Examining Value Of Menu Planning In Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay

This research work in progress describes the value of menu planning and other driving powers of the menu and the way that these can influence Hotel’s curriculum design. This research would generate some elements in the ongoing construction of theory about the menu planning consideration and the benefits of its in hotel industry. By using grounded theory methodology, theory is constructed from the empirical data. The outcomes of the research provided an overview of the divers’ value systems and driving powers of the respondents. Recommendations were made to have these value systems, driving powers and other characteristics to be taken into account by hospitality management schools in the curricula content and proximity to the industry. A moderate alert was issued in relation to schools’ size and format as perceived by the respondents. The research is going to be moved into a next phase that involves expanding the interview sample.

Hospitality industry is possibly the most dissimilar but specific industry in the world. Hospitality industry is certainly one of the largest industries. The hospitality Industry gives employment to millions of the people world wide. This industry range from the glamorous five-star hotels to the less stylish, but debatably more specialised, institutional areas such as hospitals, industrial outfits, schools and colleges. Yet of these many different sectors, catering has to be the most challenging. Whatever the size of the catering operation, the variety of opportunities available is endless. “The sky is the limit with catering” (Lebovitz D. 2007).

In the hospitality industry and more specifically upper segment hotel restaurants providing hospitality, the enjoyment of high quality food and beverages is viewed as part of a special culture. In this culture hospitableness is one of the central themes. Philosopher Telfer (1996) refers to ‘hospitableness’ as depending on devotion and a spirit of generosity rather than on skill. Practitioners or former-practitioners in the upper segment, like the researcher, can find reward, satisfaction and opportunities for personal learning and growth in the notion that hospitality and being hospitable carries substantive intrinsic value.

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Telfer (1996) quotes three historic reasons for offering hospitality in a cultural perspective. Firstly, hospitality originally involved meeting travelers’ needs before modern means of travel and facilities existed. A biblical sense is referred to here where strangers should be looked after if they are in need. Secondly, giving, receiving and sharing food is a bond of the trust and interdependency set up between host and guest. In some cultures this is a permanent bond between people (e.g. traditional Bedouin will not fight anyone with whom they have eaten salt). Thirdly, giving food and beverages is a gesture of friendliness. Particularly where hosts try to give their guests agreeable food it can be considered as an act of pleasing as well as sustaining them. On the other hand however it would be fair to agree with Johnson et al. (2005) that because restaurants operate in a highly competitive business environment, it is often critical for the restaurateur to develop or try to develop a distinctive dining experience for increasingly discerning customers.

1.1. Catering Industry:

1.1.1. History:

Food is one of the most important things for any living individual. The trend of preparing food for others is really old, earlier cooking for other was for the hospitality only but as time moved on catering became the business industry. The history of catering and fine cooking trades dates back in the 4th millennium BC. Catering Industry started in Asia (China) but the culture of grand eating and drinking was already important during the prosperous years in old Egypt. However, the catering trade only emerged from the commonly practiced hospitality, which was always free, when the first real hostels and inns were built in ancient Greece (Kahan D.J., 1992).

As the world was on progress, the development in ancient Greece continued in the Roman Empire. In the beginning, the accommodations for Roman soldiers were found along the military roads and trading routes, which were ultimately opened to all travellers. In the time period of the Middle Ages in Europe, the initial signs of the rebirth of the catering trade were seen in monasteries which covered mainly the needs of the many Christian pilgrims going to Rome. Procession series served the same purpose in the Orient and started there around 600 AD. During Charlemagne’s time, the catering trade developed and spread throughout the entire Europe because transport and trade required secure accommodation (Kahan D.J., 2992).

The catering trade had been greatly influenced by the church in the later part of the middle Ages. Additionally, the newly established bourgeoisies, the flourishing trade, the natural economy being replaced with money, and the intensification of transport all contributed to the popularity of catering industry.

The catering industry was extensively spanned in Germany from 14th to 15th century and this had drawn the attention of representatives. The first “beer inspection” licenses were paid by the Augsburg Elector in 1530. It was also in the same year that the reorganization channel Policy law was acted out and this reinstated many regional regulations. Once the law was acted out, there were so many different rules took place for hotels and inns. Hotels and catering establishments were concerned about the new rules and this led to the regulation of the service of beverages, size of different type of glasses, and the quality and purity of beer, even the quantity and variety of dishes were brought up in the new regulations. As the time was passing new hotels associations built and these association worked for the development of the catering industry. The term “Seefahrts- und Schifferhäuser” was first heard in the seaside towns during the Hanse era. At the same time these association took participation in the growing of new branches of the catering industry. The improvement of transport, technical innovations, population increase, and sudden rise in the trade of travel and tourism gave gastronomy a quick shift which made it a very important factor for national economy (Kahan D.J., 2992).

1.1.2 Catering Industry in brief:

Catering industry is a part of the Hotel Industry, The catering industry includes different places, institutions, hospitals and companies that provide meals eaten away from home. Basically a catering industry includes restaurants, schools and hospital cafeterias, catering operations, and many other formats, including “On-Premises” and “Off-Premises” caterings. Catering is a versatile segment of the food service industry. There is a slot for all types of catering businesses within the segment of catering. Food service industry is really a big industry and it includes different characters so in other terms the food service industry is divided into three general classifications: commercial segment, non-commercial segment, and military segment. Catering management is the combination of different task which are planning, organizing, controlling and executing. Planning of menu, staff, infrastructure, organizing the staff, organizing the different tools controlling the wastage, yield, and executing the outlets, all together influences the preparation and delivery of food, beverage, and related services at a competitive, yet profitable price. These activities work together to meet and exceed the customer’s perception of value for his money (Cousins J., 1999).

When providing menu choices to consumers, whether this is in a school, hospital, or other catering situation, it is important to plan the menus adequately. This planning will ensure not only that the menu is attractive and acceptable to the target consumers, but also that other aspects receive due consideration (Wiley J. & Sons, 2007).

Menu planning can mean many things to many people. Here, we are concerned with ensuring that the planned menu options presented can be shown to be nutritionally adequate and cost-effective. As individual day or meal menus and menu cycles (that is, the set of menus that make up a repeating pattern over a number of weeks) can contain large numbers of optional items, it is not normally possible to analyze combinations of dishes manually. The best that can be done without software tools is to make a few possible selections and work out the total nutrition and cost. This tells you nothing about the adequacy of the menu or menu cycle and would not be sufficient to audit the data (Lilicrap D., 1998).

Menu planning is the key part of the success of any hotel or restaurant. According to the researcher proper menu planning can be really useful to run the food and beverage operation smoothly. Anyone planning an event should offer several choices so that all guests will be pleased with what’s available (Cousins J., 1999).

1.2 Problem statement

The United Kingdom market covers a very big market of the catering industry. It has a very huge number of food and beverage organizations which offers environment of taking food and beverage related services. These organizations are high class five star hotels, three star hotels, specialty restaurants, fast food centres, out door caterers and transport catering. However, more specifically in the food and beverage services, the United Kingdom catering industry expend by sector for the specified selective catering services is not identified and consequently needs to be studied.

A clear understanding of specific selective outsourcing areas of IT related services which form part of the Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) would require one or more of the following:

1.2.1 Improving IT availability and service levels: this service helps improve the availability of IT customers’ environment and thus improve IT service levels.

1.2.2 Managing IT capacity and performance: this service helps anticipate, identify, monitor, and improve performance across IT infrastructures.

1.2.3 Planning and deploying new technologies: this service helps reduce the amount of time and resources required to deploy new systems.

1.2.4 Managing IT environments: this service helps customers manage a heterogeneous, multivendor environment.

The research question more specifically can be stated as follows: What percentage in the South African IT market by sector is spent on the specific above-mentioned selective outsourcing services?

The research also looks at other areas such as: How IT decision makers view outsourcing and the specified selective outsourcing services and more specifically the role that outsourcing plays in their sector and specific organizations.

1.3 Purpose of the research:

1.3.1 Primary Objective:

As the researcher is a hotel management graduate, being a hospitality student researcher completely involved into hospitality industry. Author has worked with different star category hotels and restaurants all over the world, and has been applying all educational, professional knowledge and skills in the workforce making the workforce fun at work. The concept of Fun at work has been followed by different companies but a very fine structure is taken by Jaypee group of hotels and Choice group of Hotels. There are different types of hotels and different themes of restaurants and bars that play a major role with human psychology. But the end product is all about value and satisfaction for the customer.

The central aim for this research is to define the influence that the consideration while menu planning could have on the Catering industry.

1.3.2 Secondry objective: To do a literature research on importance of the menu planning in catering industry.

1.4 Research Methodology:

The research is targeted at Top Food & Beverage management of the 5 star hotels, 4 star hotels and out door catering in United Kingdom , which is obtained form the Brewing, food and beverage industry (BFBI) listed top 100 Organizations. Researcher targeted people are top position Food and Beverage Managers, Assistant Managers and General Managers of different Star categories Hotels. “To survey is to question people and record their responses for analysis, and its strength of questioning as primary data collecting technique and its versatility” says Emory (1991).

1.4.1 Primary research

In order to achieve the objectives stated below, the author conducts the research on both the supply and demand side of the market, which includes IT market players, competitors and customers. The survey was carried out by means of telephonic interviews:

A list of the top 100 Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies was obtained from BMI-T, on which the interviews were conducted. For the purpose of this study and the time constraints associated with it, the author only conducted telephonic interviews. The benefits of the telephonic research are discussed in Chapter Three. 85 interviews were conducted within the author’s target market, which are the IT Company’s customers by vertical sector.

One questionnaire was designed, in conjunction with other management team members at the IT company by whom the author is currently employed, in the form of a workshop, and the results of the interviews were used. Chapter three outlines the research methodology used in this research. The survey compiles a view of the South African IT services industry according to the business segmentations identified by the author. This dimension distributes revenues according to vertical market sectors (sectors are based on the IDC vertical breakdown, and are clustered to reflect the targeted industry sectors). The survey was carried out on the top 100 JSE listed companies within the borders of South Africa. The questioning technique concentrated on the following, targeted at 45 customers.

1.5 Limitations and scope:

Basically this research has been based on Secondary data.

The research required many details and information but major constraint is the time factor, which is limiting the study.

Being a student, fund might be a limitation.

All the experience in this industry is out of United Kingdom so personal interviews with those hotels will be difficult to visit.

1.6. Discrimination of the research

Chapter two: Literature Review

This chapter includes the widest knowledge of the menu planning in catering industry. This chapter provides available current literature, data which have been used in this research to support with the qualitative analysis of the collective data. This chapter also gives full information and knowledge in depth at the literature review, in order to have clear view into the importance of the material to the problem statement and applied research methodology to be used.

Chapter three: Research Design and methodology

The research design or methodology is the plan and structure of the investigation to obtain answers to objectives says (Cooper and Shindler 1998:130). This chapter gives the full information about how researcher designs the research and what research method is going to be used by author. In this chapter aims and objective of the research will also be discussed, data gathering methods, data analysis and the end result with conclusion will discussed. The role of the research is to provide a method for obtaining those answers by inquiringly studying the facts, within parameters of the scientific method concludes (Leedy, 1989).

Chapter four: Research finding and analysis:

This chapter will give the result of the research based on gathered quantitative and qualitative data. Basically in this chapter researcher is going to declare the end result of the research. This chapter also includes the presentation and interpretation of the end result in different forms and pie chart explanations.

Chapter five: Conclusion and recommendation

The final chapter is focused on conclusions reached. Suggestions and recommendations are given to businesses interested in using the findings.