MK Restaurants: A focus on small

Continuous learning, never overlooking even the smallest of details, and "designing" its own ways and processes are among the key elements that have led to the success of MK Restaurants, one of Thailand's largest restaurant chains.

In paying attention to the smallest details, MK believes that most problems represent "the tip of the iceberg" and there is a need to discover the real causes, said managing director Rit Thirakomen.

"For example, you will find quite often, if you are dining in a restaurant, that the table towel is not clean. If you look only at the surface of such a problem, you might order that the towel be changed, but the problem doesn't go away," he said.

Looking closely at the problem, MK found that the real cause of dirty table towels was that many restaurants provided only one towel for all tasks. So it assigned specific towels for specific tasks, provided a sanitizing liquid for cleaning the towels and taught its staff how to use them properly. The carts used by MK's staff have four levels. After using a towel for the first time, it is returned to the first level. After the second use it is returned to the second level and so on until, after its fourth use, it is returned to the fourth level and must then be washed and sanitized before being used again.

MK also standardised the packaging baskets it uses for its raw materials and supplies. Markets commonly offer a range of containers, from jars and bamboo baskets to plastic bags. MK's standard baskets are able to be stacked, one on top of another, many baskets high. Each basket can carry 15 kilograms, and one of the company's carts can carry 20 baskets, and since the carts can be hooked together, one MK staff member can haul between 800kg and 1 tonne of supplies.

"Without this (process) design, we might need more than 10 people to carry those loads," Rit said.

Other MK "designs" include a factory floor built on a slope, with water drainage channels, so that one staff member can clean the entire floor in half an hour.

The company has cold storage rooms with two doors, one at either end. Normally cold storage rooms have only one door, which means foodstuffs arriving first are stored deeper in the room, and the first in tends to be the last out. MK's system supports a first in, first out policy for foodstuffs.

Instead of expecting each of its 82 suppliers to deliver goods to the company's restaurants all over the country, requiring more than 16,400 trips each day, MK has the goods delivered to one of its two factories. Here, the goods are processed or materials and ingredients combined and then the company's own fleet delivers supplies to the restaurants at least once or twice daily, requiring about 300 trips per day.

Rit said MK had also designed its own "people management" system, to ensure excellent service quality. The methods begin from design of services and extend into recruitment, training, motivation, the organisation's culture, customer feedback, quality auditing and strategy alignment. MK also follows the Japanese "Kaizen" continuous improvement philosophy.

"From a small restaurant growing into 280 branches with 13,000 employees over the past 23 years, our target has always been to create customer satisfaction. Every customer must feel happy when they visit our restaurants. We don't overlook even the smallest details. At MK, we design everything - from the smallest to the biggest matters," he said.

MK primarily sells Thai-style suki - a hot pot of fresh meats and vegetables.

The company has expanded into Japan and in August it signed a franchise agreement with a Vietnamese company to set up an MK restaurant in Vietnam early next year.

MK Restaurants' managing director Rit Thirakomen was speaking at a seminar entitled "The Corporation of Design", held by the Thammasat Business School.

pichaya@nationgroup.com