Restaurant

[rahul.s]

A negative review of a popular restaurant claimed that the wait staff was rude and the food was overpriced. This review caused sales to drop precipitously which, in turn, forced the original owners to sell the business. The new owners revised the menu and dismissed most of the wait staff. After three months, however, sales had improved by less than 1%.

Which of the following, if true, forms the best basis for at least a partial explanation of why sales at the restaurant have not improved?

A) The new owners could not determine who were the rudest members of the wait staff.
B) New menu items offered by the new owners are now more affordable.
C) The new owners neglected to advertise the fact that the restaurant is now under new management.
D) The new owners began managing the restaurant during the summer, when sales are unusually high.
E) Another restaurant with similarly-priced menu items opened across the street

[spoiler]OA's C, but why not E? It asks for a partial explanation, and a new resto across the street would provide an excellent reason for the low sales, would it not?[/spoiler]

I need your reasoning

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

A negative review of a popular restaurant claimed that the wait staff was rude and the food was overpriced. This review caused sales to drop precipitously which, in turn, forced the original owners to sell the business. The new owners revised the menu and dismissed most of the wait staff. After three months, however, sales had improved by less than 1%.

Which of the following, if true, forms the best basis for at least a partial explanation of why sales at the restaurant have not improved?

A) The new owners could not determine who were the rudest members of the wait staff.
B) New menu items offered by the new owners are now more affordable.
C) The new owners neglected to advertise the fact that the restaurant is now under new management.
D) The new owners began managing the restaurant during the summer, when sales are unusually high.
E) Another restaurant with similarly-priced menu items opened across the street

[spoiler]OA's C, but why not E? It asks for a partial explanation, and a new resto across the street would provide an excellent reason for the low sales, would it not?[/spoiler]

I need your reasoning

Is this an OG question?
I ask because it seems that both C and E have merits and problems.
C is okay, except advertising new ownership doesn't mean new (polite) staff and lower prices (the reason for the decline in the first place). For all we know, the new owners are keeping everything the same.
E is good in that we can assume that customers are drawn away from the other restaurant. My only problem with E is that the prices of the new restaurant are the same as the other restaurant, and apparently, prices were one reason for the decline in business.
Having said all of that, I think I prefer E.

[sumanr84]

E could be one of the reasons but of course not the best one I guess. Interesting thing to notice here is - similarly priced menu items in the competing restaurant.

If the prices are similar and rest all factors being the same, sales could have gone at least higher than 1%. The factor limiting the number of customers visiting the restaurant could be that they are not well informed regarding the recent changes that took place.So, I feel advertising is the main reason.
C seems to be the best option here.

[Yes.WeCan]

Why is it not E?

Because it says "Sales had IMPROVED by less than 1%". If a new similar restaurant is in town, I can think of no actual reasons why sales would still improve. I admit that if you would count the loss (new restaurant) and gain (new management) there could still be a very slight gain in sales, but if you'd compare that to C, I'd easily pick C.

[VikingWarrior]

My answer is C
E is ruled out as the passage gives no info about sales being "affected" because of competition however the passage clearly mentions that the sales dropped drastically because of the negative review rather than any other reason so it stands to logic that advertising the change would be the only way to reverse the effects.

[mmon]

I liked vikingwarrior's explanation. I think we need to be focused on mainly the argument stem. and that leads to C. E is definitely not wrong but not the best

[rahul.s]

A negative review of a popular restaurant claimed that the wait staff was rude and the food was overpriced. This review caused sales to drop precipitously which, in turn, forced the original owners to sell the business. The new owners revised the menu and dismissed most of the wait staff. After three months, however, sales had improved by less than 1%.

Which of the following, if true, forms the best basis for at least a partial explanation of why sales at the restaurant have not improved?

A) The new owners could not determine who were the rudest members of the wait staff.
B) New menu items offered by the new owners are now more affordable.
C) The new owners neglected to advertise the fact that the restaurant is now under new management.
D) The new owners began managing the restaurant during the summer, when sales are unusually high.
E) Another restaurant with similarly-priced menu items opened across the street

[spoiler]OA's C, but why not E? It asks for a partial explanation, and a new resto across the street would provide an excellent reason for the low sales, would it not?[/spoiler]

I need your reasoning

Is this an OG question?
I ask because it seems that both C and E have merits and problems.
C is okay, except advertising new ownership doesn't mean new (polite) staff and lower prices (the reason for the decline in the first place). For all we know, the new owners are keeping everything the same.
E is good in that we can assume that customers are drawn away from the other restaurant. My only problem with E is that the prices of the new restaurant are the same as the other restaurant, and apparently, prices were one reason for the decline in business.
Having said all of that, I think I prefer E.

i agree. the new owners may or may not have changed anything. but the q asks for a partial explanation, so both C and E are strong contenders. i came across this problem on a free test by gmatclub and though their math q's are excellent, i'm not sure about the quality of their verbal q's.

thank you for you input

[vijay_venky]

P1. NR claimed
1. staff was rude
2. food was overpriced.
P2. NR caused sales to drop precipitously.
P3. drop caused original owners to sell the buisiness.
P4. New owners
1. revised the menu.
2. dismissed most of the wait staff
P5. But the sales had only improved by less than 1%.

We need almost a resolve a paradox answer. Here the paradox is though things changed, no improvement was observed.

Clearly the question stem states that the negative review caused drop in sales. So it becomes imperative for the new management to advertise about the change in the ownership, menu and the staff to recoup the sales.

It would have been better if it had been stated in option C that the advertisement includes the changes that the new management have brought in to effect.

But I am a little skeptical of option C because of the presence of the word "similarly-priced". The emphasis in the question stem was laid on the fact that there was not even a 1% increase in the sales from the precipitous drop. And it is not likely for a similarly priced competitor to have that effect.

[komal]

A negative review of a popular restaurant claimed that the wait staff was rude and the food was overpriced. This review caused sales to drop precipitously which, in turn, forced the original owners to sell the business. The new owners revised the menu and dismissed most of the wait staff. After three months, however, sales had improved by less than 1%.

Which of the following, if true, forms the best basis for at least a partial explanation of why sales at the restaurant have not improved?

Since this is Resolve The Paradox type of question we can rule out any answer choice that addresses only one side of the issue.
Here the issue is (staff n price) due to negative review

A) The new owners could not determine who were the rudest members of the wait staff.
INCORRECT : This answer choice addresses only one side of the issue (staff). So I rule this out.

B) New menu items offered by the new owners are now more affordable.
INCORRECT : Same as (A), addresses only (price). Ruled out.

C) The new owners neglected to advertise the fact that the restaurant is now under new management.
CORRECT : Although not a very strong contender but this answer choice lets us assume that the issues (staff n price) could have been corrected by the new management. But failure to advertise (no attempt to make a change from negative review to positive review) led to minuscule improvement in sales.

D) The new owners began managing the restaurant during the summer, when sales are unusually high.
INCORRECT : Out of scope. Issue is not about high-sales but it is about low sales.

E) Another restaurant with similarly-priced menu items opened across the street
INCORRECT : I chose (C) over this because once again this answer choice addresses only one aspect of the problem (price) but does nothing to let us consider the second issue (staff)

Hope this helps : )

[sars72]

many seem to be having an issue as to why choice C is preferred over choice E. In my eyes, however, there is no doubt. C is the clear answer.

Let's summarize a couple of things:

Bad Review -> Drop in Sales -> Business Sold

The drop in sales was because of the bad review. People found out the restuarant was not all that is was made out to be and so stopped going there.

E) Another restaurant with similarly-priced menu items opened across the street

Similarly Priced Items -> So what? Who is to say the restaurant is more popular or even as popular becuase of the same price. We cannot assume the price is the underlying factor in choosing a restaurant.In fact, we cannot assume that the restaurant across the street even had any sales. We cannot assume anything about the new restaurany! Nothing! Nada!

C) The new owners neglected to advertise the fact that the restaurant is now under new management.

Ok, so this means that people are still under the impression that the business is still run by the same people & hence there would be no change in their perception towards the restuarant. Therefore since nothing has changed from the customer's viewpoint, then that would explain the negligible increase in sales despite the overhaul.


Hope this helps.


Now, lets go to ans choice (C)

[joseph32]

I will Go with option E in this case.