Productivity measurement in foodservice: past accomplishments--a future alternative

Productivity measurement, monitoring, and improvement are ongoing management responsibilities. Financial and personnel resources are limited, and foodservice managers are faced with the increasingly difficult task of efficiently and effectively meeting consumer demands. A wide variety of labor productivity measures have been reported in the foodservice literature. The most prevalent of those measures include labor minutes per meal and labor minutes per meal equivalent. A measurement technique that considers only one or a few of the resources used to produce goods and services may result in limitations and potentially inaccurate productivity measurement. A total-factor productivity model that relates organizational output to all input resources is recommended. Such a model has been used in several business firms. Aggregate and multiple partial-factor productivity ratios enabled business managers to identify the relationships and trade-offs among all resources not previously revealed in labor productivity measures. Such an expanded productivity model could be applied in food-service settings to provide additional information for enhanced decision making.