Quality for Hearing Impaired Run Restaurant - Food Services - ISO9001 Principles

[Sartaj Bedi]

HI,
I manage a restaurant and we are following the standard. My next assignement requires me to set up a foodservice establishment whcih will be run by hearing impaired. They will cook and will pretty much interact with customers and will be reposnsible for profits.

Its my understanding that the best sytems are those in whcih quality is engineered and allows for a better expereience.

I wanted to design the operations of the establishment using principles of ISO 9000. The objective is to do a great system so that these people with disability can create and deliver super service and food.

Any one any ideas.

Thanks
Sartaj

[Marc]

In your case I would think the biggest problem will be in defining communications aspects.

I have a friend with several restaurants (sports bars, actually). I have, over the years, watched him set up a couple (and in fact helped him out financially). He knows I'm an 'ISO person', but we've never discussed it in the context of the restaurants. But - As I have watched, he identified the important aspects and if I was to go in an do a gap analysis he would have little to do to be ISO 9001 compliant. He doesn't know anything about ISO 9001 requirements, but he is, in a way, proof that ISO 9001 is really only Good Business Practices.

The key for you, if you are wanting to use ISO 9001 as a framework, is to relate the clauses of ISO 9001 to the restaurant business which is essentially a service industry business.

Even beyond ISO 9001 he used Good Business Practices, and still does, such as visiting other restaurants and looking to see what they do and how they do it (benchmarking).

If you have an more specific questions I'll try to help out.