Start Date

7-1-2011 4:00 PM

End Date

7-1-2011 5:15 PM

Track

1. Track 1 – Formal Paper Presentation

Subject Area

Food Service

Faculty Member

Dr. Murat Hancer murat.hancer@okstate.edu

Abstract

Consistency inside of an organization is vital to the success of the organization. Many actions are taken in order to increase consistency and standardization especially in service industries such as hospitality. A lack of consistency brings up interesting complications for an organization that chooses franchising as a business model. While franchisors have a method of monitoring franchisees, it is almost impossible and certainly not cost effective to monitor that location 100% of the time. The purpose of this study is to try to determine if the company can produce consistency throughout its organization by looking at restaurant inspection scores. This study looked at the large franchised restaurant company, Sonic Drive In, and its operations inside of the state of Oklahoma. Because each county in Oklahoma completes its own food inspections and reports to the state, it is not appropriate to compare each stores score to that of the scores of another county. Instead this study used the deviation from the county average to determine consistency. The score is equal to the number of violations given during the 2009 calendar year. This study found that consistency between franchised locations was stronger than that of the company owned locations. Without standardized testing, we were unable to fully answer the research questions posed in this study, but generated data that would aid future research to better create controls for corporations and how they continue the relationship between company owned and franchised locations.

Keywords

Food Safety, Inspection Score, Consistency, Franchising

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Jan 7th, 4:00 PM Jan 7th, 5:15 PM

Consistency between Franchised and Company-Owned Locations: A Study of Sonic Drive-In Food Safety Scores in the State of Oklahoma

Consistency inside of an organization is vital to the success of the organization. Many actions are taken in order to increase consistency and standardization especially in service industries such as hospitality. A lack of consistency brings up interesting complications for an organization that chooses franchising as a business model. While franchisors have a method of monitoring franchisees, it is almost impossible and certainly not cost effective to monitor that location 100% of the time. The purpose of this study is to try to determine if the company can produce consistency throughout its organization by looking at restaurant inspection scores. This study looked at the large franchised restaurant company, Sonic Drive In, and its operations inside of the state of Oklahoma. Because each county in Oklahoma completes its own food inspections and reports to the state, it is not appropriate to compare each stores score to that of the scores of another county. Instead this study used the deviation from the county average to determine consistency. The score is equal to the number of violations given during the 2009 calendar year. This study found that consistency between franchised locations was stronger than that of the company owned locations. Without standardized testing, we were unable to fully answer the research questions posed in this study, but generated data that would aid future research to better create controls for corporations and how they continue the relationship between company owned and franchised locations.