Research on online reviews has largely neglected the role of different visitation motives. This study assumes that the reviews of local and non-local restaurant visitors are based on different factors and separates them to gain a more fine-grained and realistic picture of the relevant factors for each particular group.

Restaurants in South Africa have a notoriously high failure rate. This study aims to identify drivers of restaurant efficiency in South Africa.

A stochastic cost frontier function with three inputs (i.e. labour, food and beverage and materials) and one output as the total revenue is specified and used to estimate restaurant efficiency. An extensive data collection using primary and secondary sources enabled the researcher to gather data from 42 restaurants, for the year 2016, on a variety of parameters.

The findings show that on average restaurants were operating at 77%, with the most and least efficient restaurants operating at a 97 and a 43% efficiency level, respectively. From the study, it is clear that two structural drivers, namely, “location” and “operation type”, and two executional drivers, namely, “restaurant type” and “revenue per available seat hour”, significantly impacted (p < 0.05) on restaurant efficiency in South Africa.

Despite the importance of this study, it is not free of limitations. First, the research was based on efficiency drivers for restaurants situated in a specific South African province. Caution is therefore required when generalising the findings of this study to restaurants in other geographic areas, as a replication of this study in other geographic areas might reveal varying levels of efficiency. Second, the measurement of restaurant efficiency was limited to five efficiency drivers. Even though these efficiency drivers were included in other studies as well, there could be other relevant efficiency drivers that are likely to influence restaurant efficiency.

To improve efficiency, restaurateurs should first concentrate on the drivers that can be changed in the short term (executional drivers) and then later focus on the drivers that require long-term planning (structural drivers). Restaurateurs should understand the use of RevPASH strategies to manipulate demand during peak and off-peak periods. Furthermore, restaurants should be able to change the table mix to optimise table configuration. Changing a restaurant’s table configuration during peak times increases efficiency.

This paper is a first attempt to identify drivers of operational efficiency using a stochastic approach in the restaurant industry in South Africa. As restaurants in South Africa have a high failure rate, the results could assist restaurateurs in managing more successful entities.

Much of the information for this case was taken from interviews by the first and second authors with Cindy and John Buell at Mexicali Fresh, taken directly from the Buell’s Mexicali Fresh Business Plan, and updated information from their blog posted on http://mexigrill.blogspot.com. In addition, background for this case was provided by Stowers (2005).

The purpose of this study is to investigate what cues or surrogate indicators Muslims use to determine whether restaurants are suitable for dining purposes in the absence of the halal logo and to examine if the cues used are different among Muslims from non-Muslim countries as opposed to Muslims from Muslim countries.

Data were collected via semi-structured interviews in one Muslim majority (Malaysia) and one non-Muslim country (the UK). A total of 16 adults participated in the study with an equal representation from both countries.

In the absence of the halal logo, participants relied on extrinsic cues such as the presence of other Muslim-looking customers and service personnel to determine whether a restaurant was deemed safe for dining in. The location of a restaurant was a strong indicator for Muslims in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. In the absence of the halal logo, participants read the menus carefully, queried the service personnel for additional information and selected safer options, such as vegetarian and seafood.

The study used a small sample, and therefore, the findings are tentative.

Given the growth of Muslim population in many non-Muslim countries, it is important for restaurants in non-Muslim countries not to marginalize this customer base. Trust is a key issue and service providers without the halal logo should gain the trust of Muslim customers by training service personnel and equipping them with knowledge of what halal means, developing menus with vegetarian and seafood options, providing detailed information on ingredients and communicating this on their websites and social media sites. They could also consider working with Muslim food and travel bloggers to promote themselves to a Muslim audience. They can develop a more Muslim sympathetic marketing approach and consider using separate cooking and serving utensils to gain trust and patronage of Muslim customers as well as to appeal to a larger market (vegans/vegetarians).

The present study is one of the first studies that concentrates on gaining an insight into how Muslims make decision pertaining to the selection and dining at a restaurant in the absence of the halal logo. A major contribution of the study is the identification of cues that assist Muslims when evaluating and selecting alternative food options in the absence of a halal logo.

The purpose of this paper is to help fast‐food restaurants successfully penetrate foreign markets and then strengthen their foothold in those markets by identifying cross‐cultural differences in the perceived service quality of fast‐food restaurants; and by examining how those differences affect the globalization of fast‐food restaurant franchises based in the USA and Korea.

This paper develops a set of target performance standards that helps fast‐food restaurants monitor their service delivery process, identify relative weaknesses, and take corrective actions for continuous service improvements in cross‐cultural settings using analytic hierarchy process and competitive gap analysis.

This study reveals that a service attribute considered most important to the fast‐food restaurant customers' impressions of service quality differs from one country (USA) to another (Korea). It was found that US customers valued taste of food most whereas Korean customers valued cleanliness most. Also, it was discovered that Koreans considered employee courtesy far more important for their service impression of service quality than Americans, while they were less concerned about food price than their US counterparts. Furthermore, Koreans tended to be more brand‐conscious than Americans and thus considered word‐of‐mouth reputation more seriously than Americans for restaurant selection.

The current study is limited to the evaluation of comparative service quality of fast‐food restaurants in only two countries (namely the USA and Korea). Thus, this study cannot be generalized to the restaurant customers' perceived service quality in other countries or cultural settings. Also, this paper focuses on the performance aspect of benchmarking rather than the strategic aspect of benchmarking.

Saturated with the US restaurant market selling fast‐serving and cheap meals, a growing number of US fast‐food restaurant franchises began to explore foreign markets to increase world‐wide customer bases. However, it is not easy for them to duplicate their domestic success in foreign soils due to different needs, tastes, and preferences of foreign customers. This paper helps the fast‐food restaurant franchises develop viable market penetration and localization strategies and then provides practical guidelines for enhancing their competitiveness in the emerging foreign markets.

This paper is one of the first to compare the service quality of fast‐food franchises in the USA to that of Korean fast‐food restaurant franchises from the cross‐cultural perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships of capacity/layout (CL), design (D), location, (L), hygiene (H), human resource management (HRM), food quality (FQ) and ambiance (A) in operations management strategies (OMS) and the direct and indirect effects of OMS on customer satisfaction (CS) and customer behavioral intentions (CBIs) that might affect income and, therefore, be influential regarding café-restaurants in Sulaimania in Iraq.

Data are collected through a survey questionnaire using a simple random sampling methodology from 254 customers of 46 casual café-restaurants. Methodology includes demographic analysis, factor analysis, structural equation modeling and mediation analysis.

Concerning relationships between structural and infrastructural elements of OMS, only CL and H influence HRM, D and H affect A, and H influences FQ. Regarding relationships between OMS and CS and CBIs, only L, HRM, FQ and A affect CS. Concerning the relationship between CS and CBIs, CS influences CBIs. Finally, given indirect effects of OMS on CS and CBIs, HRM mediates relationships between CL-CS and H-CS; FQ and A mediate relationships between H-CS; and CS mediates relationships between L-CBIs, FQ-CBIs and HRM-CBIs.

The study that treats seven variables in OMS is limited to Sulaimania in Iraq. Thus, the findings cannot be generalized. The study might guide future studies about the way OMS elements forge CS and CBIs in café-restaurants where owners/managers develop credible strategic plans.

The study provides a unique insight into the hospitality industry in Iraq where studies among elements of OMS are few and far between.

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of how a crowd-shipping platform can achieve a critical mass of senders and carrier crowd members to yield network effects that are necessary for the platform to grow and thrive. Specifically, this research studies the participation decisions of both senders and carriers over time and the impacts of the resulting feedback loop on platform growth and performance.

An agent-based model is developed and used to study dynamic behavior and network effects within a simulated crowd-shipping platform. The model allows both carriers and senders to be represented as autonomous, heterogeneous and adaptive agents, whose decisions to participate in the platform impact the participation of other agents over time. Survey data inform the logic governing agent decisions and behaviors.

The feedback loop created by individual sender and carrier agents' participation decisions generates complex and dynamic network effects that are observable at the platform level. Experimental results demonstrate the importance of having sufficient crowd carriers available when the platform is initially launched, as well as ensuring that sender and carrier participation remains balanced as the platform grows over time.

The model successfully demonstrates the power of agent-based modeling (ABM) in analyzing network effects in crowd-shipping systems. However, the model has not yet been fully validated with data from a real-world crowd-shipping platform. Furthermore, the model's geographic scope is limited to a single census tract. Platform behavior will likely differ across geographic regions, with varying demographics and sender/carrier density.

The modeling approach can be used to provide the manager of a volunteer-based crowd-shipping program for food rescue with insights on how to achieve a critical mass of participants, with an appropriate balance between the number of restaurant food donation delivery requests and the number of crowd-shippers available and willing to make those deliveries.

This research can help a crowd-shipping platform for urban food rescue to grow and become self-sustainable, thereby serving more food-insecure people.

The model represents both senders and the carrier crowd as autonomous, heterogeneous and adaptive agents, such that network effects resulting from their interactions can emerge and be observed over time. The model was designed to study a volunteer crowd-shipping platform for food rescue, with participant motivations driven by personal values and social factors, rather than monetary incentives.