Module 4 Case Study: McDaniel's Burger Restaurant
Jessica Casillas
MGT 200
Professor Armelino
McDaniel's Burgers Restaurant was a successful restaurant in a small town until the
town's population continued to rapidly grow. As the small town continued to see swift growth
the large customization options that initially attributed to McDaniel's small-town success became
their downfall. McDaniel's became unable to keep up with the sudden growth of their customer
base and ultimately made the decision to sell their burger restaurant to a larger, corporate
company named Burger Business. Burger Business owns multiple establishments and is more
familiar with selling larger quantities of food to a large number of customers. Almost
immediately, Burger Business made the decision to change multiple aspects of the restaurant in
an effort to maximize efficiency and customer satisfaction. Unfortunately, shortly after these
changes were put into place, it became more and more apparent that neither goal was achieved.
Burger Business began to see a decline in customers - and therefore sales, as well as an increase
in employee turnover, which further hurt business.
Within this case study, there are multiple theories being utilized. In the initial part of the
McDaniel's Burger's scenario, Theory Y was being utilized before the restaurant was sold to
Burger Business. McDaniel's Burger Restaurant focused on the benefits of creativity and made
it one of the main selling points of their establishment - which is a main aspect of Theory Y
(Bauer, 2020). Utilizing Theory Y brought along some advantages for McDaniel's. Customers
were able to extensively customize their burgers which brought with it customer satisfaction
McDaniel's Burger Restaurant also experienced much lower employee turnover than when
Burger Business took over because employee satisfaction was higher at that time. The main
disadvantage of it was that it took longer for customers to get their food due to the high
specialization opportunities each order had. Once the business was sold to Burger Business,
there was a shift in theories and they began utilizing the Bureaucratic Theory. Our textbook
states that the Bureaucratic Theory focuses more on the overall structure of the business rather
than the organizational activities (Bauer, 2020). The utilization of the Bureaucratic Theory can
be seen when Burger Business implemented division of labor, more detailed, specific job
descriptions for employees, as well as stricter protocols and procedures. For example, Burger
Business implemented procedures that included five new burger-building stations that separated
the ordering and burger-building process into meat selection, meat preparation, toppings, sides
bar, and lastly the cashier. In theory, Burger Business was hoping the implementation of these
different stations would help make the business more organized and time efficient.
Unfortunately after these stations were set in place, it quickly showed Burger Business that they
did the opposite and seemed to decrease the efficiency and overall flow of the restaurant,
resulting in a loss of customers and sales.
One thing that Burger Business did that seems to be a good decision was discontinuing
some of the toppings that were not being regularly