Description
The Gold Coast Convention Centre offers as part of its operation, a newly created catering
service for the various events and conferences held at the facility. The initial year of operation
has seen an annual turnover of $800,000; represented by a 70% of food and a 30% of beverage
sales.
The Food and Beverage (F&B) manager of the catering service was appointed to the job as a
temporary replacement, which lasted for the whole first year. He came to this role with very
limited food and beverage experience. While he is aware of exactly how the sales revenue is
made up by each component of the service, he does not know what margins they make. Being
an inexperienced F&B manager he has decided that, there was no need to introduce any
system for controlling stock or purchases, relying instead on employees and his own
experience. He always assumed that employees are honest and know their job and therefore
only checked the final yearly results.
A brief look at the accounts identifies the following:
Food sales $510,000
Cost of food sales $315,000
Beverage sales $290,000
Cost of beverage sales $112,000
While it is considered successful in the eyes of the F&B manager, this operation is not
performing as well as it could. Some negative feedback has been received by the General
Manager, from customers participating in various events and conferences. The following are
some examples of feedback:
1. We have attended at least three functions in the last few months as well as receiving some
catering services from the kitchen. However, we decided not to come here as often as we
would like because often what was ordered and organised was different from what was
delivered. It is especially embarrassing when we have a private function for our guests and
you cater for it, as we rarely get what we expected.
2. Food quality and presentation is inconsistent and varies considerably e.g. meal sizes are big
one time and very small the next.
3. The last time we booked an event most of our participants reported being ill afterward and
complained to our organisation that they will never participate again.
10 | SCI00419 Food and Beverage Management (Session 1, 2016)
Your task
You have been hired by the General Manager as an expert to advise him on what procedures
they should adopt in terms of purchasing, receiving, storage and production that would
mitigate these customers’ comments and generally improve the performance of the catering
service. Your task for this assessment is to analyse the information provided above, critically
evaluate current procedures, and make recommendations for improvement to the GM in the
form of a report. In your analysis you should also consider the accounting figures presented
above which will help you further understand the situation and the difficulties management is
facing.
Marking criteria for the report 40%
Discussion of key issues/problems 10%
Critical evaluation of the inventory cycle procedures drawing on the relevant literature 10%
Discussion on suggested improvements supported by the literature 10%
Appropriateness and feasibility of recommendations 5%
Report format (spelling, grammar, referencing and logical flow of ideas) 5%
