Recommendations

Red Lobster is a successful restaurant chain that has profited positively through the years. They have a standard of excellence to uphold for their customers and have to ensure that their customers are treated well and provided with excellent service. The employees and management at Red Lobster have successfully upheld this standard and continue to do so today. Even with the business running successfully, there are still improvement that can be made in order to ensure higher profits for the future.

In order to ensure that customers do not switch to using substitute products Red Lobster can create a customer loyalty program, similar to grocery stores in the area, which gives each customer a specific file in the Red Lobster hardware system. By doing this the restaurant can keep a track of their customer's purchases and offer them various discounts and incentives after certain purchases. For example, for every nine meals at Red Lobster a customer can get their tenth meal with no cost. To make this a successful practice Red Lobster would need to create a new file in the Microsoft SQL server that awards customers points. The restaurant can also offer a smart-card with each customer having their own PIN to keep a record of their points and purchases at Red Lobster.

Also, to make sure that Red Lobster's customers do not switch to using their rival's products Red Lobster can be involved in offering better promotions to its customers. These promotions can be sent to various customers at the same time by advertising on social media accounts. Red Lobster can offer deals on its Facebook page as well as offer certain coupons to customers who follow and message the company on twitter. Promotions can include free drinks with purchases of certain appetizers or a certain amount of money discounted if the customer's check exceeds $100.

Finally, another thing Red Lobster can do to better their system is to reduce their information silos by having the servers manually record any food items that are not entered into the POS system. At a restaurant various customers ask for additions or condiments to their meals and these items go unrecorded in the system if asked for after the order has been served. Also, sometimes there may be a meal order that does not go through the system and may go unaccounted for. Since the items have not been entered into the POS system they would not be reduced from the inventory in the DASH software. This would result in a miscalculation of the inventory. If servers were to record these extra items the restaurants inventory would match its total sales at the end of each shift.