Forecasting at Hard Rock Cafe

1) The first forecasting application that Hard Rock uses is the point-of-sale system (POS), which includes data on almost every person who walks through the doors. With POS systems, you can analyze sales data, maintain a sales history to help adjust your buying decisions, and you can improve your pricing accuracy. Also, Hard Rock uses a 3-year weighted moving average (applied to café sales) to help evaluate managers and to set their bonuses. The biggest indicator of the performance is the sales at the store they supervise. Lastly, Hard Rock uses multiple regression to help figure out how to set up the menu (menu planning). Managers can compute the impact on demand of other menu items if the price of one item is changed.
Other areas that Hard Rock could use forecasting models for are:
1. Live shows/performances effect on sales,
2. Operation costs predictions like rent, heating, lighting etc.
3. Break-even and cost analysis for planning and control of the business process.
2) The role of the POS system at Hard rock is that it counts every person who walks through the door. The system gathers information from what the customers buy or even if they just walk in. From this transaction, they then compile statistics on the average consumer. The statistics combined with data on weather, conventions and food/beverage costs affect the finalized forecasts. Since most of Hard Rock’s information is all gathered into one POS system, it becomes their core of all their strategies and basics for