CHALLENGES IN RESTAURENT

MANAGEMENT

RESTAURENT OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

H.A.N.AMARASINGHE
2nd YEAR 4th SEMESTER
DEH/HNDTHM/F/E/2012/403
Challenges In
Restaurant
Management

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CONTENT

Introduction 3

What is a restaurant? 4-5

Restaurant management 6-7

Challenges in restaurant 8-10

Conclusions 11

References 12

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INTRODUCTION

Managing a restaurant is perhaps a bit more difficult than managing a bookstore or a car
showroom. Restaurant deals with food and people. It is critical combination because most
people are very sensitive about their food. They like eating, they like eating well. But, the
other people that a restaurant business deals with, one that is involved in the making and
presenting of the food consumed by the first lot of people, are the employees of the
restaurant. Management in restaurant business is not an easy task. So in this assignment
talking about Challenges in Restaurant Management.

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What is a restaurant?
Wikipedia says restaurant is a business establishment which prepares and serves food and
drink to customers in return for money, either paid before the meal, after the meal, or with a
running tab.

For thousands of years, from cave to castle, people ate at home. Travelers usually took their
meals at inns along the wayside; laborers could snatch a bite at taverns or pubs with their
pints. In the mid-18th century, soup shops sprang up in Paris selling bowls of “restaurant,” a
restorative concoction of hearty beef broth. That’s the direct ancestor of the word restaurant
present participle of the French restorer, “to restore” – a place where we are restored to
strength and vigor by refueling, as it were, with food.

The first restaurant the conforms to our present notion of a restaurant an establishment with
set hours where people or groups sit at separate tables, order from a menu and have food
brought to them individually – was established in Paris in 1782 by an entrepreneur and chef
named Antoine Beauvilliers. The concept spread through Europe and into England and then
to America.

Restaurants can be categorize to four parts ..

Restaurent

Casual Family Quick

Upscale
service service service

Upscale
Upscale Restaurants are restaurants that tend to have fewer people instead high prices. There
to be white tablecloths, high quality alcohol, innovative recipes unlikely to be cooked at
home, and an emphasis on the presentation of the food. It’s mainly cater VIP needs.

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Casual service
A casual-service restaurant is a sit-down property offering alcoholic beverages that markets
to singles, couples, and businesspersons with a check average lower than that of an upscale
restaurant and higher than that of a family- or quick-service restaurant.

Family service
Factors include a significant emphasis on comfort foods, a child-friendly dining environment,
relatively fast table service, and a relatively extensive menu with lower prices than in
midscale restaurants. Some properties offer buffet service only.

Quick service
It is also known as fast food restaurants. it is specific type of restaurant characterized both by
its fast food cuisine and by minimal table service. Food served in fast food restaurants
typically caters to a "meat-sweet diet" and is offered from a limited menu; is cooked in bulk
in advance and kept hot; is finished and packaged to order; and is usually available ready to
take away, though seating may be provided.

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Restaurant’s management
We can divide a restaurant’smanagement in to three parts those are:

 Administration
 Front-of-the House management
 Back-of-the House management

On those sections there are responsible peoples for each one. All the process going under this
three management groups in a restaurant.

Administration
The Owner is the person responsible for the business in general.

The General Manager or Operations is the person who operates the restaurant for the owner.

The Assistant Manager or Administrative Assistant manages the office and business aspect of
the restaurant, is responsible for Human Resources, financial and taxation documentation,
and all record management.

Front-of-the House management

The Maitred'Hôtel is entirely responsible for all front-of-the-house operations, manages staff
who give services to customers and allocate the duties of opening and closing restaurant. He
is responsible for making sure his or her staff is following the service standards and health
and safety regulations. He is the most important person in the front-of-the-house
environment, since it is up to him or her to motivate the staff and give them job satisfaction.
He looks after and guides the personal well-being of the staff, since it makes the work force
stronger and more profitable, and works with other executive management officers such as
the Executive Chef, and the Owner.

The Beverage Manager is responsible for all the beverage, beverage service and bar
operations of the restaurant. He reports directly to the Maitred'Hôtel (Manager). Beverage
managers order bar inventory, maintain and track inventory, issue bar stock, and schedule bar
service personnel. Often a bar manager will have prior experience as a bartender. Often, a
beverage manager will have extensive knowledge of beverages that include wine, beer, and
spirits.

BACK-OF-THE HOUSE MANAGEMENT

The Executive Chef usually operates in corporate restaurant companies. He is responsible for
all back-of-the-house operations, and works with other executive management officers.

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The Chef de Cuisine manages the kitchen staff working in the kitchen and creates the menus
in absence of the Executive Chef.

The kitchen is often referred to as the heart of the restaurant . They create the menu and
"specials" as well as order the products needed for the menu recipes. Managing the kitchen
staff helps to control food timing, quality, and cost. Kitchen management involves most
importantly, cost control and budgeting.

The Sous Chef oversees the daily kitchen operations. He also acts as the Chef de Cuisine
when that individual is not in the restaurant.

The Head Cook is the Head Preparation Chef who supervises food preparation (prep).

The Head Station Chef (or Head/Lead Line Chef/Cook) supervises the cooking or "work" of
your menu order and the "push" to ensure your entire table will receive their order at the same
time.

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Challenges in restaurant management

Hospitality is the act of kindness in welcoming and looking after the basic needs of guests or
strangers. It is one of the world largest industries. Restaurant is also a part of hospitality
industry. The hospitality industry is first and foremost a people-business which requires a
large pool of labour. The consequences of current and future restaurant development in the
region will therefore result in an increasingly fierce competition for skills.

Lack of employees

Restaurants therefore are divided in different work segments, with managers in each segment.
Classifying the whole work team in smaller groups make it easy to manage them. The
number of workers in a restaurant depends on the size of the restaurant. The whole
management of the restaurant is run by a number of managers. The number of these managers
also depends on the size of the restaurant and the number of employees.There are lot of
challenges that faces restaurant management the major challenge is finding employees
because of trained skill persons are lack to find in Sri Lanka. Because of lot of peoples not
knowing that this industries advantages and pool of jobs have. It is major concern that
restaurant management faces.
The Sri Lankan population has been steady in recent years, with 25% under the age of 14,
and over 40% below the age of 30’s. on the face of it, therefore there should be sufficient
domestic labor available to meet the rising demand for employment. But the problem is labor
migration a particular phenomenon not only in Sri lnaka but other parts of south Asia, over
250,000 srilankans move abroad each year for work, with nearly two mollion out of the
country at any one time. This represent some 24% of the countries total labor force.

High Turnover Rate

According to Chron, the hospitality industry, more specifically the restaurant industry, has a
60 percent turnover rate, so restaurant managers are required to train new employees every
year. This causes ongoing stress related to having to retrain new staff in times where there's a
not enough experienced staff to cover the restaurant.

Competition in the market

The restaurant industry is highly competitive with respect to price, value and promotions,
service, location, and food quality. There are a substantial number of restaurant operations
that compete with us for customer traffic, some of which have significantly greater resources
to aggressively market to consumers, which could result in our concepts losing market share.
Consumers are highly focused on value and if other restaurants are able to promote and
deliver a higher degree of value, our guest traffic levels may suffer, impacting revenues. In
addition, with improving product offerings at quick-service restaurants and grocery stores,
coupled with the present state of the economy, consumers may choose to trade down to these
alternatives, which could also negatively affect revenues.

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Food Hygiene

Food hygiene is must thing in a restaurant because of there is not food hygiene in restaurant it
can’t survives in the industry, it will destroy immediately. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) estimate that approximately 76 million cases of foodborne illness
result in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths annually. The yearly cost of lost
productivity alone is estimated at between $20 and $40 billion in the U.S. so it is like same as
the Sri Lanka numbers should vary but it’s happening same in Sri Lanka. So restaurant
management has duty to keep food hygiene properly in their restaurant. So they have to
follow standers in the food safety and HACCP system as well.
They have to keep foods freshly and healthy and use standard equipment’s also to prevent
those food born illnesses.

Food Processing, Storing, Serving

Those are critical parts in a restaurant because of when any mistakes happen in this process
whole restaurant demand can fall down. The major problem is that in food processing is
restaurant haven’t enough delivery facilities they have to hire vehicles to deliver raw food
materials. So they have to purchase lot of food in once then they can lower their delivery
cost. Another problem is storing facilities have law in restaurant they have challenge to
storing foods. They have to have enough dry and cold storage facilities. If not have enough
facilities to store they can’t properly maintain PAR system. If they can’t to manage PAR
system properly they are face more problems.
Maintaining sensible par levels means restaurant always have what they need on hand and
NEVER buy at the last minute, which saves money. When management can wait to purchase
until it’s on sale or have a coupon or BOTH, that’s serious money saving!. First and most
obviously, restaurant avoid the inconvenience of running out of items. Don’t hate it when
restaurant’s favorite place runs out of favorite menu item? Second, it helps control food costs.
If run out of something restaurant really need, a trip to the grocery store to buy it means
paying retail price, which is more than supplier charges. Third, par levels ensure that aren’t
keeping too much stock, helping to manage finances and declutter life. Finally, maintaining
appropriate par levels prevents from wasting valuable storage space that need for other
things. Management can see how important par levels are to a restaurant’s success and if they
work there, they’ll work for restaurant too.

Food Presentation

The major challenge in food presentation is that lack of employees experience and English
knowledge. So in food presentation employees have to have good experience because in food
presentation customer get idea what is this restaurant and quality foods they have in
restaurant. The way of presenting they can get customer goodwill and satisfaction. That’s
why it’s challenge to management. Employee must have the talent to attract the customer by
presenting method. So, management have to train their staff properly. They have to build
their employees English knowledge as well.

Menu planning

Menu planning is another challenge to restaurant management because of there are lot of
competitors in the industry. So they have to plan competitive menus. They have to have
specialized menu to that restaurant then the customers attract to that restaurant. Example of

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that the restaurant pillaws located in Bambalapitiya is specialized for cheese kottu. So guests
attract t to that restaurant for get and eat cheese kottu to that restaurant. So they have to have
unique specialized menus. Then customers will attract to that restaurant.

Complaint Handling

Complaint handling is another challenge that restaurant management faces. Because of

restaurant management always have to take customers party. But also they have to look after
their employees as well so it is most sensitive part that restaurant management faces.
They have not to argue with customers in bad way. Always try to keep calm in complaint
handling. They cant use harassment words when complaint handling. Always remember to
get customer side.You may or may not believe the customer is always right but the customer
is always the customer. They pay the bills and provide your income. Right or wrong they
deserve to have you listen patiently to what they have to say.Regardless of how the customer
acts, short of physical violence there is no excuse for behaving in a less than courteous
manner.In a great majority of situations a customer will be satisfied just knowing that you
care enough to take an active interest in what they are saying.

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Conclusions

Conduct employer training programs.

Maintain PAR system always.

Always use HACCP.

Make employees happy.

Introduce new menus.

Manage Costs Effectively.

Manage Product Quality.
Motivate the Team.
Create a Positive Work Environment.
Discipline Consistently.

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References

Start and run a successful restaurant Turn your dream in to a reality

Brim Cooper, Brain Floody and Gina menell
Shri Krishna Printer 2002

The Encyclopedia of restaurant training

Lora Arduser and Donglas Robert Brown
Atlantic publishing group, Ocala 2005

Hotel Restaurant and travel law

M.C.Metti
Anmol publications
New Delhi, 2008

Hotel, Restaurant and Travel law A preventive Approach

Seventh edition
Karen L.Morris, NormenG.Cownoyer, Anthony G.Mershall
USA 2008

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