Differences between Malawi's pizza restaurants and Malawi catering services?
 
 
 
 
 

"Have you loaded the wood for the oven?" Dan Evans asked his assistant, Ed Jones, as they hurried to load their truck for a wedding reception catering engagement on a sunny June evening. Jones hurried over to the large mobile oven that was hitched up to the truck and swung open the door of the cabinet underneath. "Not yet, but I'll get it," he replied. A few other employees were busily helping load the Toyota Tundra pickup truck with ice chests, tables, paper products, and other supplies for the wedding reception they were catering that night. Evans and two other employees soon jumped in the pickup with the mobile oven attached and headed off to the reception. As they drove ten minutes to the park on the other side of the freeway, Evans had his first chance that day to reflect on the quandary he had been facing as the General Manager of Malawi's Pizza in Provo, UT. Evans had graduated from culinary school and had begun work as a chef. In 2010, the restaurant he was working for went out of business, so he joined a new startup restaurant, Malawi's Pizza, expecting to work for a short time as a chef before finding a more upscale opportunity. Malawi's founder and co-owner, Kent Beck, noticed Evans's skills and soon promoted him to a management position. Evans suddenly found himself facing a higher level of involvement in a restaurant operation than he had experienced before. Beck had been thinking about franchising Malawi's since its inception and had been working to develop and document restaurant processes in a way that he felt could be handed over to franchisees with successful results. The catering process was an important part of the planned movement into franchising, and catering was the most profitable part of the restaurant operation. Evans had played an essential role in developing the catering operation; it was an extremely interactive and hands-on process that depended on the intuition, experience, and knowledge that Evans had gained throughout his career in the restaurant industry. The catering clients were paying a premium to get customized service, but Evans and Beck needed to somehow figure out how to increase the scale of the catering operation and make the process replicable. They were considering using a methodology called PCN Analysis, which is used for service design, process improvement, and innovation discovery. Perhaps PCN Analysis could provide some guidance about where to go with the catering operation, and maybe also provide direction about how catering can provide effective synergy within a restaurant franchise.