CRP Operations Management & Efficiency 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A restaurant's prime cost ratio is calculated by dividing the sum of food cost and labor cost by what?
- Net profit
- Total revenue (Correct answer)
- Operating expenses
- Gross margin
Correct answer: Total revenue
Prime cost ratio = (food cost + labor cost) / total revenue, and a healthy ratio is typically below 60-65%.
Question 2: Which scheduling approach assigns the most experienced servers to the highest-volume shifts to maximize revenue efficiency?
- Rotating schedule
- Seniority-based bidding
- Skills-based scheduling (Correct answer)
- Fixed schedule
Correct answer: Skills-based scheduling
Skills-based scheduling matches employee competency levels to shift demands, ensuring top performers are placed where they generate the most revenue.
Question 3: A restaurant reduces its ticket times from 22 minutes to 14 minutes. Which operational tool most directly enabled this improvement?
- Updated menu design
- Kitchen Display System (KDS) (Correct answer)
- New POS terminals
- Increased server headcount
Correct answer: Kitchen Display System (KDS)
A Kitchen Display System streamlines order routing, prioritization, and communication between front-of-house and kitchen, directly reducing ticket times.
Question 4: What is the purpose of a 'par level' in restaurant inventory management?
- Maximum stock allowed before ordering stops
- Minimum stock level that triggers a reorder (Correct answer)
- The ideal selling price for a menu item
- A labor benchmark per shift
Correct answer: Minimum stock level that triggers a reorder
Par level is the minimum quantity of an item that must be on hand; falling below it signals a reorder is needed to prevent stockouts.
Question 5: Which layout strategy in a commercial kitchen minimizes cross-traffic and reduces the risk of food contamination?
- Open kitchen design
- Island layout
- Zone or assembly-line layout (Correct answer)
- Galley layout
Correct answer: Zone or assembly-line layout
A zone or assembly-line layout separates prep, cooking, plating, and dishwashing into distinct areas, reducing cross-traffic and contamination risk.
Question 6: A manager notices that labor cost spikes every Sunday despite similar covers to Saturday. The most efficient first step is to:
- Hire additional part-time staff
- Review the Sunday schedule for overtime triggers (Correct answer)
- Close earlier on Sundays
- Increase menu prices on Sundays
Correct answer: Review the Sunday schedule for overtime triggers
Reviewing the schedule identifies whether overtime, overstaffing, or shift overlap is driving the cost before implementing broader changes.
Question 7: Which metric best measures how efficiently a restaurant converts table occupancy into revenue?
- Average check size
- Revenue Per Available Seat Hour (RevPASH) (Correct answer)
- Guest satisfaction score
- Table turn rate alone
Correct answer: Revenue Per Available Seat Hour (RevPASH)
RevPASH combines revenue, seat count, and hours of operation into a single efficiency metric that accounts for both occupancy and spend.
CRP Operations Management & Efficiency 2
A restaurant's prime cost ratio is calculated by dividing the sum of food cost and labor cost by what?