Interview manager and customers experiences

1. Manager

Friday the 1st of August we visited the Rainforest Cafe in Tempe. We had made an appointment with the manager, Troy Bear. Mr. Bear is manager of the café since 2004. Before he took the function as a manager at the Rainforest Café, he had been working for several cafés. A training for manager he never had. But with his great experiences, he worked himself up to location manager. In the future Mr. Bear wants to grow even more and become a staff member of the head office of the Rainforest Café.

2. Target group

- Manager
The Rainforest Cafe has no specific target group, they are focused on all kinds of costumers; Family’s with children, the youth, adults, seniors, birthday party’s and group activities. Most of the people that come to the Rainforest Café are family’s with children. People with a specific interest in nature and the rainforest are not a part of the target group. In spite of the prices, a lot of people with lower incomes will eat at the restaurant.

- Costumers
We interviewed different customers from different segments. Part of the interviewed people were families with children, a childeren’s party that was going on, grandparents with grandchildren, teenagers and adults that only visited the café but not the restaurant. The customers each have their own reasons to visit the Rainforest Café. Especially the families with children like the atmosphere and think the experience is the most important. They rather have a dinner at the Rainforest Café than a Happy Meal at McDonalds. The people that we interviewed had a very different way of spending their money. Because of the high prices some of the interviewed didn’t come to the Rainforest often. Others said they liked eating in the restaurant so much that they came more often no matter the price.

3. Service

- Manager
All of the employees are trained before starting there jobs. This will make the service a lot better. We want the costumers to be happy about the service in any possible way. That’s why they are dressed in a certain way. They should always have a smile on there face en they make the costumers happy. We believe that service is very important for the costumers to come back.

- Costumers
Overall the costumers like the way the employees behave. The service is fast, and most of the time the crew will chat with the costumers about the café for a couple of minutes. And the costumers like that. A lot of them are curious about for example the theme of the restaurant.
On the other side, all costumers have said that if it’s a busy night, the service quality goes back. The employees will hurry a lot and not spend too much time on the costumers. But overall the costumers don’t seem to mind.

4. Experience

- Manager
When costumers eat at the Rainforest café the experience is totally different with every other restaurant. The atmosphere is made by the themed surroundings. Through the application of sounds, smells and surroundings of the rainforest it becomes an adventure to eat there and it will be experienced more. ‘We do not use the experience on purpose in our concept, because it actually exists for a couple of years already, but we can see that customers want to experience more when they go out eating’. With this unique concept we try to satisfy our customers so that they will come and visit us more often. Even though the experience factor Mr. Bear thinks that the quality of the food is the most important. ‘The atmosphere can be good, but when the food does not taste good the customers will not return’…

- Costumers
All interviewed persons agree on the fact that a night in the Rainforest Cafe is totally different then in every other restaurant. From the interviews we noticed that some guests especially choose the rainforest Café for a night full of experience with sounds and seeings. This counts especially for families with children and grandparents with grandchildren. They thought the quality of the food was good but was less important than the experience factor.
Other guests thought the atmosphere was good and the food too but did not relate it to experience directly. Thus was said by a young couple.


5. Strong and weak points

- Manager
Mostly Unique Selling Point of the Rainforest Café is the theme and the experience of the customer. Because of this the Rainforest Café separated itself from other restaurants. This is why there are no direct concurrents anymore.

The manager thinks the weak point of the Rainforest Café is the service. On quit days the service is good, but on most days it’s so busy that there is a line of costumers waiting for a table. On such days the pressure on the employees is high, and that’s why the costumers don’t get the service they expect.

- Costumers
Costumers think the theme and ambiance are the strongest points of the restaurant. It’s funny that the costumers think positive about the service, where the manager disagrees with that. On the question if they think the service is not personal enough, they disagree with it, where the manager thinks different about that.


6. Developments

- Manager
With the success they have, the manager thinks the Rainforest Cafe will extend in the future. Not in the restaurants itself, but the number of locations. This you can already notice right now when you look at the increase of locations in Europe. Inside the restaurant the manager doesn’t have a clear image of the future. The concept has already so much experiences that it is ahead of other restaurants. The manager thinks that the quality processing of the service is an important development point for the future.