Improving Gross Profit Margin in a quick service restaurant

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to try help implementing the corporate strategy in a quick service restaurant environment by offering practical examples. The objective is to improve the profitability of the case company by the management of the sales team. Questions to be answered are how the gross margin can be developed and what results can be gained. Some of the key concepts of this thesis are gross margin and sales management, restaurant profitability and implementing corporate strategy into practice.

This thesis looks into finding ways for developing gross margin within the case company and examine what kind of results can be gained. There are three stages taken into practice in the case company; improving the visibility of high gross margin products, teaching proactive sales techniques and setting goals supporting the improvement of gross margin.

The theoretical foundation of this thesis includes subjects of gross profit, strategy, profitability, goal setting, quantitative and participant observation research methods. It was collected using various academic journals, books and websites. In addition, information was gathered by observing.