How do you create clear and consistent F&B policies and procedures?

1 Assess your needs

The first step to create F&B policies and procedures is to assess your current situation and identify your goals and challenges. You need to understand your target market, your menu offerings, your operational costs, your legal requirements, and your customer feedback. You also need to evaluate your staff skills, your equipment and facilities, your suppliers and partners, and your competitors. By conducting a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), you can determine what you need to improve, maintain, or change in your F&B operations.

2 Draft your policies

The next step is to draft your policies, which should reflect your vision, mission, and values, as well as industry standards and best practices. Your policies should be clear, concise, and consistent, so that they can be easily understood and followed by your staff and customers. For example, a food safety and hygiene policy outlines the rules and procedures for ensuring food quality and preventing foodborne illnesses. This includes topics such as personal hygiene, food handling, storage, preparation, cooking, serving, and disposal. Furthermore, a service quality policy defines the expectations and standards for delivering excellent customer service. This covers topics such as greeting, seating, taking orders, serving food and drinks, handling complaints, and collecting payments. Lastly, an inventory and cost control policy explains the methods and tools for managing your food and beverage inventory and reducing waste and costs. This includes topics such as purchasing, receiving, storing, issuing, tracking, and auditing your inventory.

3 Write your procedures

The third step is to write your procedures, which are the specific steps that implement your policies. These procedures should be detailed, practical, and measurable, as well as flexible, adaptable, and scalable. For example, a food safety and hygiene procedure should include checklists, charts, logs, labels, and instructions for using equipment and materials. Additionally, a service quality procedure should illustrate the workflow and communication for each stage of the service cycle with scripts, cues, signals, and tips for interacting with customers and colleagues. Lastly, an inventory and cost control procedure should demonstrate the calculations and records for each stage of the inventory cycle with formulas, ratios, reports, and software for analyzing and optimizing your inventory.

4 Train your staff

The fourth step is to train your staff, the key actors and enforcers of F&B policies and procedures. You must ensure they are aware, informed, and skilled in following them, as well as motivate, empower, and reward staff for compliance. Orientation and induction is the initial training for new hires, introducing them to policies and procedures, as well as organizational culture and values. Refresher and update is ongoing training for existing staff, reviewing and reinforcing policies and procedures, as well as introducing any changes or improvements. Coaching and mentoring is personalized training for individual staff, providing feedback and guidance on their performance and development.

5 Review and improve

The final step is to review and improve your F&B policies and procedures, which are the dynamic and evolving documents that reflect your F&B operations. To ensure that your policies are effective and efficient, you should monitor, evaluate, and update them regularly based on data, feedback, and results. Additionally, it’s important to communicate with staff and customers, consult them, and involve them in the review and improvement process. This can be accomplished through auditing and inspection for compliance, surveying and collecting feedback for satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, as well as benchmarking and innovating to identify gaps, opportunities, and trends.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?