Light & Dark

I wonder if the chess.com community can help me out.? I’m considering opening a Chicken Diner (possibly to be called Light & Dark Birds). I have a few possible food scenarios in mind, but I can’t quite get my head around which one would be best.

Scenario A: Offer 2 slices of white (breast) meat plus 3 pieces of dark (leg) meat to every customer. A customer doesn’t have to take both, but he can’t have extra of the other if he declines one colour.

Scenario B:  Offer white meat at a premium price of say 40 pence / 1 ounce slice and dark meat at 20 pence / ounce. Customers can have as much of either (or both) as they choose to pay for.

Scenario C: Set out the portions of white and dark meat (separately) and let customers help themselves to either a light portion or a dark portion.

Scenario D: Randomly allocate customers either a light portion or a dark portion.

My main concerns are:

1)    running out of light meat and being left with surplus dark meat.

2)    clients soliciting extra light meat in place of undesired dark meat.

3)    customer perception of inequitable distribution.

Has anyone experience of handling similar situations? Can you offer me any advice?

I think I'd be concerned if, for example, some customers exclusively chose white meat all the time, that this burden would be borne by the remaining customers who would only be left with dark meat to choose from.  I think fundamentally this could lead to an inequitable distribution which would be unfair to those who, while perhaps largely indifferent, do like to have a little variety.

Perhaps simply forcing customers to take an equal amount of light and dark meat is the optimal solution, that way everyone will be able to have variety and no-one will find their preferred colour unavailable.  You might make exceptions for those that come in with friends, in which case one order could be dark meat only provided the friend's order is light meat only.

If you do go this route, I'd suggest setting this policy before you open the diner, though, as being forced to do it after setting a precedent of choice (however unfair the result of providing that flexibility) will most certainly lead to all sorts of complaints by those who mistakenly feel something that was their right has effectively been revoked.

Since there are many kinds of diffrent customers we can expect that thay also will have difrent disires of how they want to be aproached.

I would gues that some would prefer to have a preset option like Scenario A. On the other hand there are also those who like to be specific of what they order so they would prefer to be able to chose exactly what they need.

So the best would probobly be to chose  a combination if you have the posibility to do that. That is to have some set meals of Scenario A type but also offer your customers to be able to pay per piece of chicken they buy.

In that case you would make both types of customers happy.

I suppose Scenario B wwould work the best. However, I am no judge on this matter, I much prefer dark meat. I  do not understand the yuppie obssession with chicken breast in endless forms and variations. White meat is dry and tasteless; dark meat is juicy and flavorful.

About the problems of being out of meat:

I think that is a problem at the startup when you dont yet know which customers will visit your establishment. With time I guess that if you note statistics of what is sold and also during wich time of year and event you sell your food. This will give you a good estimate of how much is consumed and need to be replaced.

But you are right that it can be tricky to know at the beginning.

This sounds attractive. However, I then incur overheads in offering multiple options, extra staff training, more complex pricing, etc.

I like the new option in one such restaurant of being able to watch other people eat. But I'd really like it if you could choose to watch from the perspective of the people who eat the dark meat, as at the moment the viewing booths only overlook the white meat eaters. I find this annoying.

I believe that the main difficulty to make your busines succesfull is to learn to know your customer. That means that you have to take chanses and make qualified guesses at the begining of what is the right consept to chose from. If you only tro to note what happens during the time you are working with your ´business Im sure you would be able to do the changes which both make your customers to visit your establishment but also use the right statistics to be able to order exactly what your business need to function.

In the end by knowing your customers and the costs which comes with having a busines you will also be able to use the same information to make your busines cost effective.

Sounds a little voyeuristic! Do you think I would be able to charge for 'viewing tables' even if the customers didn't order anything?

Im sure there are those who whould pay for that kind of kink but I dont believe you will be able to make your business work if you are only depending of this service lol

That's interesting. However, if the majority thought like you, I would have the opposite problem ... of potentially running out of dark meat.

Would you consider accepting a job as manager?

I dont agree that you would have a problem. As long as you bey in to your busines the amount of dark or white meat consumed then the only problem would be how to dispose of the proffit from your succesful business.

Having worked in the restaurant industry, I know this quandary well. In an effort to use dark meat and light meat equally, one often serves both. However, many more people seem to have preferences for light meat than for dark.

We always combated this problem by:

1. Honoring requests for whatever color meat we had available. (Oddly enough, nobody ever wanted the slightly green-ish, aged chicken.) The customer is always right (even when the customer is an idiot). I would strongly caution against limiting customer choice with arbitrary rules about what can and cannot be ordered, especially if there is another restaurant nearby (and isn't there always?) that allows the customer to order what they want, how they want it.

2. Running a special on dark meat when we had surplus.

3. Using any extra dark meat in soups and casseroles.

Good luck in your venture!

I was thinking of buying whole chickens and preparing the meat in-house, in which case the proportions of light and dark meat would be fixed; but maybe that's too inflexible?

Thanks for the tips, pleasant_business. I felt sure there would be expertise and goodwill to resolve a dilemma like this amongst chess.com'ers.

If not this, what what about the other restaurants that get stuck with the dark meat surplus you'd leave in the market?  It is ultimately a zero sum game, surely this isn't fair to them.

I can't accept responsiblilty for fairness or unfairness outside my domain!

As you say, with whole chickens it's a zero sum game. If I  keep the light and dark in balance, it's efficient and there's no waste.

On the other hand, if I keep the most demanding customers sweet, I'll be short-changing the rest of my customers to a slight degree. Will they notice? Will they mind?

There are other restaurants, or just cook at home. If I ran my own restaurant, I would choose my policies with the idea that 'I can't please all of the people all of the time'. But it would be strange to watch customers crying in the middle of the restaurant, once they realize, here, the white and dark meat are mixed

Nice analogy, Artfizz

It is a zero sum game, but there are lots of different ways that dark meat is used, not just by restaurants. Since dark meat is less in demand, it sells for a lower price (compare the price of a pack of chicken thighs to the price of a pack of chicken breasts at your local grocery), and therefore it is an economic alternative for companies that make chicken products. Failing that, cat and dog food often contains chicken... perhaps that's where the surplus supply of dark meat ends up. 

The restaurants I have worked at have always bought whole chickens, or at least 1:1 ratio parts (1 wing : 1 thigh : 1 breast : 1 leg), but in a market where consumers demand all white meat, buying only white meat is a (more expensive) option.