BusinessDay 04 Feb 2018

Sunday 04 February 2018
BD SUNDAY 29
SundayBusiness
Food &
Beverages
With
Ayo Oyoze Baje
The compelling attraction
of the brilliant colours
of orange and yellow
pull the first time
visitor into an alluring
ambience of the wave-making
eatery. Call it a fast food restaurant,
or Quick Service Restaurant
(QSR), like its predecessors such
as Mr. Bigg’s, Sweet Sensation,
Chicken Republic, Tantalizers, and
Tastee Fried Chicken their menu
and top-range services have a
combined centripetal force on the
bulgy purses of the novaeu riche
of the urban society.
The term, “fast food” which
was first recognized in a dictionary
by Merriam–Webster in 1951
connotes the unique culinary experience
of both the preparation
and presentation of their dishes.
From the business perspective,
“fast food restaurants are typically
part of a restaurant chain or fran-
Ideas
Nwaodu Lawrence
Chukwuemeka
IDEAS Exchange
Consulting, Lagos.
email - nwaodu.
lawrence@hotmail.co.uk
Cell: 07066375847.
The “Bribery Game” was the
usual institutional punishment
public goods game
with the punishing leader,
but with one additional choice—
players could not only keep money
for themselves or contribute to the
public pool, they could also contribute
to the leader. And the leader
could not only punish or not punish,
they could instead accept that
contribution. What happened? On
average, we saw contributions fall
by 25% compared to the game without
bribery as an option. More than
double what the pound has fallen
against the USD since Brexit (~12%.
Fine, bribery is costly. The World
Bank estimates $1 trillion is paid
in bribes alone; in Kenya, 8 out of
10 interactions with public officials
involves a bribe, and as pointed out
What Mega Chicken eatery brings to the table
chise operation that provisions
standardized ingredients and/or
partially prepared foods and supplies
to each restaurant through
controlled supply channels”.
In their traditional niche, QSRs
serve fast food cuisines cooked
in bulk in advance and kept hot,
presented from a limited menu.
Though it is packaged to order
and usually available for ‘take
away’, well arranged seats are also
provided for those who wish to savour
the cozy and cool surrounding,
spiced with soft, soul-lifting
music that combine to delight the
senses of sight and hearing.
The question that came to mind
was obvious- what new cuisines,
services and initiatives would
Mega Chicken would bring to the
Nigerian culinary experience,
especially making its foray, with
both KFC and on its toe? And
what about having to operate in
a rather inclement business environment,
characterized by the
economic recession? The answer
is not far-fetched.
Mega Chicken Restaurants
(MCR) Ltd came into reality after
the cross-pollination of ideas by
some eggheads called the ‘country
builders’ with the noble aim
to develop a first class Fast Food,
Chinese and Continental restaurants
of unbeatable taste and
quality. To expand its customer
base it was meant ab initio to accommodate
low, middle and high
class customers. The concept is to
be relevant in the food and hospitality
industry so as to appeal to
all nationals; for them to always
feel at home wherever they may
be . At Mega Chicken Restaurants
Ltd, the verdant vision is: “To give
the experience of excitement and
offering unparalleled quality in
service delivery”.
With branches located at
Festac area, Eti-osa, Lekki-Epe
Express road, Ikota, Ajah, Lagos
and Agidingbi-Ikeja axis they
provide quality and affordable local
and continental dishes. These
include economy and filling varieties
of food items like chicken
joints, burgers, pizza, snacks and
other ice-cream products like
crushers with variety of flavors.
The variety of the dishes are for
Delivery, Dine Out or Take-away.
The delicacies are prepared for
families, associations, groups and
Kids who want to have a swell
time out. With PoS available,
the ease of payment for products
and services is guaranteed. The
location of the Festac branch
opposite the fun Funderland
Mall, is appealing as families
and friends come over to enjoy
a quick meal between adventure
games. A first time visitor noticed
that “their service delivery is on
par with the nice meals, and you
might get discount offers and
loyalty rewards if you become a
regular customer”.
The feedback so far is heartwarming
for the owners. For
instance, one
Alexander Osondu had this to
say after a treat on 12th November,2017.
Said he:“They have great
prices, very sumptuous meals and
a courteous staff”. On his part, one
Mr. Joszef Yong praised their efforts
with the words:” Captivating,
I could perceive the aroma from
the car park. The prices are reasonable
enough. And the food is
very tasty”. That was after having
a great time out on 9th November
last year.
Also in the same month, one
Mr. Ayoola Afolabi gushed: “Tasteful
cuisines. They have a special
rice called Mega rice and it is quite
tasteful” Not left out was Buren
Obi who said that Mega Chicken
has:“Well priced good food ranging
from fast food to local dishes
and intercontinental cuisines”.
That was for the men.
The women also have words
of commendation for the QSR.
Back in August of last year, Kafilat
Emmanuel said: “The food here is
pretty good. They provide a wide
range of options, including breakfast
in the morning. They pay
attention to quality and customer
service, with a rep available to take
and remedy complaints”. And Chi
Amaka , without mincing words
said that this is “a cool eatery with
different dishes to choose from.
Good service rendered also, you’ll
definitely enjoy food bought or
time spent there, cheers!!!”
All these accolades notwithstanding,
some customers have
urged the company to reduce its
price of bread and institute better
crowd control to save precious
time. Even then, as the competition
intensifies amongst the industry
players it should also prepare
for eventualities as only an innovative
approach to its operations
would keep it afloat and smiling.
For instance, back in 2014 a
through appraisal of the QSR
Bribery, corruption and the evolution of prosocial institutions: Part 2
in the paper, most of humanity—6
billion people—live in nations with
high levels of corruption. The model
also reveals that unlike the typical
institutional punishment public
goods game, where stronger institutions
mean that more cooperation
can be sustained, when bribery
is an option, stronger institutions
mean more bribery. A small bribe
multiplied by the number of players
will make you a lot richer than your
share of the public good!
So can it be fixed? The usual
answer is transparency. There are
also some interesting approaches,
like tying a leader’s salary to the
country’s GDP—the Singaporean
model. So what happened when
these strategies are introduced?
Well, when the public goods multiplier
was high (economic potential—potential
to make money using
legitimate means—was high) or the
institution had power to punish,
then contributions went up. Not to
levels without bribery as an option,
but higher. But in poor contexts
with weak punishing institutions,
transparency had no effect or
backfired. As did the Singaporean
model. Why?
Consider what transparency does.
It tells us what people are doing. But
as psychological and cultural evolutionary
research reveals, this solves
a common knowledge problem and
reveals the descriptive norm—what
people are doing. For it to have any
hope of changing behavior, we need
a prescriptive or proscriptive norm
against corruption. Without this,
transparency just reinforces that
everyone is accepting bribes and
you had be a fool not to. People who
have lived in corrupt countries will
have felt this frustration first hand.
There’s a sense that it’s not about
bad apples—the society is broken in
ways that are sometimes difficult to
articulate. But societal norms are not
arbitrary. They are adapted to the
local environment and influenced
by historical contexts. In the experiment,
the parameters created the environment.
If there really is no easy
way to legitimately make money and
the state doesn’t have the power to
punish free-riders, then bribery really
is the right option. So even among
Canadians, admittedly some of the
nicest people in the world, in these
in-game parameters, corruption
was difficult to eradicate. When
the country is poor and the state
has no power, transparency doesn’t
tell you not to pay a bribe, it solves
a different problem—it tells you the
price of the bribe. Not “should I pay”,
but “how much”?
There were some other nuances
to the experiment that deserve follow
up. If we had played the game
in Cameroon instead of Canada,
we suspect baseline bribery would
have been higher. Indeed, people
with direct exposure to corruption
norms encouraged more corruption
in the game controlling for ethnic
background. And those with an
ethnic background that included
more corrupt countries, but without
direct exposure were actually
better cooperators than the third
generation+ Canadians. These results
may reveal some of the effects
of migration and historical path
dependence. Of course, great caution
is required in applying these
results to the messiness of the real
world. A further investigation into
these cultural patterns is hoped to
be carried out in future work.
The experiment also reveals
that corruption may be quite high
in developed countries, but its costs
aren’t as easily felt. Leaders in richer
nations like the United States may
accept “bribes” in the form of lobbying
or campaign funding and
these may indeed be costly for the
efficiency of the economy, but it
may be the difference between a
city building 25 or 20 schools. In
a poor country similar corruption
may be the difference between a
city building 3 or 1 school. Five is
more than 3, but 3 is three times
more than 1. In a rich nation, the
cost of corruption may be larger
in absolute value, but in a poorer
nation, it may be larger in relative
value and felt more acutely.
The take home is that cooperation
and corruption are two sides of
the same coin; different scales of cooperation
competing. This approach
gives us a powerful theoretical and
empirical toolkit for developing a
framework for understanding corruption,
why some states succeed
and others fail, why some oscillate,
and the triggers that may lead to
failed states succeeding and successful
states failing.
Our cultural evolutionary biases
lead us to look for whom to learn
from and perhaps whom to avoid.
They lead us to blame individuals
sub sector of the food industry
revealed their dwindling fortunes.
Tantalizers was not the only one so
hit. Before Tiger Brand bought equity
in the fast food arm of United
African Company Nigeria (UACN),
Mr. Bigg’s, its QSR, was under
threat. Even after the intervention,
it was not clear if it has returned to
the path of profitability, as some of
its outlets at some service stations
were closing down.
The way forward is for pragmatic
partnerships between the
QSRs and farmers who supply
some of their raw materials. Nothing
stops any of them from engaging
in backward integration policy
of the IBB era. A company such as
UAC with its Grand Cereals and
Oil Mills (GCOML) Ltd in Jos could
reduce the cost of production by
this means.
Therefore, as Mega Chicken
forges ahead, it should synergize
with the suppliers of its inputs.
Also, state and federal governments
should take a look on ways
to assist the industry to grow. Provision
of stable power supply, good
access roads as well as the Bank
of Industry (BoI) and streamlining
tax payment to avoid multiple
taxation would go a long way in
this direction.
Since the QSR has link with the
small and medium scale enterprises
(SMEs) and employs hundreds
of thousands of our youths, the
time for Public Private Partnership
(PPP) is today, not tomorrow.
Baje is Nigerian first Food
Technologist in the media
for corruption. But just as atrocities
are the acts of many humans
cooperating toward an evil end,
corruption is a feature of a society
not individuals.
Indeed, corruption is arguably
easier to understand than my fearless
acceptance of my anonymous
barista’s coffee. Our tendency to
favor those who share copies of
our genes—a tendency all animals
share—lead to both love of family
and nepotism. Putting our buddies
before others is as ancient as our
species, but it creates inefficiencies
in a meritocracy. Innovation are
often the result of applying wellestablished
approaches in one area
to the problems of another. We
hope the science of cooperation
and cultural evolution will give us
new tools in combating corruption.
Putting aside what it means for
something to be natural for our species,
suffice to say these are recent
inventions in our evolutionary
history, by no means culturally
universal, and not shared by our
closest cousins. Genes that identify
and favor copies of themselves will
spread. Helping those who help
you. The United Nations Human
Development Index ranks the
United States 10th in the world.
Liberia is 177th.
Temporal discounting the degree
to which we value the future
less than the present. Our tendency
to value the present over the future
is one reason we don’t yet have
Moon or Mars colonies, but the
degree to which we do this varies
from society to society.