Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

CAPT’N JACSK ISLAN GRILL RESTAURANT

INTERNSHIP REPORT

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Table of Contents

Summary................................................................................................................................................3
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4
Company Description............................................................................................................................5
Company’s mission and vision..............................................................................................................5
Company’s products/services...............................................................................................................6
Project description.................................................................................................................................6
Research design.....................................................................................................................................8
Market analysis.....................................................................................................................................8
Theoretical Background......................................................................................................................10
Conclusions and Recommendations...................................................................................................12
References:...........................................................................................................................................13
Appendix..............................................................................................................................................14

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Summary

This internship report fully describes the challenges that restaurant Capt’n Jacks, that is
located in the city of Wildwood, NJ state in USA, has faced in this summer season and which
steps were taken to overcome those obstacles.
As my aim is to start my own restaurant business the best preparation for starting is to
first work in someone else’s establishment and being an intern in American restaurant allowed
me to see many insights of this sphere. In this internship I was able to strengthen all my
management skills such as planning, decision-making, communication with customers, problem
solving and proposing innovative solutions for problems.
While fulfilling my main duties as an intern such as purchasing the food, managing the
staff in the back of the kitchen, and scheduling the kitchen and server’s staff I could identify the
current issues regarding the restaurant logistics and customer service. After taking interviews
from the managers and staff I came up with proposals to solve particular problems.

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Introduction

Restaurants always play an essential role in social, artistic life and business. This is the
place where people go to eat, socialize, do business and at the same time gain unique and
valuable experience. And with rise of world population the restaurant sphere is getting
more enhanced. This business is woven into city planning, neighborhood development, and real
estate unlike any other time in history. According to the National Restaurant Association,
“Restaurant industry's projected sales in 2019 will be $863 billion of the entire US GDP, giving
15.3 million Restaurant industry employees, which is the 10% of the whole US workforce”
([CITATION Cus13 \l 1033 \m Nat19]

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Company Description

Company Profile

Capt'n Jacks Island Grill is the best known restaurant in the Wildwood city with its rich
history of establishment. This is a family-owned restaurant that pursues the goal to uphold their
family’s legacy through food, drink and hospitality. It was founded by the grandfather of present
owner Jack Steward in 1960s. With wide open decks and views of the beach and boards, Capt’n
Jacks became the first Restaurant on the Wildwood Boardwalk.

Company’s mission and vision

Missions:
To delight customers with healthy, high-quality and tasty food and excellent service at a
reasonable price, understanding the changing needs of customers and constantly improving the
quality of customer service. Provide steady profit growth for the company. To improve the
quality of employees, and their continuous development. Promote a community through
initiatives that are consistent with restaurant corporate social responsibility program.

Vision:
To serve happiness to our customers through delicious, quality meals providing
gastronomic pleasure in the cozy atmosphere of our restaurants and extraordinary restaurant
experience while working toward the greater good for our employees, community, and
environment.

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Company’s products/services

Capt’n Jacks attracts prospective customers by offering an exciting and unique dining
experience. High quality food, friendly and professional service, and an entertaining, live-music
environment differentiate Capt’n Jacks from its competitors. This restaurant offers a variety of
lunch and dinner meals, such as:
Starters, appetizers, entrees, burgers, Pizzas. Customers also can enjoy from several types of
special salads, brand Jacks’ Wings and drinks [ CITATION Cap19 \l 1033 ].

Project description

Problem Definition,

Regarding the innovational development, the approaches should be made in numerous

ways such as, personnel management, customer satisfaction management, food safety
management, marketing, and ecology.
“The key to providing a unique experience in the restaurant sector depends on flexibility”
[ CITATION Iva65 \l 1033 ].This means that managers should try to practice new management
styles in order to develop empathy for each individual client. I tried to propose and implement
new approaches to improve some of the company’s obstacles.

Online reservation and reviews

The Internet has become very important channel for business transactions and activities.
And the restaurant business acquires some of tools to enlarge the company’s activities. One of
the issues that I have noticed in Capt’n Jacks restaurant was the lack of use of online reservation.
Instead the restaurant workers were using only phone call reservations, which was the main
reason of clients waiting in line, as the restaurant employee is already busy talking with another
client. In addition, there was a lack of tracking the online customers’ reviews, which is main
reason of restaurant popularity among guests.
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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

I proposed an idea of creating an online platform for making reservations. Transactions

are typically being made by people who came for vacation from different cities and countries and
do not know the local restaurants, as a result, they do not want to waste their time searching for
place to have a dinner. Moreover, customers will not have to call and do this lengthy procedure
to book the place. The online reservation service saves a lot of time and is convenient for both
parties. With the creating a guest waiting list, a text message can let visitors know when their
desk is available. Larger parties can be organized faster when they have access to an online
restaurant reservation system. Restaurants can also benefit, as they will not need to attract
additional staff to attend phone calls throughout the day.

QR соde

Being an intern and paying particular attention to the customer’s behavior I have noticed
that clients were more demanding and had less tolerance in time of rush-hour. The
trustworthiness of customers or clients depends on certain level of quality of product and, what is
most important, on service they get. In this case there was a problem for customers seeking
additional information about meals, ingredients or allergens. Sometimes they simply wanted to
know more about the food they order. They could ask the servers about allergens and get no
response for that or wait for them to clarify from managers.
So, I proposed implementation of QR Code in the menus and on restaurant websites. By
scanning the code, a customer would be able to obtain additional information about menu items
(Ingredients, allergen info, nutritive and energy information, etc.). The managers positively
reacted to this proposal and the idea is on the implementation stage.

Inventory

The biggest part of my internship consisted of assisting the kitchen supervisor in

purchasing the food and needed materials. In addition to it, most of my time I was spending in
the kitchen watching the work process. There I frequently was observing the workers using the
materials in insufficient and inappropriate way, wasting the food because of irresponsible
behavior. With each inventory, there were flaws in some products. The company was losing a lot
of foods. Even a theft was detected by some kitchen staff.

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

On my initiative, we conducted an unscheduled inventory process several times. And

after identifying the inappropriate use of particular products and responsible persons for these
products, managers conducted re-training of employees and some replacement of workers.

Research design

All my decisions and proposals were made by observations of customers’ and employees’
behavior as well as the taking interviews from managers and responsible people for particular
departments.

Market analysis
For the full understanding the market and company’s potential, a Porter’s five forces
model was prepared.
The strategic model for the analysis of the five forces of competition was described by
Michael Porter in 1979 (Chartered Global Management Accountant). This model with the help of
the five structural units described the ways in which a company could form a competitive
advantage and long-term profitability of a product, as well as the ways in which a company
could maintain its profitability and competitiveness in the long run. Therefore the Porter’s Five
Forces, can illustrate the Wildwood restaurant market competitors and conditions for new
players.
The first step is analysing the bargaining power of suppliers.
The Capt’n Jacks restaurant has the same suppliers for the past decade. Hopefully, they will
continue to cooperate.
Bargaining power of buyers.

The second step is to determine the bargaining power of buyers, which refers to how easy
it is for your buyers to influence prices to drop.
According to the Tourism Economics, the Visitors spending in Wildwood grew 4.9% in 2015
reaching the 1.5$ billion and still raising year by year. As you can see in Appendix 1.1 and 1.2,
visitors of Wildwood tend to spend about 20% of their budget on food and beverages. Visitor
volume numbers of Wildwood and Cape May, which is the neighbor city, grew up to the 13
million this year (Measuring Tourism Growth). So, the overall market has a great potential and
everyone can benefit from it.
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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

But still in this case customers have a full right to switch from our service and products to
another market competitors. To make sure that it does not happen, managers maintain a high
standard of service and food quality. According to the statistics average number of customers per
day is 450 on weekdays and 600 on weekends. The restaurant was using its capacity in a full
manner. You can see the sales summary report in appendix 1.3.

Competitive Rivalry

The main part of market analysis is competitors’ analysis. The strength of the local market
affects how many customers the restaurants will serve and how much the restaurants can charge [
CITATION Rya03 \l 1033 ]

The market in Wildwood is very intense. There are more than 100 restaurants in Wildwood
according to the TripAdvisor, 20 out of them are located in the Boardwalk (TripAdvisor). Most
of these restaurants were established many years ago as a family-owned businesses, and have
owned their clientele base. There are 3 restaurants including Capt’n Jacks located close to each
other.
The main competitors in that area are Sam's Pizza Palace and Mack's Pizza. These two
restaurants have a long history of operating in the Boardwalk,focusing more on providing a
delicious pizza and fast food in a reasonable price for customers. They often make discounts on
their food menu, attracting the consumers.
They both have been awarded with a certificate of an excellence from TripAdvisor 5 years in a
row and have many positive reviews and feedbacks on internet platforms, having a good brand
image for new visitors of Wildwood.

The location of these restaurants plays a huge role on their popularity among visitors as well.
They both located in the central part of Boardwalk, near to the beach entrance where is a large
congregation of people. Also, one of the main advantages of these restaurants is focusing on
limited type of food and having peculiar recipe of their pizzas.

Threat of New Entrants

It is extremely difficult to enter the market of Boardwalk, since almost every restaurant has
several branches and occupied the best spots.

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 Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

The owners of the Capt’n Jacks restaurant are planning to establish two new restaurants in the
Boardwalk. One is going to be located near to the beach entrance, the other one is near to Capt’n
Jacks, preventing themselves from new market competitors, since there will be no spaces for
another restaurants. So, there is not much concern about new competitors.
The Porter’s five model analysis shows that market is very intense, but in the same time it has a
huge capacity for every company to succeed in a long term.

Theoretical Background

“The restaurant business is indeed a highly competitive sphere, and over time the
competition becomes even more intense”, these are the words of the owner of Capt’n Jacks
Shawn Steward [ CITATION Cap19 \l 1033 ]. Competition in the restaurant business is based on
the price and quality of food products, the variety and value perception of the menu, the quality
of service, the effectiveness of new product development, advertising and sales promotion,
restaurant design and the maintaining the restaurant in such a way that he continued to attract
customers and finally the brand's reputation and strength. As a result, the success of the company
depends on its ability to continue to compete effectively with other local competitors. Using my
knowledge from Business Administration courses, I developed SWOT analysis and discuss them
with managers. This was done in order to understand the restaurant limits as well as its
possibilities to develop furthermore.

Strength Weaknesses

- regular customers; - Staff turnover

- wide range of dishes with great quality; - Lack of using digital platforms.

- live-music

- original interior design.

- Patio bar ( access to Fridays’ Fireworks)

Opportunities Threat

- Attracting way more customers - Fierce competition

- Restaurant Expansion
- Changing the tastes of consumers;
- increasing the range of dishes, adding
- Less attractiveness of the area for
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sweets. tourists due to weather conditions.

- Sale of paraphernalia, souvenirs for
tourists

Strengths are the strong financial position, which allows the Company to expand its
business both in the short and long term. A capable and experienced team of managers that has
been working in the restaurant business for more than 20 years and which helps to make
company management efficient and effective. Also the best strategic places, the restaurant is
located next to the ocean.
Weaknesses is lack of using the online reservations, which can lead to losing the clients.
There is also a big issue regarding the staff turnover, because of seasonal work. Opportunities
will be increasing the restaurant territory and opening the souvenir shop for tourists and guests,
increasing the clientele base.
While this is the ocean near place, there is a huge competition among restaurants, in
addition to it there is a threat from new appearing cafes and small restaurants.

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Conclusions and Recommendations

By the end of my analysis I have proposed several recommendations to the Capt’n Jacks
managers and mister Shawn Steward:

- Improve the online brand image of the restaurant in Facebook and TripAdvisor pages, as it
leads to increasing the positive reviews and clients itself.

- Work more on personnel trainings and reward systems in order to keep motivation among
employees.

- To expand the business through opening the souvenir shop, which is going to be the nearest
shop to the restaurants and the ocean.

Practicing all the theoretical knowledge that was obtained from the university was an
immense experience for me. Thanks to this internship I was able to develop my managing skills,
which I was not aware of. Working with great management staff and being supported by them
gave me a courage to implement my ideas regarding the restaurant. My efforts could bring
positive effects to the optimization of work processes among employees.

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References:

Association, N. R. (2019). Retrieved from Restaurant.org:

https://www.restaurant.org/Downloads/PDFs/Research/SOI/restaurant_industry_fact_sheet_20
19.pdf

Capt'n Jacks Island Grill. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.captnjacksislandgrill.com/

Economics, T. (2015). The Economic Impact of Tourism in Greater Wildwood, New Jersey. Tourism
Economics.

Engagement, C. S. (2013, December). Independent PhoCusWright study of 12,225 global respondents

prepared for TripAdvisor. Retrieved from TripAdvisor:
https://www.tripadvisor.se/TripAdvisorInsights/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/24-Insights-to-
Shape-TripAdvisor-Strategy-Infographic-en-us.pdf

Ivana, B., Jovanka , P. R., Tatjana , P., & Milan , I. (1965). FACTORS INFLUENCING STUDENTS’ CHOICE OF
FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS. Economics of Agriculture.

Limited, M. R. (2017). Retrieved from http://m.listedcompany.com:

http://m.listedcompany.com/misc/risk-factors/20180315-m-riskfactors-2017-en.pdf

Ryan, B. &. (2003). Restaurant market analysis. Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin – Extension, Center
for Community Economic Development and the Small Business Development Center.

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Appendix

Appendix 1.1

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Capt’n Jacks Island Grill restaurant analysis

Appendix 1.2

Appendix 1.3
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