EXAMINING BUSINESS COMMUNICATION PROCESSES IN BURGER KING

The burger king is international Fast Food chain was founded in 1953 in Jacksonville Florida. At that time the name is insta-burger. The original founders and owners, Kieth J. Kramer and his wife’s uncle Matthew Burns, opened their first stores around a piece of equipment known as the Insta-Broiler. After the original company began to falter in 1959, it was purchased by the Miami, Florida franchisees James McLamore and David R. Edgerton who renamed the company Burger King. After independent for eight years, the company expanding around 250 locations in the United States, when they sold it to the Pillsbury Company in 1967.

According to my knowledge the Burger king in New Zealand the previous owner was Dennis Jones and Mark Backhaus and they sold out Burger king to Anchorage Capital Partners Australian Company. Anchorage partner Mark Bayliss become chairman of the New Zealand Burger King operation.

My objective in this report is discussing communication process in Sylvia park burger king. The reason behind this to choose this business because I was working in this company for nearly one year and I was watching day by day communication process ,how it is effective and how it is important for business.

Business demographics:

Business Communication: business communication is the communication between the people in the organization for the purpose of carrying out business activities. It may be oral, verbal, written etc.

In burger king there is different stages where the communication process takes place ,in internally the communication is MEMO’S,BUSINESSLETTERS,E-MAILS, MANUALS ,METTINGS, NEWSLETTERS and these communication are very important in business to met main objective.

The communication process in management levels are.

That means how communication is occurs in different level of management levels that are following.

Top level management CEO and other top level management.

Top level manager (area manager) and restaurant managers.

Restaurant manager and lower level manager.

Restaurant manager

Assistant manager

Salary manager

Hourly manager

Team leader

Crew

The communication process in different station in burger king:

Front counter and order making: in this process, the front counter person take the order of customer and after that trough screen the order maker got message to make a customer order.

Drive thru person and customer: when a car comes to drive thru the order taker and customer communicate each other via headphone and speaker and mice.

Order making (boat) to the fry station: the cooked product is delivering FRY STATION to the boat PHU (PRODUCT HOLDING UNIT) according to the order requirement by verbal communication. For example if there is order of five Bk chicken then the boat person told fry station person please down five chicken if other person says yes then boat person says thanks that is compiled communication process.

In our burger king (Sylvia Park) there is screens in each station for example front counter order, drive thru order, boat station, fry station and boiler station. That means how message is passes from one station to other station.

Drive thru and order making: in this process, drive thru person take the order of customer and after that trough screen the order maker got message to make a customer order.

Burger king menu board is good example of nonverbal communication process because if customer come to place order first see what he/she want after looking menu board he/she decide what is good meal deal.

I have one good example to explain the whole communication process in steps

Step 1: Front counter person taking order (verbal communication) between the customer and front counter person.

Step2: Enter order in the system .that is encoding electronic machine that message to front counter to the kitchen screen (decode message in read able form), that is non verbal communication.

Step3: Boat person prepare order and send ordered burger on the level.

Step4: After getting burger the packing person packs the order and gives to customer.

So for complete communication process there is various steps and how these steps are important in business communication.

Burger king goals:

Burger king want to individualize each customer’s order and provide the fastest service possible that the fast food restaurant aim and provide good customer service.

Burger King’s policy is to give the customer many choices and to accurately and quickly provide whatever the customer chooses for example our restaurant menu board provide customers graphical communication.

Burger King’s procedures are also consistent with their goals. In order to individualize each order they provide customers with many options when ordering. Some options include fries or onion rings, cheese, bacon, mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and onion.

The customer can pick any combination of these options that they desire, such as different meals of beef burger, chicken burger and salad burgers.

One employee takes the customer’s order, the customer then moves down the line where another employee is preparing the order. Meanwhile, the original employee is taking another customer’s order. Customers also get their own drinks while they are waiting for their meal. This makes service much faster in that employees do not have to prepare drinks or provide refills.

The climate at Burger King was very pleasant and customer can enjoy their meals by watching television at dining room.

The restaurant was very clean and there were no loud noises from the service area. They also provided relaxing music for customers to listen to while dining.

Burger King possessed more than adequate communication and leadership. Employees gave the customers feedback on their orders. Each customer received a receipt, which enabled them to double-check their order. The employees also read the order back to the customer before handing them the order.

In terms of leadership, a manager does visit to every station and he is taking order and coaching staff in proper way. FOR EXAMPE he is do supervision every station and communicate every team member so everything goes in proper manner.

Burger king culture and ethics:

Burger king culture means how improving ethics in organisation that means moral rights and wrong of any decisions in burger king.

How people behave in organisation for example in our burger king company had made some rules and regulation so all the staff should follow those rules, and how all the staff behaves with each other and how they behave with customers.

By providing staff proper training to maintain company values so that all member of the organisation should learn proper way of work.

For example in the burger king the company setting standard of all food and safety like temperature , holding time of all products, and the culture of burger king includes standards ,language ,way of behaving, way of communicating, way of dressing .

Standards: setting standard of products temperature, holding time and the entire staff member follow these standards.

Language: we have different staff form different culture and ethics values but at work place all the staffs speaks only English language.

Dressing: company having dress of all staff so that dress communicates any one is working in burger king.

Way of behave: every staff behaves politely and friendly.

Management of knowledge resources:

According to that concept knowledge management how the knowledge put in practically and how it is good for any organisation. So for this first decide what organisation objective is.

For our burger king the main objective is providing good quality of fast food and good customer service to achieve this objective there are some steps.

Manager should have good knowledge of food.

Good quality of food

Good cooking equipment.

Trained all staff in proper way

All staff should follow rules in fast food organisation

Provide latest technology equipment and sharing that knowledge with staff and how effective it is.

To trained staff how to sale more product by suggesting customer, if customer want only whopper burger then suggest him buy meal it’s cheaper.

To share knowledge of new equipment to all staff.

Group dynamics:

Is the study of groups, and also a general term for group processes. Relevant to the fields of psychology, sociology, and communication studies, a group is two or more individuals who are connected to each other by social relationships. Because they interact and influence each other, groups develop a number of dynamic processes that separate them from a random collection of individuals. These processes include norms, roles, relations, development, need to belong, social influence, and effects on behaviour. There is some barrier

Risking: when taking in group how much a person can take risk in communication.

Expectations: that means in group what the other people expect from you and how to control your expectations.

Avoidance: that means behaviour of a person to do use to avoid, may be that is habit or people can change their behaviour to make more relation with their group.

Probing: that means how you explain in group according to the requirement of other member of group.

Control: when any one taking in group and other member control you in his way how you feel in that communication.

Silence: sometimes it better way to keep silence in group according to the situation.

Meeting management:

In any business meeting is very important part of communication, and to make meeting run effectively are following points.

An effective meeting serves a useful purpose. This means that in it, you achieve a desired outcome. For a meeting to meet this outcome, or objective, you have to be clear about what it is the purpose of meeting. Mostly manager in any organisation call a meeting to discuss something important discussion.

Use time wisely: time is a precious resource, and no one wants their time wasted. With the amount of time we all spend in meetings, you owe it to yourself and your team to streamline the meeting as much as possible. So in meeting make agenda, the agenda is what you will refer to in order to keep the meeting running on target and on time. For making agenda some points should be consider.

Priorities-what main topic is discuss in meeting.

Results-what decisions will be taken.

Participants-who are attending the meeting.

Sequence-order of discussed topic.

Timing-discussion time of topic.

Date and Time-when will the meeting take place.

Place-where will the meeting take place.

Satisfied participants that a sensible process has been followed: Once you have an agenda prepared, you need to circulate it to the participants and get their feedback and input. Once in the meeting, to ensure maximum satisfaction for everyone, there are several things you should keep in mind:

If certain people are doing conversation, make a point of asking others for their ideas.

At the end of each agenda item, quickly summarize what was said, and ask people to confirm that that’s a fair summary. Then make notes regarding follow-up.

Note items that require further discussion.

Watch body language and make adjustments as necessary. Maybe you need a break, or you need to stop someone from speaking too much.

Ensure the meeting stays on topic.

List all tasks that are generated at the meeting. Make a note of who is assigned to do what, and by when.

At the close of the meeting, quickly summarize next steps and inform everyone that you will be sending out a meeting summary.

Stakeholder:

The burger king manages to communicate with all stake holders with who are directly and indirectly linked with the organisation.

Management and employees: they also communicate with burger king their jobs, pay and working hours etc

Customers: customers are also communicating with organisation when they buy any product.

Supplier: different supplier can communicate with organisation such as bakery supplier, beef and chicken patty supplier, salad suppliers, equipment suppliers all are communicate according to their requirement.

Banks: company communicate with banks, directly transfer money to company account by using eftpos (electronic device).

Financial organisation: provide finance to an organisation.

Government: the government tax policies especially Inland Revenue communicate with organisation to pay tax according to sales of organisation.

Trade unions: these unions are communicating with worker of organisation to provide laws and rights of worker.

City council: communicate with organisation that business runs according to government standards and providing good quality product.

Networks:

In our burger king there various methods of communications such as telephone, fax, internet, E- mail, etc. There are two types of networks

LOCAL AREA NETWORKS (LANs): where all the electronic machines are connected with each other and close to each other.

WIDE AREA NETWORKS (WANs): where computer communicate with each other via telephone lines or wireless transmission.

Some examples of networks in burger king are:

Minder: That’s electronic device which connected with PHU (PRODUCT UNIT HOLDER) calculated which product is expires after a certain limit so the screen of minder communicate with staff which chicken patty is expired.

Drive thru system: that electronic device which can communicate between burger king staff and customers.

Internet: communicate managers with head office via emails.

Telephone: this is also good source of communication in business.

Electronic device to help taking order on front counter and drive thru and that system connecting with main computer in the office.

Conclusion:

To conclude that the communication process takes place in different level in burger king, like as verbal, and non-verbal and different sources are used to complete this process step by step and how it is effective in the organisation. In our organisation how people communicate with staff, manager communicates with staff, networks used in organisation.