Food For Pondering - Is Your Meals And Drink Establishment Being Dealt With Prop

Posted by Mariko on January 21st, 2021

I consume food. I consume beverages.

For that reason, I am certified to manage a Food and Beverage operation.

In examining the operations of many clubs/resorts every month, I discover that a person of the most badly operated, irregular locations of club/resort operations is Food and Drink. Especially in member owned environments, which are often managed by a club board, people appear to believe that due to the fact that they eat in restaurants, they in some way have some level of proficiency that enables them to make service choices about this important element of the club. The reality is that this is one of the most complicated departments in a club to handle, control, and produce a constant experience.

Let's ask a couple of questions!

Is your Food and Drink experience proper for what your members/guests wish to have in your club/resort? Are you priced properly, too high, or too low? How do you understand? Are you tracking cover counts by day? By shift? By hour?

Are your food selections stuck in the past, a nice balance of old favorites and brand-new selections, or edgy? Is your menu designed for function or fashion? Do you change your menu quarterly, or at least semi-annually to keep it fresh? Or is it altered every year or two and end up being a club dinosaur? What are your item specs and part sizes? Is every item on your menu costed? What is your objective for a la carte food cost? Do you know the contribution margin on every product on your menu?

What about your special events. Are they really unique? Do they create a buzz in the Club? Are they eagerly anticipated or the very same thing that was done the last 10 years with nothing more than the year changed in the newsletter and advertising piece promoting the occasion? Is your staff challenged every quarter to attempt new events? New rate points?

Got Worth?

What about value added programs? It's happening every day in the hospitality market. Chili's, Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, Flemings, Cody's Roadhouse, McDonalds, Quiznos, Subway, and many other national franchises are actively programming to keep people being available in. Any question the success rate of franchises is over 90% while the success rate of separately owned dining establishments is about 10%?

What are you carrying out in your club to produce a "WOW" for your members/guests in your Food and Beverage offerings? Are you standing pat on your filet and sea bass questioning why you are doing so couple of covers? Or, are you attempting brand-new principles that may offer "meal replacement" dining instead of just "unique occasion" dining?

Something as simple as Happy Hour can produce extra use. Home cooking such as meatloaf, chicken pot pie, lasagna, or comparable for" at or throughout the week are popular. Taco bars, pasta bars, hamburger night, half cost on bottles of house white wine, Fresh Fish Fridays or a Friday Fish Fry, a Chef's choice at a special rate on slower nights, sushi nights, appetisers at a special cost, entertainment, and many other ideas and occasions drive use, supply incremental revenue, and keep the staff working. Are you try out brand-new occasions in your club/resort? Offer it a try. You'll be surprised at the buzz it creates.

The Experience

How is your dining-room provided? With white table linens? No tablecloths? Placemats? Are you charging properly for the experience you are providing?

How are your buffets presented? Elegantly with skirting, flower display screens, and glossy silver chafing meals? Or rudimentary with little or no frills? Does it make sense?

Do you have requirements of operation to make sure the food and beverage experience for your members/guests? Is every employee using a clean and pushed designated uniform? Is there a particular way to present menus, serve, food, cocktails, and white wine? Are members called by name? Specify actions of service in place?

Does the service personnel understand the composition of every product, sauce, and part size from the menu? Is training offered at least regular monthly? Is your personnel offering suggestively?

The Technical Aspects

How often do you take a physical inventory? Is there "independence" in the stock procedure to make sure that the counts are precise? Is inventory rates changed frequently to reflect the most recent cost the club is spending for all inventoried items or is the cost the club paid in 2015 still being used to determine stock value?

Do you follow this mantra when receiving and inventorying items?

If you purchase it by the pound, weigh it. If you buy it by the piece, count it. If you purchase it by ounce or length, measure it? Under no situations, accept it blindly.

I am impressed at how frequently deliveries are accepted and signed for without even physically remaining in the exact same space as the items that were provided not to mention examining the packing slip or invoice versus the goods got. Delivery people become smart very quickly to those who hold them accountable and those who do not. A few pounds of missing out on steak here or a few bottles of missing out on alcohol there costs a lot of cash over an extended period of time.

How much unusable food is stashed away in the freezer, frequently a chef's best friend, and continues to be counted each month throughout stock yet is essentially worth little or nothing?

What does the organizational structure look like in your club's F&B operation? How are your supervisors compensated? Are they incented to produce a particular monetary outcome, train the staff, and maintain requirements? Or are they paid merely for revealing up?

How is your service staff paid? By hourly wage? Suggestion pool? Some combination home & garden of both? Does your pay structure promote period or turnover? What about overtime? Are you paying overtime? Lawfully?

In addition to costing every product on every menu, have you done the same for liquor, beer, and red wine? Do you have defined pour sizes? Are they being stuck to? Do you have pourers which enable only for the pour size for which you are charging? Just how much of your club's resort's money is bound in red wine stock? Have you established par stocks?

Do you have a Food and Drink minimum? Does it make good sense for your club? Do you have a minimum month-to-month service fee? Should you?

Do you offer a staff member meal? How is it accounted for? Is it accounted for at all? Do you enable workers to remove food/beverage from the club? (A bad idea!). Do you permit your staff members to consume alcoholic beverages at the end of a shift? (An even worse idea!!).

Personal Occasions

What about your Private Events? Is your catering menu priced right? What does priced best mean? Have you evaluated the competitive environment? What are you doing to bring weddings and meetings to the club/resort? Are you covering the costs of establishing and breaking down every space based upon the varying needs of each occasion?

Do your private event policies make sense? When is the "assurance' due? When is payment in full needed? Do you require a signed contract? Do you even have a contract that you need be signed?

A Solution

Lots of concerns! Get a management company that will work collaboratively with you to respond to all of these and any others and create a customized food and beverage experience that reflects your special scenario and offers what your members/guests want and want to pay for.