Improving Food and Beverage Performance (Hospitality Managers' Pocket Books)

395 Pages·1996·23.05 MB·English

by  Keith Waller

Improving Food and
Beverage Performa nce
I would like to thank the following colleagues for their
support throughout the preparation of this text: Jane
Shaw, Beverley Hopping, Sean Mooney and Mike Coyle.
Peter Blair, a friend and colleague now sadly departed,
deserves a special mention. To many of us Peter was
a guiding light, a true caterer of the 'old school' whose
knowledge and understanding was continuously
adapted to the modern industry. The abiding message
being that whilst there is always something new that we
can learn from, we do not necessarily need to discard
the lessons (good practice) of the past.
Keith Wa Il er
Improving Food and
Beverage Performa nce
Keith WaIler
H
E I N E M A N N
Butterworth-Heinemann
Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP
A division of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd
@A member of the Reed Elsevier plc group
OXFORD BOSTON JOHANNESBURG
MELBOURNE NEW DELHI SINGAPORE
First published 1996
0 Keith Waller 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in
any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by
electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some
other use of this publication) without the written permission of the
copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, YO Tottenham Court Road, London,
England W1P YHE. Applications for the copyright holder’s written
permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed
to the publishers
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7506 2812 X
Typesetting and artwork origination by
David Gregson Associates, Beccles, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn
Contents
Preface vii
Introduction ix
1 Customer-centred performance improvement 1
2 Developing operational policy 40
3 Marketing 73
4 Merchandising 122
5 Quality 150
6 Product and service development 192
7 Systems management 256
8 Efficient staffing 313
9 Summary 361
Bibliography 364
Index 367
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Preface
There are many writers who have shared with us their knowl-
edge and understanding of the hospitality industry. Many
more have written on the wider, more general, principles of
management. The opportunity to compare and contrast ideas
that the written word provides should not be undervalued.
Reading, both general and specific (research) should be
encouraged in all walks of life, particularly in business. Some
authors have managed to achieve ‘cult’ status and their writ-
ings are eagerly sought out as providing the ‘secrets’ of
success. But, when looking for an author that produces the
‘best’ advice, I turn not to any of my contemporaries nor to
any lengthy tome of technical jargon and detail.
Success in business, as in life, is all about finding solutions
to problems. The ‘key’ to finding the right solution is to ask
the right questions. Rudyard Kipling, in his Just So verses,
provided us with the simplest and soundest advice in this
regard.
Taken from ‘The Elephant’s Child’:
I keep six honest serving-men.
(They taught me all I know);
Their names are What and Why and When
and How and Where and Who.
Rudyard Kipling
...
viii Preface
Kipling is telling us that good management is not a case of
knowing all the right answers but rather the culture of an
enquiring mind. Like a doctor, a good manager will attempt
to identify and treat the cause of illness rather than over-
medicate or mask the symptoms. The objective of good
‘health care’, in business as in life, is to avoid the need for
major surgery by regular and effective screening. A
programme of health care, for each operation, may be
designed by effective managers using a series of ‘screening’
tests, based on the ‘Kipling technique’ in order to identify
potential problems at the earliest opportunity thus enabling
preventative treatment.
Keith Waller
Introduction
The hospitality industry serves to meet two main objectives:
1 Ensuring a return on investment for the owners.
2 Provision of products and services for the consumer.
Response to these objectives is based on the management of a
number of resources, the possible permutations of which
provide for almost infinite variety of activity. It has been
common, in some circles, to try to make sense of the
hospitality industry by categorizing provision under various
sectors.
Thus there have been many attempts to classify the various
sectors of the hospitality industry and the way in which
operations respond in terms of service style. Unfortunately,
operators steadfastly refuse to co-operate, constantly invent-
ing unique and novel approaches which defy current rules of
classification. Distinguishing characteristics are more diffuse
and the lines separating one sector from another have become
more blurred. While counter service would once have been
the domain of the cafeteria, customer ‘involvement’ is now a
significant part of the system in all forms of catering and at all
levels. The choice of silver service as an appropriate system of
delivery (style of service) is now much more a response to
specific customer need than it is representative of one parti-
cular sector of the industry.
Traditionally there has been a tendency to differentiate
between the welfare and commercial sectors of our industry,
primarily on the basis that one was earning a profit and the