Research on Fast Food Restaurant, Hotel Restaurants (Casual Dining and Fine Dining Restaurants)
Introduction
They are commonly known as the quick service restaurants or QSR in the hospitality industry. They refer to restaurant that’s characterized by fast food cuisine and where there is minimal table service. Fast food restaurants have limited menus and the food is cooked in advance and stored in preheated conditions or kept hot. When ordered it’s packed mostly as sold as takeaways. Most fast food restaurants operate as franchise of other restaurants where the ingredients standardized and the bulk of their products are prepared partially at the source and the supplies that each fast food restaurant receives is controlled and the quantities costed. (Goodale, 2007)
The products that are common on fast food restaurants are hamburgers, French fries, fried chicken, pizza, sand witches, ice cream and fish & chips. (Dhawan, 2000)
The hotel restaurant is made of two types of services. The casual dining restaurant where the food is offered just like in the fast food restaurants but with a table and service dinning atmosphere where a waiter serves the guests while they are seated and the menu is more extensive while the food production system is also different as the food is wholly prepared at the restaurant. Its ranked as a mid scale restaurants.
The other type is the fine dining restaurants where the menus are very elaborate and the food prices are very high. The restaurants present an atmosphere of grace, lavishness and elegance where customers have to make reservations and in some instances there is a code of dressing. Most of the fine dining restaurants employ very experienced chefs who have attended culinary schools and whose food production skills are exceptional. Most of the customers are prepared to pay more for the services they have received and in most instances the food offered is a five-course meal with expensive wine options. Waiters serve individual tables and are always on hand to offer any service required. Its ranked as an upscale restaurant.
Food Production
The food in most modern fast food restaurants is highly processed and mostly prepared in bulk or in large scale. The bulk ingredients are cooked using standardized ovens and other modern production methods and equipment in different locations and transported to the fast food selling outlets. Others like French fries, fried chicken or sausages are deep fried at the fast food restaurant. Pizzas and Hamburgers are precooked and take a short time to prepare.
The food production system in casual dining takes a longer period to prepare as the food is wholly prepared and cooked at the restaurant. The type of food offered is more elaborate than those found in fast food restaurants but less elaborate than those found in fine dining restaurants that require years of training and experience to perfect the skills.
Fine dining restaurants food production system is very elaborate and it requires the expertise of an experience chef to process the required type of food in these types of restaurants. The food is wholly prepared and cooked at the restaurant while the customers are enjoying the other courses of their meals.
Fast food restaurants operate a self-service system where the customers wait for their tray of food or container at the counter. The services of a waiter are limited to clearing the tables and not serving the customers. A drive through service is also available in some fast food restaurants where customers can order their food and pick them from their cars.
Casual dining restaurants have waiters who serve a number of tables at the same time and the customers have occasionally to wait for the services of a waiter while seated. Unlike in fast food restaurants where there are no waiters and the customers have to queue at the counter for their own food and also unlike the fine dining restaurants where a single waiter is assigned to a particular table.
In fine dining restaurants the waiters remain standby at each table until they are dismissed by the clients and are available at the instance of their customers. (Strianese & Strianese, 2002) The services of the waiters in these types of restaurants are in most of exemplary. They end up with a lot of tips fom their customers as they are always ready to spend more for good service. (Katsigris & Thomas, 2006)
A menu is a set of prices for each type of food or beverage offered in a particular restaurant. Menus that have a list of options that customers choose from known as ȧ la carte may be influenced by the nature of the customer’s common preference. The products that are mostly included in the fast food restaurants’ menus are the ones that are popular with the customers and which in most cases is affordable depending on the type and standard of the fast food restaurant. The menus in casual dining restaurants are decided also in the same way as in the fast food restaurants but are more extensive and also allow more options. They are also based on the common trend of food that majority of the customer’s order.
In fine dining restaurants most of the food is prepared according to the request of the customers and the menu is not of great importance. The customers in this type of restaurant choose what they want to eat.
Fast food restaurants need only a cashier and two or three other staff members to pack and serve the food to the customers who queue near the counter. One or two waiters are needed to clear and clean the tables. The rest of the staff are cooks who prepare the required food. It’s less expensive to operate a fast food restaurant than large hotel restaurant which require more waiters and supervisors. The total cost of maintaining more waiters is more in a hotel restaurant than in a fast food restaurant. In fine dining restaurants the cost of maintaining the waiters is much higher as more waiters are required than in other casual dining restaurants. (Kotschevar & Luciani, 2006)
The food production system in fast food restaurant is mostly limited to frying, boiling or some instances just warming the food. The nature of food processing is not so elaborate and most of the processing is usually done much earlier so as to allow minimum production time. The customers are required to queue for the food while it’s being packed or served. The service in this instance is suitable for the nature of the restaurant as the fast food customers are in most cases require quick service or are interested in buying the food as a take away to be eaten later or in a different location. This type of restaurants is very convenient for quick tea or lunch breaks.
Hotel restaurants have almost the same production systems between the casual dining restaurants and the fine dining restaurants. The only difference is that all the food ordered in casual dining restaurants is limited to the menu whereas in fine dining restaurants the customers can order any food they want and it’s not restricted to the ones available on the menu. (Regina & Durocher, 2001)
1. Mr and Mrs. Dolmio average check for the restaurant
| $ | ||
| Sales | 868,420 | |
| Food costs | 260526 | |
| Labour | 112894.6 | |
| Total cost | 373420.6 | |
| GP | 494999.4 | |
| Expenses | ||
| Fixed charges | 120,000 | |
| Rent | 25,000 | |
| Labour fixed | 150,000 | |
| Other costs | 100,000 | |
| Total Expenses | 395,000 | |
| NP | 99,999 | |
| Tax | 19999.88 | |
| Net Profit | 80,000 |
(David, 2009)
2.
| Average sales per day | 2392.342 | |
| Sales per table | 39.87236 | |
| Daily Seats turnover | 15.33552 | |
| Average meals | 16 |
Mr and Mrs. Dolmio will have to maintain a daily an annual turnover of $868,420 dollars every year or an average of 2392.342 per day to maintain their net profits at $80,000 per year. The total food costs will add up to $ 260, 526 dollars while the total prime costs would amount to $373,420.6 dollars. The Gross profit would be $494,999.4 dollars. Other expenses would be $395,000, while the earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) would be $99,999. The net earnings would eventually be $80,000 after paying a tax of $19,999.88.
Sample Menu
| 1 appetizers | Chunky Tomato Soup | 0 |
| 1 main course | Pollo Crème – Pan fried chickenescalope, white wine, mushroom | |
| and cream sauce served with pappardelle | $25 | |
| 1 desserts | Insalata Sicilliana – Wild rocket with tomatoes, | |
| basil and mozzarella & topped with balsamic | ||
| vinegar | $15 |
3. Three costed recipes
| Appetizers | Main Course | |||||
| Tomatoes | 1pc | 0.5 | Chicken pcs thighs | 1pc | 3 | |
| Tomato sauce | 50 ml | 1 | Wine | 100ml | 1.5 | |
| Butter melted | 10 oz | 0.5 | Cream Sauce | 50ml | 2 | |
| Onion Chopped | 10 oz | 0.5 | Mushrooms | 10 oz | 1 | |
| White pepper | 1 tsp | 0.5 | Others | 4.5 | ||
| Total | 3 | Total | 12 | |||
| Dessert | ||||||
| Tomatoes | 1pc | 0.5 | ||||
| Wild rocket salad | 4pcs | 2 | ||||
| basil | 5gm | 0.2 | ||||
| Mozzarella | 10 oz | 0.8 | ||||
| Balsmatic vinegar | 5mg | 1 | ||||
| Total | 4.5 |
My partner and I have decided to host dinner for the other two couples. We decided that we will treat the event as a social event and we opted to replicate a social catering on-premises service. The dinner will exclusively be an indoor event and the exact place would be the dining room area that has a dining table with six chairs. (Strianese & Strianese, 2002) We decided to scale our service category as mid scale and the food would be in a form of buffet complete with warmers. (Singh, 2002)
The major processes would involve invitations and confirmations, budgeting, shopping, food production and quality, hygiene and safety standards adherence, seating arrangement and cutlery, plates and glasses arrangement. I would be in charge of the budgeting, shopping and the hygiene and cleaning chores while my colleague would be in charge of invitations and confirmations, food production and placing the food on the tables.
We decided to invite our friends officially by sending invitation cards and confirmed their attendance by way of phone. All the four of them confirmed that would be available for the event that was scheduled to commence at 6 pm in the evening to late at night around 10 p.m.
We decided that we would prepare a casual dining restaurant menu that would entail Fried chicken, Fish, French fries, Rice, vegetables, soup and white wine. We settled for a Gateua as desert that’s a cake that’s filled with fruits or nuts and topped with custard. The drinks would include beverages, coffee and tea, Fresh juices, pineapples and orange. (Heiss & Heiss, 2007)
Food production had the highest number of labor hours needed to prepare and process all the required food. My colleague decided to spend the entire afternoon, peeling the potatoes, cutting tomatoes, onions, vegetables, baking the cakes and preparing rice and eventually frying the fish and chicken. These items have to be prepared much earlier since we were just the two of us and our gas burner is limited to two burning options only. Application of salt and cooking oil appeared tricky as one of the couple is diabetic and they take minimal amounts of salt and also use very little cooking oil.
The picture below portrays one side of the seating arrangements where each one of us will seat with our favorite couples.
Shopping Lists
| QTS | Description | unit | tt $ | Accompaniments | unit | tt $ |
| 4 | Tomato Juice (250ml) | 3.4 | 14 | Worcester sauce (2) | 2 | 4 |
| 0 | ||||||
| 2 | Smoked Salmon (small) | 7 | 14 | Cayenne pepper, Brown Bread and butter. (2pcs each) | 8 | 16 |
| 0 | Half lemon (3pcs) | 0.4 | 1 | |||
| Soups | 0 | |||||
| 4 | Crème de tomate | 3 | 12 | Croutons (2) | 2 | 4 |
| 4 | Fish fried (small) | 4 | 16 | lemon slices with peeled skin | ||
| 0 | Tartare sauce (250ml) | 3 | 3 | |||
| 0 | ||||||
| 4 | Chicken pcs | 3 | 12 | Roast gravy sauce (250ml) | 4 | 4 |
| 2 | Californian white wine | 10 | 20 | |||
| (750 ml) |
Our budget totaled to $120 and it was heavily subsidized by our own stock in the house that was made up of coffee, tea, sugar, cooking oil, rice, fresh oranges and pineapples and potatoes for French fries. The items have been purchased at Wal-mart as it’s located near our neighborhood and all the items are available there. Most of the visitors are personal friends and they like eating fish and French fries. (Loftus, 2007)
The plan is to prepare all the meals and place them in food warmers. When the visitors arrive their appetizers will already be on the dining table and as they enjoy themselves, the food will be placed on an adjacent table next to the dining where they will be required to serve themselves with whatever food they would like and then take a seat at the table. During the meal, fresh juice will be offered on the table. Eventually the dessert will be served at around 8 p.m. and the white wine served immediately after the dessert. As they have been our friends for a long time we intend to converse for a number of hours while enjoying the white. later after the food and the plates have been cleared out the table then I would ask them if they could comment on the food and the service given, the feedback is very important as it will help in improvement of our services in future. The comments should encourage us to work harder and improve the services offered instead of discouraging us.
The cleaning of the utensils and cutlery sets after the visitors have gone is my responsibility.
The following is my check list and hygiene standards conformity
| Checklists |
| Cocktail napkins |
| Paper towels |
| Toothpicks |
| Wine opener |
| Garbage bags |
| Dishwashing soap |
| Glasses |
| Cooking fuel (gas) |
| Charging the camera’s battery |
| Wiping the Speakers |
| General house cleaning |
| Cleaning windows |
| Watering the garden |
| Check the plates & glasses (cracks) |
Evaluation Tool
| Evaluation Tool |
| Was the food appetizing? |
| Was it well cooked? |
| Were the quantities too few? |
| Was the soup enjoyable? |
| Was the dining room arranged properly? |
| Would they return if invited again? |
When the visitors arrive, they will find their appetizers on the table and as they continue enjoying their snacks
Finally, after the party when the visitors are leaving, I would request at least one of the visitors to comment on the food, service or any comment that he has experienced while enjoying his dinner. The feedback is good as it will enable us to plan better in future.
References
Dahmer, S.J, Kahl, K.W. (2002), Restaurant Service Basics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
David, F.R. (2009) Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases. 12th ed. FT Prentice Hall, p. 104-114
Dhawan, V. (2000), Food and Beverage Service, Frank Bros. & Co.
Goodale, G. (2007). “At fast-food joints, try the secret menu”. Boston: Christian Science Monitor.
Heiss, M.L. & Heiss, R.J. (2007), Hot Drinks: Cider, Coffee, Tea, Hot Chocolate, Spiced Punch, and Spirits, Ten Speed Press.
Katsigris, C. & Thomas, C. (2006), The Bar and Beverage Book, John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Kotschevar, L.H. & Luciani, V. (2006), Presenting Service: The Ultimate Guide for the Foodservice Professional, John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Loftus , D. (2007), Restaurant Notes, Ryland Peters & Small.
Regina S. B, Durocher, J.F. (2001), Successful Restaurant Design, John Wiley and Sons
Singh, S.A. (2002), Restaurant Management, Anmol Publications.
Strianese, A.J. & Strianese, P.P. (2002), Dining Room and Banquet Management, Thomson Delmar Learning.
