Wiki 4: Restaurant Business

The restaurant we are interested
Manchester United Restaurant Bar

Introduction

Manchester United Restaurant Bar is a theme restaurant which is located in Tsim Sha Tsui. It is the tenth branch of Manchester United Restaurant Bar in the Asia pacific region. It features an extensive collection of Manchester United’s authentic football memorabilia, highlighting both legendary Red Devil footballers such as Sir Bobby Charlton, George Best and Eric Cantona to its current roster of superstars such as Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs and Michael Owen. Customers will be able to watch major sporting events and Premier League matches live on state-of-the-art video walls and flat screen TV.

The restaurant’s prime location in Tsim Sha Tsui and comfortable atmosphere not only provide an ideal place for Manchester United fans, but also for everyone. The bar will have an extensive list of signature cocktails such as Red Devil and Free Kick for the after-work crowd looking for a refuge to relax and unwind.

The legend moment can be shown in front of us again!

Characteristics

The restaurant bar also offers a spectacular menu, ranging from Continental and International cuisine, to Manchester United Restaurant Bar signature dishes such as Manchester Combo Platter and Champions Burger.
Furthermore, parents will also be pleased to know that the restaurant will be child-friendly with a special children’s menu and plenty of space to hold birthday parties for kids.

The menu looks like a magazine

Pizza with perigord truffle

Pasta

Drinks - Old Trafford

Why I like it?

Although I am not the fan of Manchester United, I am glad to know that such a big football club opens a restaurant in Hong Kong. It is really a good place for a group of people to watch football match, to celebrate birthday or even valentine's day. I am going to try it with my girl friend when I celebrate my coming birthday.

Birthday Card

When we open it, we can see the home stadium of Man Utd - Old Trafford

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Chain Restaurant

V.S.

Independent Restaurant

	Chain Restaurant	Independent Restaurant
Foods offered	Same menu with standard recipes for the fast food they advertise	Different varieties of culinary delight often with different recipes for different foods on their menu
Marketing	Insufficient money to invest in large advertisements	Many "Word of Mouth“ advertising and spending millions on a national TV campaign.
Price	Strong bargaining power to suppliers Lower cost and then provide lower price	Little bargaining power to suppliers
Design	Same design within their branches but the different styles from their competitors Examples: The main color in all branches of Fairwood is orange while Café Deco Group is black.	Different styles as different bosses

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Real Life Examples

Independent Restaurant

1.Ming Kee Noodles in Mong Kong

Delicious Hong Kong Style Noodles

2.Wonderful Fastfood in Tai Wai

3.Ka Ho Restaurant in Hin Keng

Chain Restaurant

1.McDonald

2.KFC

3.Burger King

4.Pizza Hut

5.譚仔雲南米線(三哥)

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Local Trends about Restaurant Business

A. Wine

In 2009, Hong Kong overtook New York and London as the world’s largest wine market. Sotheby’s and Christie’s have each sold bottles of wine here for small fortunes. In May 2011, a buyer purchased a single bottle of 1961 Château Latour for US$216,000.

Hong Kong's new role as a literal funnel for fine wine owes everything to the government’s 2008 decision to eliminate duty on imported wines. Since then, nouveaux riches on both sides of the Shenzhen River have been eager to slurp down wine at an unprecedented clip.

B. Tracing food origins for 'responsible dining'

There are more people nowadays asking, ‘where is this from?’

Hong Kong, due to its small size, is inherently incapable of growing enough food to feed all of its residents.

China, the supplier of most of Hong Kong’s food, is certainly not a poster child for food safety, and disruptions to other sources, such as those in the wake of the recent earthquake in Japan, make clear how convoluted the food chain actually is.

C. Simplification

The term “trend” implies something that’s fleeting or rooted in a specific temporal context. Trying to constantly create or follow trends can complicate the very essence of dining. Restaurateurs have taken this to heart.

“Things are a lot simpler,” says Linda Kwan, of the Café Deco Group. “Food can be very nice without having to be ostentatious.”

Calvin Ku, co-owner of Lily & Bloom, says, “I think right now we are at a point where there isn’t really a leading trend that’s too mind-blowing, so we fall back on the fundamentals of what makes food exciting in the first place: great ingredients, and sensible and simple preparation cooked by people who care.”

Wiki 3: Food and Beverage Operations

      Functions F&B operations

      As F&B operations include managing the operations of different department, the major functions of F&B operations may be cross-departmental and include the followings:

      Managing kitchen: 

      Labor costs represent the most significant variable costs in this area, F&B operations should include staffing day by day. Also, F&B may also need to visit kitchens to observe the service delivered. For example, tasting the food in kitchen.

  

      Managing food operations: 

      F&B functions as an advisor and supervisor for food operation area. For example, F&B director needs to meet executive chef and purchasing director, to check whether the food operation is in right direction.

Supervisor for managing bars:

As the beverage profit margin is higher than other food items, bars are an important revenue source for F&B departments. F&B should tightly supervise the operations of bars, such as supervising the beverage cycle. Moreover, F&B help imposing strict policy and procedure guidelines for bars employees. For instance, strict policies help avoiding the problem of pilferage.

  

4    Supervisor for managing stewarding department: 

      Stewarding department employees need to clean the china, cutlery etc. Therefore, the problem of pilferage may exist. F&B needs to ensure no guests and employees can take away the stocks. F&B department needs to impose strict inventory control and constant vigilance.

  

5    Supervising operations of catering/ banquet: 

      F&B functions as a supervisor and an advisor to oversee and give suggestions to catering and banquet operations.

      Supervising room service: 

       F&B directors need to check room service to forecast demand, to check whether food & beverage can be delivered correctly and on time.

     

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Pilerage problem of Food & Beverage Operations

Is piferage a common problem of Food & Beverage Operations? If so, how can it be avoided?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rFOIrkF0gs (Wine pilferage)

http://sleeping-around.com/practical/hotel_amenities_theft.shtml (Hotel pilferage)

 

The above links tell us the dilemmas of F&B operations nowadays- pilferage. As wines’ profit margin is much higher than other food items, employees are easily attracted to steal wines. Thus, the problem of pilferage exists. It is difficult to arrange supervisors to keep track of everything. The dilemma of F&B operations right now is to avoid pilferage. Many hotels set strict rules to keep pilferage to a minimum. However, if the rules are too strict and harsh, the morale of employees will be affected. F&B departments should be aware of the above problems.

Furthermore, as the rules are not clear enough sometimes, employees and guests don’t know what they can take away. They may take something away that they shouldn’t take away. For some tricky guests, they know the rules clearly. Thus, they may take away something that’s valuable but not clearly listed on the rules. Employees also create such problem to F&B operations. So that, F&B department should be careful to handle pilferage problem.

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Trends and Challenges in operating Food & Beverage Operations

What are the trends in Food & Beverage Operations?

Although the functions of Food & Beverage operations are similar within the industry; in the meantime, the environment of the industry changes rapidly. The trends are as follows:

1. Healthy food demand: 

Nowadays, people are concerned about health. Their eating habit changes to a healthier style. In order to meet their needs, the food supplied to customers should be healthier. More specifically, the food should contain more low-fat, low-carb.

 

2. Increasing use of technology: 

 Technology plays an important role for F&B management in recent years. For example, automatic dispensing system helps avoiding mischarging customers. Furthermore, technology helps guest ordering (PDA for ordering), marketing(Internet), management control and communication(e.g. Facebook).

 

3. Theme restaurants: 

 In order to differentiate from competitors, theme design is more often used in hotel restaurants. For example, forest design is oftenly used for theme restaurants designs.

 

Besides, Food & Beverage industry needs to deal with the challenges they are facing. The challenges are as follows:

1.  Pilferage: 

 Pilferage is still the major problem for F&B operations, especially for beverage. In order to tackle this problem, most hotels set-up a CCTV system to supervise the hotel. Moreover, some hotels set strict rules to punish pilferers. However, as it’s difficult to keep track of everything(costly), pilferage can not be completely tackled by F&B department. It can only keep pilferage to a minimum.

 

2. Demand forecasting: 

Nuclear crisis in Japan causes a fear to people to eat Japanese food. The demand for Japanese food sharply decreased during the crisis. As the F&B department can’t forecast the earthquake and nuclear crisis, it can’t forecast the decreased demand for Japanese food as well.

Wiki 6: Managed Service

Ch 8~Managed Service

A.Five unique feature of service

1.      Challenge to please guest and client (food service)

For guest:  main concern:
                                 1. taste --good flavor
                                 2. type of food --many choices
                                 3. the price --acceptable

             
       * If more requirements achieve, more available to keep visiting the service again.

For example : Ming General Japanese sushi restaurant

This restaurant aims to provide the cheapest pricing sushi, to trim cost, the ingredients of sushi and the type of Japanese food are in the least cost.

Therefore, it is less famous because the food is not good. So guests are less willing to come again.

 

 

 

                      Another example : Genki Sushi(元氣壽司)

The comment given by guest is quite good. Not only it is cheap, but also fulfill many guests’ requirement.

When comparing with this restaurant, more cost have to spend to get more satisfactory by customers.

        

For client: the quality of the service.

• customer-processing.
• branded and signature concepts.
• experienced, professional, and innovative.
• sanitary, flexible, and consistent.
• We are a cooperative, responsive, and pleasant partner!

 

           

Example : Airlines either provide meals from their own in-flight business or provided by a contractor

LSG Sky Chefs is the brand name of LSG Lufthansa Service Holding AG, which is the world's largest provider of airline catering (although Gate Gourmet claims the title of world's largest "independent" provider) and in-flight services.

Its primary business function is to prepare and deliver meals, beverages and snacks to aircraft for domestic and international flights.

LSG Sky Chefs partners with more than 300 airlines worldwide and operates almost 200 customer service centers in 50 countries, producing around 460 million meals a year

     

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2.Food service is not the primary business

The food service is not the primary business
But is the complementary of the other service, which help diversify the service, and thus customers may be more satisfied with the service.

EXAMPLE 1 . 

some cafés in Mong Kwok

Festures : provide a place to  have a meeting, gathering for a group.

food service : the food is just the complementary to this service.

                      food is offered to earn money

Example 2.

the leisure and recreation service : Neway Karaoke

Food service : provides lunch set and buffet package at happy hour time

                           which is free or cheaper meal

                           which is great convenient to the customer and they are willing to stay to play

                           which can diversify the karaoke service

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3.Guests are captive clientele (they may not have an alternate dining option)

4.Produce food in large quantity (e.g. batch cooking)

5.Volume of business is consistent

B.Challenges

1.      airline food service:

     Food safety---passengers

For example, on February 20, 1992, shrimp tainted with cholera was served on Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight 386. An elderly passenger died and other passengers fell ill.

Food safety---Technical crew meals

Food safety with technical crew meals (pilots and flight engineers) is sometimes even stricter than for passengers.

      Many foodstuffs are banned completely from crew meals, including all egg products and often any dairy products that has not been ultra-heat treated.

      

      The meals supplied on some airlines are labeled with the position of the crew member for whom they are intended, and no technical crew member eats any of the same products as his or her colleague.

       This ensures that each pilot eats a different meal to minimize the risk of all pilots on board being ill. This situation was a key part of the plot of the movie Airplane!

2.      school

Recipes of meals every day ensure to be fresh, delicious, and nutritious, including school breakfast in cafeterias, classrooms, and grab-and-go selections.

Regular changing of menu of meal is needed. Otherwise, children may not enjoy  it if the food is not suitable their flavor.

3.      health care

it should  provide clean color-coded menus for various diets. Clean color-coded is essential for the staff and even patient to pay attention to their need of their body.

For example:

• Low-fat/low-calorie = lavender
• High-energy = red
• High-fiber = green
• Low-cholesterol = blue
• Indulgence = yellow

C.Trends

1.      airline

Typically, the airline dinner includes meat, a salad or vegetable, a small bread roll, and a dessert.

Special diets can also prepared to fulfill different groups.

• Cultural diets  French, Italian, Chinese, Japanese or Indian style.
• Infant and baby meals. Some airlines also offer children's meals, containing foods that children will enjoy such as baked beans, mini-hamburgers and hot dogs.
• Medical diets  low/high fiber, low fat/cholesterol, diabetic, peanut free, non-lactose, low salt/sodium, low-purine, low-calorie, low-protein, bland (non-spicy) and gluten-free meals.
• Religious diets  including kosher, halal, and Hindu, Buddhist and Jain vegetarian (sometimes termed Asian vegetarian) meals.
• Vegetarian and vegan meals. Some airlines do not offer a specific meal for vegetarians; instead, they are given a vegan meal.

2.      School

The meal of the provider will be made to be have different shape and colorful so as to be more attractive to children.

  

3.      health care

the dietitians collaborate with the pharmacy department to counsel patients on potential food/drug interactions, review each patient's medication, and modify menus to avoid adverse reactions.