Food Service Disciplines

While creativity and innovation are hallmarks of an outstanding culinary experience, it is a daily focus on the basics that makes a foodservice operation extraordinary and profitable.?The following disciplines are taught in every hospitality and culinary program, but it’s the consistent daily application of these that makes a difference in your team’s ability to meet every challenge:

Standardized and costed recipes.?Recipes for every menu item, both à la carte and catered, must be standardized, and costed.?This discipline ensures consistency of product and ongoing profitability.?Given the volatility of some ingredients, recipe costing should be reviewed on a periodic basis, or more frequently during inflationary times.

Pricing based on known cost structure.?The standard method of pricing is to take the cost of each menu item and multiply it by an appropriate factor to cover the cost of labor and other expenses.?For instance, a 2? times factor should yield a 40% food cost; a 3 times factor yields a 33% food cost.?This simple formula is all well and good, but if your revenues are below projections and/or your payroll cost or overhead are higher than expected, you may still lose money.?Given the interplay of revenues, pricing, volume of business, and cost structure, these numbers must be tracked closely and reviewed frequently.

Portion control.?Standardized recipes are costed based upon specific portion sizes.?If untrained or poorly supervised employees routinely serve larger than costed portions, your profitability will literally be eaten up.?Costly meat and seafood products should be weighed to ensure correct portion size.?Ladles of specific sizes should be used to plate specific menu items.?Pies, cakes, and other baked desserts should be cut and served using templates to ensure the correct number of portions are realized.?Cooks and pantry workers must be trained to prepare and serve appropriate-sized portions.?The discipline of measuring alcoholic beverage portions is especially critical to profitability in bar operations, though clubs often choose to free pour to members’ satisfaction.?In these cases, efforts must be made to train bartenders to a consistent free pour, and appropriate pricing should reflect the established free pour amount.

Labor control.?Labor, both front-of-house and in the kitchen, is the single largest expense in a foodservice operation; it is also a continuing challenge to control.?Electronic timekeeping systems make it easier for supervisors to verify hours worked, but regardless of the system used, supervisors must monitor payroll hours daily.?Close monitoring of employee hours will reduce overtime and “milking the clock,” while allowing daily comparison of payroll costs to revenues.?Front of house supervisors should also keep a daily log that notes revenues, meals served, payroll hours, and a subjective evaluation of the smoothness of service.?Such an evaluation of each meal period will enable supervisors to better schedule staff.?Bi-weekly pay periods beginning on Fridays and staffing guides are useful methods of controlling overtime and benefit costs.

Benchmarking revenues and expenses.?Benchmarking is the act of measuring and analyzing operating performance.?In a food service operation, there are many things to benchmark, such as meals served and average check per meal period by day of week; payroll hours by position, by meal period, or day; and beer, wine, liquor sold per meal period and day of week.?When tracked over time, these statistics become the baseline to project and monitor future performance, stock requirements, and staffing needs.?

Benchmarks also allow measurement of member reactions to foodservice initiatives such as new menus or pricing.?Most importantly, benchmarking makes supervisors more knowledgeable about their operations.?Such knowledge translates into improved decision-making, operational efficiency, and bottom lines.?Club Benchmarking Resources provides greater detail and Excel spreadsheets to track key F&B benchmarks.

Routine and consistent inventories.?Inventories are critical to monitor stock levels, avoid shortages, control pilferage, and determine cost of goods sold.?Inventories can also be time consuming and inconvenient for hard-working and time-pressed kitchen staffs. ?Inventories sometimes get delegated to poorly trained subordinates who miss or miscount key items.?Sloppy inventories contribute to erratic cost of goods sold.?Poorly organized storerooms contribute to sloppy inventories.?Keys to accurate inventories include well-organized storage areas; knowledgeable individuals conducting inventories; routine and timely inventories; and organized receiving documents, invoices, and credit slips.?Delegating counts is acceptable if employees are trained.?However, having the same employee conduct all inventories without spot-checking and oversight will invite problems.

Initial and ongoing knowledge and skills training.?This is particularly important in the high turnover front of house positions.?With a current tight job market, clubs are struggling to fill these key member-facing positions, and ongoing turnover makes this a never-ending task.?Today’s job market challenges are forcing many clubs to hire unskilled, first-time workers who need a great deal of basic training in food service.?Private Club Performance Management has created various customizable training manuals such as General Food & Beverage Knowledge , Casual Dining Server Basic , Casual Dining Server Intermediate , Catering Server , and Host/Hostess .?Two On the Go Training books also provide important information to food service staff – Alcoholic Beverages on the Go , which is used to familiarize staff with the wide world of spirits, liqueurs, wines, and beer, and Service on the Go , which details the nuances of quality service.

Suggesting and describing training for employees.?Service employees who are trained in the techniques of suggesting and describing can improve any members’ dining experience, the average check, and the bottom line.?Whenever a new menu is put in place, all servers should be provided Menu Item Selling Sheets, PCPM Form 484 , that give key information about each entrée to include cooking method, ingredients, time of preparation, and enticing descriptors to help describe each item.?Just as standardized recipes are important in the kitchen for consistency of product, selling sheets provide the service staff with the knowledge and information they need to describe and suggest the product.?In addition to entrées, special training should be given for suggesting appetizers, desserts, wines, and specialty alcoholic beverages.?The time spent providing servers with the information and confidence to suggest your food and beverages will yield consistently higher member satisfaction, as well as average checks.

Continual sales feedback to employees.?Every month’s budgeted food sales are made up of how many meals are sold and how much each member spends on average for a meal.?By breaking projections down into meal and average check totals, then posting daily targets prominently in the pantry or other visible location provides servers with goals that connect their daily efforts to profitability.?By comparing month-to-date actual covers and average checks to projected totals, employees are given a day-by-day incentive.?People are competitive by nature and this technique will become a powerful inducement to servers.?The same applies to appetizers, desserts, and bottles of wine sold.

Forecasting and scheduling.?By tracking revenue and patronage benchmarks and keeping a daily log of staffing, supervisors can develop a routine system of forecasting business levels.?While some level of volatility can always be expected, the act of forecasting, when formally done and evaluated after the fact, will assist in maintaining member service while controlling labor cost.

Member feedback.?While some members are vocal with their opinions, many are not.?Foodservice supervisors should make it easy for members to provide feedback.?Comment cards should be readily available, periodic surveys should be conducted, revenue benchmarks should be analyzed to measure member reaction to offerings and initiatives, and employees should be trained to routinely report comments made or overheard to supervisors.

As with so much else in the club industry, it is the daily discipline of well-known basics that are the foundation for success.

Excerpted from Food Service in Private Clubs: A Holistic Overview of Management Best Practices .

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