Pocket Guide for Hospitality Managers

1 Hospitality services management 9
1.1 Knowing your hospitality business 9
1.2 Hospitality businesses pros & cons 9
1.3 Possible solutions 12
1.4 About services 13
1.5 Working with customers 20
1.6 About hospitality 20

2 Empowering unit management 25
2.1 Empowering employees is more than a name change 25
2.2 Empowerment: cutting through the jargon 26
2.3 Feeling empowered 35

3 Team leadership and motivation 39
3.1 Ensuring the happiness of your employees 39
3.2 What kind of leader are you? 41
3.3 A matter of choice 51
3.4 Working in teams 54

4 Working with people 59
4.1 It is people, people, people 59
4.2 Individual differences 59
4.3 Individuals in groups 71
4.4 Influencing others 73
4.5 Dealing with conflict 75
4.6 Motivating people at work 79

5 Staff turnover and retention 83
5.1 Hidden problem, hidden costs 83
5.2 Causes and types of staff turnover 83
5.3 Counting the cost 86
5.4 Measuring staff turnover 88
5.5 Keeping your staff is not rocket science: Everyone can do it. 91

6 Staff recruitment and selection 99
6.1 You cannot train nice 99
6.2 Flexible employees 99
6.3 The local market for labour 101
6.4 The importance of planning ahead 102
6.5 Describing the job to be done 102
6.6 Describing the ideal recruit 103
6.7 Attracting candidates 105
6.8 Making the selection 110
6.9 Approaches to recruitment and selection 114

7 Employee development and training 117
7.1 Learning by trial and error always involves lots of error 117
7.2 The benefits of training 118
7.3 Training Your Staff 123
7.4 The ABC of training 127

8 Managing service quality 131
8.1 You serve hot food hot, and cold food cold, and everybody smiles 131
8.2 Hospitality retail service quality 132
8.3 Quality management and hospitality retail operations 138
8.4 Total quality unit management 139

9 Time management and activity planning 145
9.1 What sets you apart from others is how you use your time 145
9.2 Time management 146
9.3 Activity planning and management 151
9.4 Reviewing performance 159

10 Control and operating profit management 163
10.1 It is all about keeping sales and costs under control 163
10.2 Understanding costs and sales 163
10.3 Cost-volume-profit relationships 167
10.4 Costs and sales control 170
10.5 The control process 174

11 Food and beverage cost management 181
11.1 To be successful we need to be smart business people 181
11.2 Purchasing control 184
11.3 Receiving control 186
11.4 Storage and issuing control 187
11.5 Portion control 189
11.6 Quantity control 192
11.7 Monitoring costs 194
11.8 Monitoring sales 195

12 Labour cost management 199
12.1 There is more to it than cutting wages 199
12.2 Elements of labour costs 200
12.3 Measuring staff costs 206
12.4 Adding to staff income 208
12.5 Scheduling employees 210

13 Sales generation and marketing 215
13.1 Meeting and exceeding customer expectations 215
13.2 Marketing services 216
13.3 Customer occasions 217
13.4 Know your customers 225

14 Preparing a unit’s business plan 235
14.1 Business plans, like any map, improve the chance of reaching the destination 235
14.2 Describing the business 235
14.3 Description of the products and services 237
14.4 You and your team 238
14.5 Market research 239
14.6 Competitive business strategy 242
14.6 Operations 244
14.6 Forecasting results 245
14.6 Writing up, presenting and working with your business plan 247

About the authors 251
Bibliography 252