Study of Entrepreneurial Motivation and Key Success Factors of Garden Restaurants-A Case Study on “Lowgu’s Home” Garden Restaurant

• Main Authors: Guan-Ru Li, 李冠儒
• Other Authors: Wu-Chung Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/522g5p

碩士 === 國立高雄餐旅大學 === 餐旅管理研究所在職專班 === 103 === With the fast-pace lives of modern people along with economic development, garden restaurants have become a trend of leisure. How to create a garden restaurant for the masses has become a popular topic. Lowgu’s Home is one of the few large-scale garden restaurants with landscapes in Southern Taiwan, and it has successfully operated for 8 years in Meinong. The main differences between this study and past studies of garden restaurants are: (1) Meinong’s geographical location: garden landscaping can be imitated and replicated, but Meinong's natural environment is unique, (2) large landscapes combined with art projects: past garden restaurants rarely incorporated art pieces, and (3) cooperation with universities: owner’s cooperation with universities in the beginning stages of establishing the restaurant has influenced Lowgu’s success. The purpose of this study is to understand the origin, entrepreneurial motivation, key operational success factors, and challenges of Lowgu’s Home in order to make suggestions to the industry. The study will provide operational strategy recommendations that can serve as a reference for similar Taiwanese restaurants. This qualitative research is based on in-depth interviews with the owners, employees and customers, as well as an on-site field study of the restaurant for triangulation. The study integrates grounded theory to explore Lowgu’s Home’s entrepreneurial motivation and key success factors in combining gardening and restaurant. The study has five main findings: (1) Start-up background: catering related background and interest in gardening. (2) Entrepreneurial motivation: changes in family business spurred the founder of the restaurant to start working with National Kaohsiung University of Hospitality and Tourism (NKUHT) through a friend’s introduction, and he decided to become an entrepreneur. (3) Key success factors: uniqueness that is difficult to imitate, industry cooperation and business guidance from NKUHT, no rent as operational location is family owned, and regular maintenance of garden landscapes to ensure customer satisfaction of the garden restaurant experience. (4) Business strategy: high quality word-of-mouth marketing and group reservations from special customers like motorbike gatherings and Tzu Chi vegetarian groups. (5) Problems and difficulties: hard to find talent in rural areas, local culture does not really attract local customers, differences in ideals of family management, and steady growth but low profit margins. Therefore, this paper presents a study on entrepreneurial motivation and key success factors of garden restaurants with natural landscapes.