Week 8 - Wiki Assignment

Q1. Choose one topic about the restaurant operations you’re interested and explore more information about it.

We are going to dig deep into the food or kitchen production and have searched about the factors of ensuring food safety associated with kitchen production. Food safety is one of the upmost concerns of daily restaurant operations. Maintaining a clean kitchen production certainly helps ascertain the food safety for customers. 

Site Plan

A perfect site for a restaurant kitchen should be near to storm drain and garbage areas. Most restaurant owners do not the smell of garbage diffuses with the food aroma. A storm drain could be troublesome, too. When it is in the rainy season, rainwater ends up entering the drain and brings garbage to the nearby area of restaurant.

Floor Plan

This is the most important part of the planning. The planning of position of equipment determines the flow of the restaurant operations, raises the efficiency and accuracy of kitchen staff. Food safety can be improved. On the contrary, confusion of food prep procedures and cross-contamination is caused by a bad floor plan mostly. The essential parts of a good floor plan should include food service, storage, dishwashing, restrooms, server prep, and janitor areas.

Sink Requirements

A kitchen with good hygiene should process multiple sinks so staff can conveniently wash their hands anytime anywhere. The location of sinks should be located in different area of the restaurant, making sure all staff can be accessible to the sinks, especially in food prep areas and dish washing room.

Mop water should be disposed in the separate mop sink. Each restaurant should have one in kitchen at least. A 3-compartment sink must be available to show that equipment can be washed using the wash, rinse and sanitize method, step by step. The size of sink should be large enough to submerge the largest piece of restaurant equipment. It is needed even the restaurant has the mechanical dishwasher.

Ware washing area and food prep should be separated to avoid cross-contamination. Also, the entrance of washing area should be separated or sanitized regularly. In short, the food prep area should be distant from any washing areas and have a separate room. So, staff will not enter food prep by passing by any ware-washing sink and deliver any bacteria to the food.

Equipment

To avoid raw meats mixing with ready-to-eat foods, and efficiently execute the ordered dishes, equipment have to be properly positioned. For example, the salad prep area should be at the far end of the raw materials station to prevent mixing with raw meat. This can be easily forgotten by staff as they are all in one station.

 

Q2. Research on how restaurants do their forecasting and food cost control process.

Sales forecasting and controlling are always important in every industries, especially to the restaurant business as raw food may spoil if they were not used within a period of time. Therefore, a well-calculated sales forecast with suitable food cost control process can help on maximizing the resataurant's profits. Following are some strategies thar restaurant may used on their forecast and food cost control process. 

Forecasting Process

1. Existing Business Calculations

Restaurant can observed the comsuming behavior of their repeat customers and use retention statistics to determine the likelihood that these die-hard patrons will continue to frequent the restaurant. In order to perform this forecasting, restaurant need to identify and monitor their repeat customers and analize and identify the patterns. Once the patterns are found, restaurant can used them to perform the forecast. For instance, when the weather becomes cold, HK people are more willing to eat hotpots.

2. Growth Indications

Up-and-coming restaurants often use growth statistics to better forecast their future sales. To determine growth statistics, restaurant owners must monitor their sales and complete calculations, determining how much their sales increase each month. If they notice a relatively consistent pattern of increase, for example, if the sales appear to grow 5 percent each month, the restaurant owner can use this growth as a standard, assuming the same growth for subsequent months and projecting several months into the future with this figure.

3. Seasonal History

Because the weather has an impact on consumers' appetites, restaurants often experience changes in sales as the seasons shifts. A restaurant that offers belly-busting comfort food may, for instance, lose some customers come warmer weather as many consumers shift their focus to dieting and fitting into their skin-baring summer clothes. By reviewing sales data from the same season of the year prior, restaurants can better anticipate weather-related sales shifts.

4. Trends Research

Restaurant owners just entering the arena, with no personal data on which to base their forecasting, can use trend data to project their potential sales. For example, if a restaurant owner seeks to open an Asian fusion restaurant, he can research this industry pocket and gather sales information on other restaurants of his planned type in similar communities. He can then use this information to forecast his sales, giving himself a better idea as to what sales figures he can realistically expect.

Food Cost Control Process

1. Menu Planning & Standard Recipes

Each recipe and menu item must have a recipe. The recipes must include the measured portions and the standard costs for each ingredient. These recipes provide a theoretical cost to compare to actual. This is the basis for measuring the cost of each menu item and the overall food cost.

2. Purchasing Systems

Working with your suppliers to ensure you are receiving the correct specification at the correct price is critical. All the food you purchase must have a designated specification. There are many factors to consider when determining the specs for your food purchases. Considering the recipe and cooking method is the key. Once you determine your specifications it’s time to compare and negotiate with suppliers.

Your purchasing system will also require that a “Par” or “Build To” system with an actual inventory used to control the amount of food purchased. Purchasing is vital and must be done by management or a senior level staff member. Improper purchasing can cause serious issues from product shortages to excessive waste.

3. Receiving Process

It’s critical when deliveries arrive that a manager or senior level staff member check the deliver for accuracy. Each case must be counted and spot checked for proper weight and quality. Believe me when I say the suppliers know whose checking and who’s not. If you do not check consistently you will undoubtedly receive inferior quality or shortages on occasion.

4. Prep Process

The prep process begins with a daily forecast of sales and a daily forecast of menu items. To properly determine prep you must have sales mix history information. Many restaurants break prep down by shift or even by the hour when product quality dictates it.

5. Food Production

The production process requires the use of a system to track what has been ordered and delivered. In most restaurants that will be a POS system. If no POS system is used an order pad will be used. Each order pad must be accounted for and allocated to your food servers. Missing order copies are clear indication of theft. Another key to control and tracking of expenses is to document remakes, waste, promotions, employee food and other items that are not served to the customer. These can add up to a significant expense if not controlled. Following recipes and the use of portioning tools such as scoops and scales will also help deliver consistency for the customer and control costs.

6. Inventory Cycles

A physical inventory count weekly or monthly is needed to determine actual food used during the timeframe. In many cases you may decide to count expensive items daily or even by shift. Whatever your frequency of inventory it’s absolutely critical to take an accurate inventory to produce the cost of sales numbers that are derived from it.

7. Accounting & Reports

The previous steps will go for naught if you are not producing food cost restaurant financial reports. The processes above with a proper accounting process will generate the reports needed to determine if expenses are in line, and if they are not where to look to fix the problem.

Q3. Find out the updated trends about restaurant operations

 Staff recruitment processes in a restaurant

1. Internal stage

Before a restaurant starts the recruitment and staffing process, the manager or the person in-charge has to first understand the internal situation of the restaurant. They have to identify the employee needs, for example, the type and the number of employee needed, also the budget limit on salary. For type of employees refer to which position you want to fill up, like servers, bussers, chefs etc. After that, you have to plan how many people you have to employ in total for different position, also come up with the salary range which is affordable to you. Finally, the owner also has to list out some critical requirements for different position, such as servers must have an out-going personality in order to provide suggestive selling.

2. Recruitment way

After finished the internal stage, it is time to look for the suitable channel for recruitment. It differs according to the type of employee expected, type of business and also the budget on posting recruitment information. Besides posting recruitment notice, social networking site is also a good way to get people attention of the vacancy. For example, posting the information on facebook is free of charge, and it is convenient for people to widespread the notice. With the advance in technology, unlike in the old time people have to send out their cover letter and resume by mail, recruiters can simply collect resume and arrange interview through e-mail.

3. Staff selection

After getting all the information from job candidates, the manager and owner will start to go through the resume and target the candidates they want to conduct interview with. The information listed on the resume is not detail enough for understanding a person, so interview is a must to get to know more about the potential candidates and see whether he or she is suitable for the position. After they choose the right person for all the positions, the person in-charge still have to meet them again to talk about their employment detail, like salary, annual leave, staff benefit etc. At the end, contracts have to be signed in order to protect the right for both employees and employers.

Reflection:

We always think that the operation in restaurants is pretty simple and easy before we have this lesson, but actually it can be quite complicated when it comes to management level. What we normally see in a restaurant as a customer is the lobby as well as the cashier, although some restaurants are operating an open kitchen. All these are only the front line operation which customers are able to experience, but in back office, there are more complicated stuffs that are waiting for the manager to handle. For example, we don’t know that a server can act as a salesperson by providing extra ideas on menu to customers. Point-of-sale system always being seen as money counting machine, but actually it also records the usage of the ingredient, which these discoveries are pretty new to us.

Will not ever think that running a restaurant successfully is very easy, handling different issues like purchasing, storing, food preparing etc. can be very exhausting. Besides maintaining the daily operation in the restaurant, they s still have to pay attention on the service quality as well as the food quality which is very important to a restaurant’s reputation. In different seasons, many restaurants will come up with new or special cuisine in order to attract more sales, the person in-charge also responsible to the competitiveness of the restaurant. In conclusion, managing a restaurant is not easy.

Reference: 

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/recruitment-staffing-process-17593.html

http://www.ehow.com/info_12166336_kind-sales-forecasting-use-restaurant.html

http://www.losangelesrestaurantconsultant.com/managing-restaurant-food-costs/food-cost-control-system/