1.0 Introduction to Report
The Masuba Japanese Restaurant is located at the commercial block of Taylor’s Lakeside Campus’ Commercial block. The Matsuba Japanese restaurant is the only restaurant that promote primary on Japanese food in the campus. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to study how the restaurants operate, solve issues faced by the restaurant to improve the quality of their service and also study the background of the restaurant.

In this report contains the discussion about the operation of Matsuba Japanese Restaurant. Moreover, the report will discuss the problems and provide solutions regarding to the problems faced. The objectives of this report are to give additional solutions to the problems faced by the restaurant owner and how to further improve the situation and also the restaurant.

2.0 The Matsuba Japanese Restaurant
2.1 Introduction
The first Matsuba restaurant was set up 16 years is to introduce Japanese food to Malaysia with the main purpose of earning profits. The Matsuba Japanese restaurant in the Taylor’s Lakeside Campus was set up in 2012 to promote and introduce Japanese food to the staff and students in the Taylor’s Lakeside campus. Moreover, the aim of the restaurant is to serve Japanese food at a reasonable price.

2.2 Background of the company
The Matsuba Japanese restaurant was founded by the brother in law of Ms Ann which is the current manager of the Matsuba restaurant in Taylor’s Lakeside Campus. The restaurant starts up as a partnership business with the brother in law and a relative of Ms Ann. The restaurant begins their first operation 16 years ago in the year 1998 on their main branch at Sri Hartamas in Kuala Selangor. The restaurant has two other outlets, one is located in Selayang in Kuala Selangor and the newest outlet which opened up on year2012 located at Taylor’s Lakeside Campus. Currently, the main branch is managed by the brother in law of Ms Ann which is the main owner of the Matsuba restaurant. The Selayang branch is managed by the relative of Ms Ann and the Branch at Taylos’ campus is managed by Ms Ann herself.

2.3 Operating Hours
The Matsuba restaurant of the Taylor’s Lakeside Campus operates from Monday to Saturday every week from 10am to 8pm. The employees hired by the restaurant are split into different shift of working hours, first shift starts from 10am to 3pm and the second shift starts from 3pm to 8pm.

3.0 The Matsuba Japanese Restaurant Marketing strategies
3.1 Products
The Matsuba restaurant focuses on the appearance of the food served which is based on how the original Japanese restaurant did it. According to Griep (2010) “The three essentials of food presentation is good preparation and cooking techniques and visual sense.” The food served at Matsuba is very traditional as they followed how the Japanese served the food which captivates the original taste of the food. The Matsuba restaurant introduces new dishes to their customer based on the ingredients they can come across. For example, some ingredients can only be acquired on a certain season in a year.

Figure 1: Elements of Product (Lars, 2008).
The figure above shows that the product that will succeed should have features which in this case the features of the originality of Japanese food and also the awareness of the cateogory of food service they are involved.

3.2 Price
The price of the food at Matsuba is relative cheap as they are determined by the cost of the ingredient obtained. The price is set at a price which is not regularly altered as they don’t wish to change the menu too often as it is too costly to do so. Moreover, the Matsuba Japanese restaurant also provides meals for their customers at lower price. This method is called the product bundle pricing which is defined as “the combination of several products and offering the bundle at a reduced price” quoted from Kotler and Armstrong (2010). At a regular basis, discounts are given to customers for trying out their new dishes and also given to the regular customers of Matsuba.

3.3 Place
The Matsuba was initially set up in Taylor’s Lakeside Campus as the customers who prefer Japanese food are the student and also Matsuba restaurant was offer a place in the commercial block. The Matsuba have three outlets scatter around Selangor Darul Ehsan, which is located at Sri Hartamas, Selayang and Taylor’s Lakeside Campus at Subang Jaya. The outlets are designed by one of the owners based on how Japanese does it. The opportunity given to the Matsuba restaurant has placed themselves in the middle of their targeted crowd. As said by Kerin et al. (2006) place of distribution played an important role as the value of convienient distribution is highly recognized in satisfying the market.

3.4 Promotion
The Matsuba restaurant provides promotional sets all day round at a special price for the comfort of the student at the Lakeside campus. The dishes are promoted via mouth to mouth communication between the customers. This promotional method is successful as they are dealing with lots of student in the campus, yielding tons of interactions. Moreover, special offers are provided to the regular customers to build good wills and also as a part of promoting their meals. The Matsuba restaurant is practicing relationship marketing, which emphasizes on creating customers satisfaction which will build and maintain long-term relationship and profit of their business. (Kotler et al, 2010)

4.0 Communication
4.1 Internal Communication
4.11 Managers
Managers assigned to each outlet are given free will to decide their own task based on their capabilities but the goals of the restaurant remains the same. The decisions are made by discussion between the managers which will gather around for a meeting regularly and when it is necessary to solve issues regarding feedbacks from customers. From start, the managers are given internal training to cope the new environment and also how to comprehend the culture. According to Lipman (2012) “Respected well-trained managers boost morale, and improved morale boosts retention.” Therefore, it is beneficial to the business.

4.12 Employees
According to Mishra et al 2014, pp. 183-202, “Internal communication is important for building a culture of transparency between management and employees, and it can engage employees in the organization’s priorities.” The communication between employees is highly focused by the restaurant as they build the relationship to make the employees feel like a family. This helps the employees to perform more efficient and more comfortable. Thus, the communications between the employees are mouth to mouth with is a more direct communication.

4.2 External Communication
4.21 Customers
The customers of Matsuba often give feedback regarding improvement to the meal which focuses on the taste of their food. The communication between customers is essential as the customers are helping to promote the meals and dishes of the Matsuba to the others. “Effective communication ensures your product or service meets the customer's immediate needs” quoted from Joseph (anon).

4.22 Suppliers
The Matsuba restaurant basically order their ingredients at a once a day basis to give their customers the best food from fresh ingredients. The orders are placed using Fax for most of the ingredients needed and most of the time the orders are in bulk. The relationship the suppliers are quite close as they are involve in business together in a long period of time. According to Reiss (2010) the supplier is part of the strategic for every company since the service and product orientation is dependent on the suppliers.

5.0 Problems
The customers give complaints about their food from their customers which mostly consist of Taylor’s University’s staffs. They are currently no competitors in the Lakeside campus outlet but there are competitors in the main outlet. Bailey (2012) mentioned “The companies that will thrive however are the ones whose employees communicate and collaborate effectively with customers, colleagues, suppliers and partners.” There is communication issue between the employees which is the language barriers as the foreign employees do not understand local languages. For example, they have employees from Myanmar who only speak their native language. Lastly, there are conflicts arise between the employees as the workloads are looked differently.

6.0 Recommendation
6.1 Provide Replacement for the Dishes or Refunds
The resolve the issue of unsatisfactory of their customer due to their food served, the Matsuba restaurant should provide a replacement for the food serve or refund their customers in terms of cash. By doing so, they can build a better customer relationship and make sure the customers would give their restaurant another chance in the future after the incident.

6.2 Provide English Language Class
The Matsuba Japanese restaurant can offer their foreign employees to attend an English language class for a period of time to help their staff to understand the communication in their work place. Moreover, by providing them with an English course, their employees will work more efficiently and fewer conflicts will happen as the issue caused is more to the misunderstandings between employees.

6.3 Compute a Well Planned Schedule and Issue Warning Letters
The problems with the workload that are looked differently by the employees can be resolved by computing a work plan schedule that describes who is performing which tasked and also a statement of work tasks for each employees. With this schedule which will be placed on a location where all the employees can access, this will create a mutual understandings between the employees and conflict arouse due to workload will be drastically reduce. If the problem persists, they can consider on giving out warning letters to their employees which will be given in stages. The warning letter come in as a first waning followed by the second and third which the third warning would be asking that employee to leave.

7.0 Conclusion
The Matsuba Japanese restaurant is the only restaurant that serves Japanese food in Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus. The outlet here is the third outlet under the name of Matsuba Japanese restaurant opened 2 years ago in the year 2012.
The marketing strategies of Matsuba Japanese restaurant from the view of product is that they focuses on the appearance and the taste of Japanese food based on their origin. The price of the meals there are set according to the price of the ingredients and discounts are given to their regular customers for trying out new dishes. The Matsuba Japanese restaurant has placed them in a strategic location whereby the focus of crowds is mostly students which are fonder to Japanese cuisine. Their main promotional methods are via their customers which is using social network. The more their customers know about the place, the wider they promote.
The communication between employees is through words of mouth where it is more direct and makes their employees feel like a part of them. The managers regularly held meeting to discuss on the improvement or any major decision with their restaurant. The customers provide feedback regarding their food to the manager of the restaurant which serves as building good relationship between the customers and also promoting their restaurant. Lastly, the Matsuba Japanese restaurant builds a good relationship with their suppliers as they ordered ingredients very frequently.

The problems faced by the Matsuba Japanese restaurant are having some customers’ complaints and to resolve that, it is recommended to offer a replacement to their meals or giving a refund. Next the problem arises from their employees due to language barrier between them as some of their employees are foreigners which only speak their languages. Therefore, it is recommended to give their employees language classes to improve their understandings. Finally, the problem is with the different workload among employees which the employees are unsatisfied with their work task. Recommended actions to be taken are to provide a properly scheduled work plan and giving out warning letters if conflicts happen.