Quality Has a Cost

By quality has a cost we mean that quality is an effort for restaurants to obtain the maximum acceptance of it product or service by preventing or detecting potential failures. There are good quality costs that businesses must address to meet customers’ expectations and avoid non-quality costs. Among the good quality costs one can identify two categories:

- Prevention costs, they are obtained from the sum of the costs of those procedures or activities that are carried out to reduce or avoid deficiencies in the service. For example, setting up of machinery, supplier evaluation and training.

- Evaluation costs, they are related to the measurement, evaluation or audit of services to ensure they are adapted to the requirements of the standards. For example, audits of the product, process or service and calibration of equipment.

At first sight, these costs mean money however their objective is to generate the minimum possible costs; hence the costs of prevention and evaluation are investments and must be seen as corrective actions adopted to produce improvements.

In restaurants there is a big amount of costs that can be seen as investments which implementation we highly recommend. 

First, some relevant quality prevention “costs” could be:

- Marketing: market research, surveys and queries of customer perception.

- Product Development: product design and in-service testing.

- Purchasing prevention: supplier reviews and supplier quality planning.

- Operational prevention: training of personnel, control of the processes.

- Quality management: quality training and audits.

Second, relevant quality evaluation “costs” are:

- Purchase evaluation: delivery inspections.

- Operational evaluation: measurement and process control equipment (HACCP).

- External evaluation: evaluation of operations in service and quality assessments.

We hope you have found interesting our blog. Use all the knowledge exposed and tips as guidance for your restaurant business. We guarantee a high return of investment!

Good Luck,

Alberto Pelayo, Verónica Rojo y Fernanda Viñas.