Saturday, June 16, 2012
Do Your Servers Understand the Magic Minute?
As a customer, we all know what tends to happen to our mood when after being seated we wait and wait to be recognized by someone.
A good rule of thumb, is for your guests to be greeted within 60 seconds after being seated. Any longer than a minute and the potential for irritation and frustration increases geometrically with each passing second.
During a service program I was conducting, a lady told me how a manager had impressed upon her the importance of recognizing the magic minute. One afternoon the manager got all the servers together for a minute and just before it started, dashed out to get something in his office. He returned and asked each person to write down how long they have been waiting for him to return. Most servers wrote down 4-5 minutes or more when in fact he had gone exactly "one minute".
A person's perception of time can be very different from reality. Especially when you're waiting, wondering if you've been forgotten, time can seem to creep by very, very slowly.
What a simple, yet brilliant way to demonstrate how important it is to greet and recognize every guest's presence as quickly as possible, within one minute after being seated. After a minute, the magic of the moment starts to wear off and the mood at the table starts to turn downward.
Monday, February 6, 2012
The Food Production Process - Part 2
Structure of the Food Market
The path of food products from the grower or producer to the end user is quite complex. The route begins with the producers or growers, who sell their products to processors. Often, an intermediary (a concentrator) is necessary to gather the output of numerous, widely dipersed producers into transportable quantities. Concentrators maybe grain elevators, receiving plants, or cooperative marketing organizations, such as sunkist growers in California. Processors may be divided into primary processors such as flour mills and secondary producers such as bakers. Producer may use a food broker to sell their processed product. A broker is an independent sales agant who works on commission and does not take tittle to the goods. From the processor, the goods are shipped to major distribution centers and wholesellers around the country or region. The processor himself may maintain regional warehouses and act as wholeseller. The wholesellers are ussually specialized according to the markets they serve - institutional or retail stores. Institutional distributors may be specialized even further, dealing only with top quality hotels and restaurants or specializing in a very few products or just one product.
Although the marketing channel may vary somewhat for different types of food products, generally follows the same pattern. The restaurant or institutional buyer may buy the product at various stages in the channel. If he/she buys from a local farmer, he/she is buying from the producer. He/she may buy from a local or district office of the processor, or from a variety of wholeseller distributorss. He/she may even enter the channel farther down and buy from a few items from a retail store, although this is ussually a poor practice.
Marketing food products through channels is an enormous and costly task. Approximately 60 % of the consumer food dollar goes to the cost of marketing, and about 40% goes to the farmer. Labor has always been the largest cost in marketing, with transportation second. Packaging is another cost that is increasing in importance.
Marketing cost have been viewd suspiciously by the consumer and food service operator alike as pure profit to many unnecessary middlemen; but this middlemen provide the following important services: storage, grading, and identification of products, transportation, transfer of ownership, (buying and selling), packaging, advertising and financing.
(Part 3- Receiving and Store Management)
The Food Production Process - Part 1
Purchasing:
The character of the product the resulting product cost begin with the purchasing of the raw materials. Although poor preparation practices may destroy the quality of a good product, good preparation practices cannot instill quality where it never existed. The best menu merchandising policies cannot compensate for purchasing that is not alert to new products, new markets, and new trends. And cost control cannot be wholly effective in production or service if buying is inefficient.
Buying must always be judged by its overall effectiveness and never by price comparison alone. An item’s purchase price is only as important as the item itself; it may be five cents less per pound or 15 percent cheaper by price but 30 percent more expensive in actual yield. The buyer should be interested in the lowest price only when the items are comparable in quality and yield. Good buying procedures provide a food operation with the products most suited to its merchandising policy at the most economical price.
“Buying” is not to be confused with “ordering”. Buying involves making decisions and setting policies about what products to buy and how to buy them, approving the vendors to be used and determining the frequency of the purchases and the quantities to be bought. Ordering is clerical activity which is done within the buying policy.
There are two approaches to commercial food buying: the needs of the operation and the availability of products in the market. When the food service operation is located at some distance from a food distribution point, the buyer may have to begin with what is available to him and make adjustments in the menu and preparation accordingly. When product availability is not a problem, the buyer first analyses the needs of the operation and searches out the products he needs. Most often, the products ultimately purchased are a compromise between need and availability. Whatever the approach, the food buyer should have some understanding of the market in which he/she is dealing.
(Next Part 2- Structure of the Food Market)
The character of the product the resulting product cost begin with the purchasing of the raw materials. Although poor preparation practices may destroy the quality of a good product, good preparation practices cannot instill quality where it never existed. The best menu merchandising policies cannot compensate for purchasing that is not alert to new products, new markets, and new trends. And cost control cannot be wholly effective in production or service if buying is inefficient.
Buying must always be judged by its overall effectiveness and never by price comparison alone. An item’s purchase price is only as important as the item itself; it may be five cents less per pound or 15 percent cheaper by price but 30 percent more expensive in actual yield. The buyer should be interested in the lowest price only when the items are comparable in quality and yield. Good buying procedures provide a food operation with the products most suited to its merchandising policy at the most economical price.
“Buying” is not to be confused with “ordering”. Buying involves making decisions and setting policies about what products to buy and how to buy them, approving the vendors to be used and determining the frequency of the purchases and the quantities to be bought. Ordering is clerical activity which is done within the buying policy.
There are two approaches to commercial food buying: the needs of the operation and the availability of products in the market. When the food service operation is located at some distance from a food distribution point, the buyer may have to begin with what is available to him and make adjustments in the menu and preparation accordingly. When product availability is not a problem, the buyer first analyses the needs of the operation and searches out the products he needs. Most often, the products ultimately purchased are a compromise between need and availability. Whatever the approach, the food buyer should have some understanding of the market in which he/she is dealing.
(Next Part 2- Structure of the Food Market)
Thursday, February 2, 2012
The Food Production Process - Part 1
Purchasing:
The character of the product the resulting product cost begin with the purchasing of the raw materials. Although poor preparation practices may destroy the quality of a good product, good preparation practices cannot instill quality where it never existed. The best menu merchandising policies cannot compensate for purchasing that is not alert to new products, new markets, and new trends. And cost control cannot be wholly effective in production or service if buying is inefficient.
Buying must always be judged by its overall effectiveness and never by price comparison alone. An item’s purchase price is only as important as the item itself; it may be five cents less per pound or 15 percent cheaper by price but 30 percent more expensive in actual yield. The buyer should be interested in the lowest price only when the items are comparable in quality and yield. Good buying procedures provide a food operation with the products most suited to its merchandising policy at the most economical price.
“Buying” is not to be confused with “ordering”. Buying involves making decisions and setting policies about what products to buy and how to buy them, approving the vendors to be used and determining the frequency of the purchases and the quantities to be bought. Ordering is clerical activity which is done within the buying policy.
There are two approaches to commercial food buying: the needs of the operation and the availability of products in the market. When the food service operation is located at some distance from a food distribution point, the buyer may have to begin with what is available to him and make adjustments in the menu and preparation accordingly. When product availability is not a problem, the buyer first analyses the needs of the operation and searches out the products he needs. Most often, the products ultimately purchased are a compromise between need and availability. Whatever the approach, the food buyer should have some understanding of the market in which he/she is dealing.
(Next Part 2- Structure of the Food Market)
The character of the product the resulting product cost begin with the purchasing of the raw materials. Although poor preparation practices may destroy the quality of a good product, good preparation practices cannot instill quality where it never existed. The best menu merchandising policies cannot compensate for purchasing that is not alert to new products, new markets, and new trends. And cost control cannot be wholly effective in production or service if buying is inefficient.
Buying must always be judged by its overall effectiveness and never by price comparison alone. An item’s purchase price is only as important as the item itself; it may be five cents less per pound or 15 percent cheaper by price but 30 percent more expensive in actual yield. The buyer should be interested in the lowest price only when the items are comparable in quality and yield. Good buying procedures provide a food operation with the products most suited to its merchandising policy at the most economical price.
“Buying” is not to be confused with “ordering”. Buying involves making decisions and setting policies about what products to buy and how to buy them, approving the vendors to be used and determining the frequency of the purchases and the quantities to be bought. Ordering is clerical activity which is done within the buying policy.
There are two approaches to commercial food buying: the needs of the operation and the availability of products in the market. When the food service operation is located at some distance from a food distribution point, the buyer may have to begin with what is available to him and make adjustments in the menu and preparation accordingly. When product availability is not a problem, the buyer first analyses the needs of the operation and searches out the products he needs. Most often, the products ultimately purchased are a compromise between need and availability. Whatever the approach, the food buyer should have some understanding of the market in which he/she is dealing.
(Next Part 2- Structure of the Food Market)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Right And Left-Brain Management Style
Different management styles can originate from the left or the right side of the brain. The left side has an irritating devotion to numbers, analysis, logic, etc, concerning itself with cash flow and the dire consequences of mismanagement of finances. The right side deals with more romantic ideas and imagination rules.
Right and left-brain Management Styles
Have a look at this model of a company using left-brain management styles, called British Risk Aversion Plc, or BRA:
• New ideas are regularly dismissed
• The organization is not always concerned with external needs
• The emphasis within the organization is on problem solving
• Stability and experience are the most valued attributes within the company
• The good of the organization is put before the success of the individual
• Command and control are the dominant processes
• It is practically impossible to change the corporate mind-set
Now compare with this model of a right-brain company, ACE – Adventure Corporation of Europe:
• Creativity and new ideas are welcomed
• The company focuses mainly on the needs of the customer
• The emphasis is on taking advantage of new opportunities
• Motivation and innovation are among the most valued attributes
• The company's aims and those of individuals are largely aligned
• All staff are granted autonomy and are able to show their initiative
• Minds and policies regularly change, according to circumstance
ACE is much more fun place to work than BRA and much more likely to embrace the new because the whole outfit is geared up to do just that.
However judging by a show of hands, members of an audience I addressed recently were more likely to work in a company resembling BRA rather than ACE.
The measured prudence of BRA has to be combined with the dynamic venturism of ACE for a knockout left-right combination of management styles.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Passion for a Better World
Too often our sensibilities are assaulted and bludgeoned by all that seems bad in the world -the T.V. bulletins of the day's horrors, the full, graphic story we get by watching the eleven o'clock news.
in reference to:"Too often our sensibilities are assaulted and bludgeoned by all that seems bad in the world - the T.V. bulletins of the day's horrors, the full, graphic story we get by watching the eleven o'clock news."
- The Greatest Gift (view on Google Sidewiki)
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