Contemporary Hospitality Practice And Reflection As A Restaurant Manager: An Essay.

Part A

In contemporary hospitality practice, a manager must understand the logic and the complex system involved with managing their operations; in addition, a reflective Manager must also be able to critically analyse his/her own operations. 

• Customer needs and expectations
• Service standards
• Types / Forms of Communications
• Efficiency of service
• Staff skills and product knowledge
• Impact on the kitchen operations.
• Menu types, service styles & food and wine matching

Part B
Reflect on one moment of truth that you have experienced whilst working at the Ambassador Restaurant.
Analyse this moment from a Restaurant Manager's point of view. What were the causes that have led to this moment? What would you do to remedy the situation (if it was a negative moment)? What lesson will apply when you are a manager? Use primary and secondary sources of information, the suggested readings and other relevant, related and researched readings. 

Key factors affecting Ambassador Restaurant

The report is mainly based on contemporary hospitality practice, as we know that the manager must know the all logics and the complexities involved in the system while managing their operations.  Moreover, being a restaurant manager, one must be capable to critically analyse his or her own operations activities. Thus, work experiences and learning from them will be reflected through this report while working at ambassador restaurant (herein after referred as AR). Good hospitality practice through considering all key factors that affect restaurant image and sales is essential in food and beverage services (Bowie, et al., 2016).

Customer is the God for any sustained business in the world, and hospitality practice of ambassador restaurant has driven through customer’s updated demands as well as needs. Ambassador restaurant is always suitably identifying guest needs, which is allowing them to hike sales of their products or services. As the AR is keep on understanding its customers’ expectations regularly, it is making their hospitality better, more versatile, as well as increasing organization profits (CTS, 2014). Main key to success for the AR is their innovative assumption of the fact in their operations and working that the Customers are vague at times about their own needs, or they can be unsure about what they actually want which is to be identified by the effective hospitality management (Bhavani, 2013).

AR understands that Service standards are the key components for attracting new customers, holding potential customers, employees as well as management of any business. Thus, service standards of ambassador restaurant helps its management team to understand what a customer can expect at any time. Additionally, these standards are used to remind management as well as employees of the challenges and obligations that they can face while treating the customers (Bhavani, 2013).

Effective communication among all staff members is can play a vital role in restaurant hospitality; this has proved by AR communication tools (Jong , 2016). Following types of communications in AR are helping to form a culture of constant effective communication:

• Anonymous feedback
• Employee newsletter
• Digital employee wiki
• Manager Log Book 
• Leveraging mobile chat

Thus, the above all has helped AR in increasing their employee’s satisfaction and profitability through effective time management as well as ease of work.

Ambassador Restaurant’s efficiency of services it is providing has been influenced from the following hospitality management practices:

• Reviewing Processes as well as Procedures
• Checking Platforms as well as Resources
• Considering appropriate Layout Size
• Timely assessing Promotions and Products
• Managing Labor Deployment (Martinez, 2016)

As we know that food and beverage incorporates the services provided to restaurant’s customers related to food as well as a wide variety of beverages. Therefore, for AR’s rapport building staff skills and detailed product knowledge has played key role, as the staff skills helped the restaurant understand that to be aware of customer’s needs and expectations is the right way to perform while trying to meet customer service standards (CTS, 2014).

Moreover, the secret behind providing high quality, and highly professional customer service by the AR is that all the staff of AR are developed in their skills of dealing with people, as well as they have good knowledge regarding the products and services which they own. Staff of AR knows each and every detail about the products offered by their firm. Additionally, good knowledge of the available menu, key ingredients, pricelists, cookery methods and wine list enable the staff to recommend any of the above to a range of customer needs and expectations (Smith, 2013).

Customer needs and expectations

Most importantly, many of the prime customers take their purchasing decision on the basis of advice as well as depth of prior knowledge about the products that a restaurant offer, for holding those customers also this quality of AR has worked (TAFE NSW restuarant, 2017).

In addition to above mentioned factors, other kitchen operations factors have also influenced the AR’s sales and prestige (AGA Australia, 2018). These factors include:

• Menu items
• Use of accessible and healthy foods
• Facility layouts and designing of production equipment
• Type of kitchen services
• Quantity and portion size of meals as well as number of meal periods in a day
• Kitchen working environment and working hours (BC Campus, 2018)

Most importantly the style of service always influences the menu types and available varieties of foods that the restaurant can offer anytime to the customer (Thacker, 2016). There are some key factors those have influenced the best service styles as well as food, wine menu types of AR, are as follows:

• Reception Service
• Buffet Service
• Action stations
• Butlered Hors d’ Oeuvres Service
• Cafeteria Service
• Family-style Service (Menu Shoppe, 2015)

Moreover, AR offers a wide range of wine matching like sparkling includes Domaine Chandon, Vintage blanc and Morris Sparkling. Additionally, AR is also having long wine list in the menu comprising Red, Rose and Dessert wines (Garnett, 2014). Besides, the exclusive wine collection Ambassador Restaurant is having three menu of restaurant food including series of delicious Canape, starter, main course and dessert types (TAFE NSW restuarant, 2017).  

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, in hospitality management customer needs and their expectations plays a key role for generating business. Those restaurants that fulfil as well as exceed their customer’s expectations survive and reach at the heights of prestige. Besides, restaurant service standards, communication forms, service efficiency, as well as product knowledge and skills of the staff of the Ambassador restaurant has contributed a lot in acquiring its remarkable place within the hotel industry. Most importantly the kitchen operations, food menu types, service styles as well as food or wine matching and chef’s skills impacted positively on Ambassador’s business and fame.

Being a restaurant operations manager, I want to share one of my experience at workplace that contain the roles of different characters include restaurant guests, staff and me as a restaurant manager. The incident was about understanding and fulfilling the expectations of guests. One guest who came to have dinner at our restaurant Le Cordon Bleu  with family, got sick because of our food as he was allergic to mushroom. When I analysed the moment then I got to know that he did not inform about his allergy of mushroom, because of that our chef as well as restaurant staff served dishes contained mushroom. After having that dish on f them got immediately showed the allergic symptoms like vomiting and swollen face.

I was feeling very bad and irresponsible in spite of the fact that we had no information regarding his allergic reaction for mushroom. Right after the moment happened. We took him to the nearby hospital and took all the responsibility of the medication. Additionally, I personally apologised to all of the family members of that person on the behalf of the whole hotel community about the incident.    

Moreover, when I went through the whole incident and saw all video footages of the restaurant then I got to know that causes of the incident were lying at customer’s end as he did not tell anything about allergy, still it was a bad moment as he could have sued us for the same. Although I handled the situation very well being the restaurant manager yet future action plan was needed. I evaluated the causes, worst possibilities and future remedy in a way that no same incident can happen in future again.

As a precaution, I suggested to the higher management of the hotel that we must have our menu cards printed with asterisk marked note at the bottom of every page. The note will contain the guideline that if someone is having any allergy to any kind of food then please let us know during order taking  by the staff and waiters. Moreover, I also instructed all my waiters, waitresses about repeating the order in front of customer with detailed food contents so that he or she can edit it if they want to. There were so many lessons from that incident include it could have ruined the whole prestige of the restaurant if could have sued our restaurant. I declared that from now onwards this must be a practice by all the staff that re-confirms at least once about the food allergies of the guests if there is any.  In this way, being a manager I analysed the situation and implemented its precautions as well as remedies for the betterment of my career and employer’s respect within the hotel industry.

Thus, I learnt many things from that incident and I got realised my potential for solving sudden real-time problems as I acted well in that situation being a manager. Besides, I got an opportunity to learn from that moment and got a lifetime experience of handling the same kind of situations.

References:

AGA Australia, 2018. Cooking Demos & Events. [Online]
Available at: https://agaaustralia.com.au/food-ambassador/
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

BC Campus, 2018. Basic Kitechen and food service managment. [Online]
Available at: https://opentextbc.ca/basickitchenandfoodservicemanagement/chapter/factors-affecting-working-performance/
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

Bhavani, M., 2013. Customer’s expectations of hospitality services–a study on five star hotels in Hyderabad city. Journal of Management and Science, 3(4), pp. 16-22.

Bowie, D., Buttle, F., Brookes, M. & Mariussen, A., 2016. Hospitality marketing. London: Routledge.

CTS, 2014. 5 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR TEAM’S PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE. [Online]
Available at: https://customersthatstick.com/blog/5-ways-to-improve-your-teams-product-knowledge/
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

Garnett, T., 2014. Three perspectives on sustainable food security: efficiency, demand restraint, food system transformation. What role for life cycle assessment?. Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 73, pp. 10-18.

Jong , C. d., 2016. How to Communicate Effectively in Your Restaurant: 7 Suggestions. [Online]
Available at: https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/how-to-communicate-effectively-in-your-restaurant
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

Martinez, J., 2016. 5 Steps to Making Your Restaurant More Efficient. [Online]
Available at: https://www.foodnewsfeed.com/fsr/vendor-bylines/5-steps-making-your-restaurant-more-efficient
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

Menu Shoppe, 2015. 8 Menu Types You Should Know About. [Online]
Available at: https://www.menushoppe.com/8-menu-types-you-should-know-about
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

Smith, P., 2013. Delivering food security without increasing pressure on land. Global Food security, 2(1), pp. 18-23.

TAFE NSW restuarant, 2017. The Ambassador Training Restaurant. [Online]
Available at: https://www.nsi.tafensw.edu.au/campus/SpecialistCentres/Restaurants/Ambassador.aspx
[Accessed 27 10 2018].

Thacker, K., 2016. How to Launch Perfect Food & Wine Pairings at Your Restaurant. [Online]
Available at: https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/how-to-launch-customer-beer-or-wine-pairings-at-your-restaurant
[Accessed 27 10 2018].