Food and beverage control systems can help us introduce the same financial rigour to your

dining establishment or catering company that youll find in manufacturing operations. This
article tells you what to look for.

What is a food and beverage control system?

A food and beverage control system is a means of computerising best practice within a restaurant
or catering operation. It gives managers a better idea of the flow of food through the restaurant,
enabling them to plan cash flow and stock control more effectively. At the sharp end, it provides
chefs with a more structured way of planning menus, taking into account nutritional and
financial considerations.

Why do I need one?

In areas like manufacturing, companies keep close tabs on the manufacturing cost and value of
their products. And yet in dining establishments, the core product the food is often not
subject to the same scrutiny.

Matt Tough, sales and marketing director for PSL, a consultancy that helps restaurant and
caterers refine their food control techniques, says that food control in many establishments is
chaotic and unstructured.

Restaurant budgets are often based on what was achieved last year, Tough says. Ideally, chefs
should be able to cost out each item on a menu, creating a clear picture of the cost of each sale to
measure against its revenue. This helps you to understand which are the most profitable items,
and whether you are keeping food wastage low enough to hit the profitability targets that you
have set yourself.

Putting in place a proper food and beverage control system will help you to make more
intelligent decisions that help to cut the overall cost of sale for an establishment while
maintaining profits. For example, if you find that your overheads are too high, you may be able
to cut items from the menu that have a higher cost-to-revenue ratio.

What sort of features should it have?

There are several key features that dining establishments should consider when purchasing a
food and beverage control system. You may find that these features fall under different products
or modules within a single companys offering:

Market lists
One common mistake made by restaurants is to purchase ingredients from suppliers
without any clear rules. Creating a database of suppliers and ingredients will enable you
to manage ingredient pricing more effectively.

Nutrition
More applicable for specialist dining establishments (such as those in hospitals) or
catering companies, the ability to provide nutritional information on the food you serve
can offer you a competitive edge, and reassure customers particularly in areas such as
school dinners, for example.

Recipe management
According to Max Mueller, head of the European team at food and beverage control
system company Hospitality Control Systems and a chef for eleven years, many chefs
either work from memory without any clear recipe, or have incomplete recipes that they
do not follow.

Codifying recipes helps you to manage your ingredients more effectively, while building
in standard estimates for wastage (such as the yield after peeling and chopping
vegetables, or the wastage caused by evaporation and transfer of a cream sauce from
bowl to bowl). This will help you to price your food more accurately. If you know exactly
what a meal costs to make, you can price it more accurately to undercut the competition
while still making a quantifiable profit.

When looking at recipe management, consider the ability to nest recipes, because most
recipes are made up of multiple others. And a function to scale recipes easily for different
quantities will be invaluable for busy chefs.

Stock control and purchasing

Some food and beverage control systems give you the chance to inventory your food and
create purchase orders for more so you can maintain a minimum level of perishable stock
and free up your capital. Such systems can also be used to create work lists, so that staff
 taking delivery of orders know exactly what to expect on any given day.

Reporting
Reporting is a key asset in any food control system software. In addition to providing
preconfigured reports, the best systems will let you customise reports to suit your own
particular requirements. Reporting can be used to analyse a vendors history, or to find
out how volatile an ingredients price has been over the past few months. Other good uses
for reporting modules include finding your best-performance, highest margin menu items,
and using what if analyses to assess the impact of a cost change to a particular menu
item.

Intelligent reporting can help you to forecast your requirements, which can be useful for
seasonal items, for example, or for ingredients with volatile pricing. Baselining your
usage of butter over the course of a year might show that you use more butter in the
autumn this can be a useful piece of market intelligence if you see that butter prices
have been steadily increasing for the past few weeks.

Does it need to connect with anything else?

If your food and beverage control system can connect with your point of sale (POS) system, then
you can automate the updating of inventory as menu items are sold. You will find a variety of
different interfaces in food and beverage control software products to connect with POS systems
including Micros, Squirrel and Aloha.

If your software can also export data to an accounting system, then you can make financial
reporting much easier. Data can be exported from some food and beverage control systems to
popular accounting software such as QuickBooks, letting you transfer invoice and purchase order
details. Look for the ability to create specific account codes for each product category to make
the transfer easier.

Is technology enough?

No amount of technology will save you money or provide you with insights into your food
control unless you train your staff to use it properly. Make sure that your chefs understand the
importance of working with structured business tools so that they can tie margin estimates and
wastage control to the end product on the menu.
Unless you encourage this accountability as part of your dining establishments culture, such
software could end up sitting in a corner unused. But if done right, food control systems will
enable you to steer your restaurant or catering business towards long-term goals, rather than
reacting to short-term conditions.

Food & Beverage and Technology.

FOOD AND BEVERAGE

MANAGEMENT
Food and beverage Management starts with learning the Structure, scope & future
of catering industry The catering industry is a very broad one, including lot of sub
outlets such as- restaurants, coffee-shops, banquet halls etc. Besides this lot of clubs,
multi-cuisine restaurants etc have also come up.
Looking at the number of outlets in each of the sectors, a hotel has the largest and pubs
has the second largest number of outlets operating for profit. Cafes and take-a ways are
the fourth largest restaurants remain reasonably static in fifth place.

Then there are number of fast-food outlets also which is the most modern trend and
they are high in demand and serve less costly food.

Similarly road catering,railway catering and airline catering also forms part of the
catering industry. Service areas are often open 24 hours a day.Function & event catering
is also part of the catering industry and require better Food and beverage Management.

Airline catering has developed considerably over the last 25 years. Nowadays full&
varied services are provided in the airline industry.

Sea & marine catering is another type of catering.Food & beverages are produced on
short sea route ferries.

CLASSIFICATION OF FOOD &

BEVERAGE OUTLETS
-There are various types of food & beverage outlets according to Food and beverage
Management:-

Outlets that operate on a strictly commercial basis and those that are subsidized.
he subsidized sector is not available to the public.
The type of market served or which type of market is catered by the food&
beverage markets.
Outlets where catering is the main activity.
Outlets that are in private ownership & those that are in private ownership.

Importance- Commercial food& beverage outlets may be defined as those operations

in which profit is a primary concern. So, all in all commercial f & b outlets are business
entities. So, they are important in the way that they provide revenues to the catering
industry or the hotel. So, these outlets being commercially viable help the hotel in
earning revenues.
Size of the catering industry-The size of the catering industry includes hotels,
restaurants & snack bars, public houses, fastfood & take-away counters. These diverse
type of restaurants caters to various type of cuisines.There are various speciality
restaurants such as Chinese, Polynesian, Indonesian etc. So the size of catering industry
is diverse.
Consumers- Customers are those prospective persons who would be our guests.
Customers are those persons who are catered to by the hotel industry. They are our
prospective guests. Customers can be the resident guests or the stray
guests. Customers provide revenue to the catering units so hotel & catering industry
look to satisfy customers always.
The eating out habits& leisure-The analysis of who the customers are is very
important and then comes the food habits .For example it can be done by age,by socio-
economic class and by the frequency of eating out.Other example of type of analysis is
done by marital status, by number of people in the household ,by the number& Age of
children in the household, and by region within a country. Or of a specific area etc.
Major research of this nature is conducted by established market research organizations
such as market power ltd., FDS market research groupp etc. Leisure is directly related to
eating out.And there are various statistics available to eating out.
Nowadays there is a increase in healthy eating, awareness for hygiene and cleanliness,
demand for vegetarian foods, decrease in demand for red meat, with an increase in
demands for white meat, fish & pasta, demand for organically produced fresh foods.

Changing trends in modern food & beverage department- Nowadays managers

are totally involved in the planning process-setting objectives, making decisions and
implementing decisions. Managers nowadays are involved in staff motivation also.They
are responsible for purchasing, receiving, storing & preparation of food& beverage. The
food& beverage management also looks at the and moniters
The prices of various items.and achieving competitive rates while ensuring quality
food.The food& beverage management also prepares and compiles various menus. The
food& beverage management has a very important task of Forecasting costs and sales
& training to all food& beverage department staff.

FACTORS AND STRATEGIES CONSIDERED

There are various strategies that the food& beverage management uses for better
productivity and better management Which increases the yield more and produces
more results. Generally senior managers are more business oriented & devise various
business strategies.
Theoritical facts & practical decision making- As we know various
managers virtually follow theoretical facts & does their decision making. Always the
decision should be made keeping the future
In mind. And also the decision should be long term.

Sales volume& mix analysis of profit margins-Sales volume means the total
volume of sales of hotels or we can say the room sales & food& beverage sales.
Sales margins depend on the total turnover of the hotels. Sales volume is directly
related to profit margins. Now mix analysis of profit margins means to analyse the profit
margins and to see how much profits can be earned and what would be the level of
profit and how much profit can be Earned.
FOOD & BEVERAGE BRANDING STRATEGIES

-Food & beverages should be branded keeping in mind the

profit of the organisation. The brands will be always-national & international.Food&

beverage management works in conjunction with other departments for formulating
branding strategies..
Reviewing corporate food& beverage operations-It is the primary duty of f&b
management is to review corporate
Daily, monthly & yearly tab sheets are kept with food & beverage department to keep a
close look at food & beverage operations. The emphasis of food& beverage
management is towards

teamwork & participation. One of the key jobs of food & beverage management
is training, directing, monitoring & Motivating the job of food & beverage
staff. The efficiency of their day to day job is also monitored by f&b
management.Reviewing of corporate operations also becomes important to maintain a
certain standard of hotel.
All areas of catering services are monitored including efficiency of staff
& hygiene.Management should
always do performance measurement of staff . It is also done to avoid pilferage &
theft.

PLANNING & DESIGN

Location- For any success of any catering facility, its location is of utmost importance.
Then the restaurants location in relation to its present market should not be considered
but also its location to possible future market. For example, a city restaurant may rely
heavily on a large number of local companies for majority of its lunch time, if large
number of companies leave this area, then the restaurants trade would be affected. A
road side restaurants, trade would be affectedby expansion or relocation of a major
nearby road and consequently an increase or decrease of number of traffic.Customers
going to any food outlet will expect proper Car parking facility. So the accessibility to
the catering joint is another important factor.
Market feasibility-Feasibility means how much practically feasible a certain food
outlet is in the market. Most food & beverage outlets are market linked. The food outlets
being business entities should be feasible in the market. For being market Feasible the
outlet should be business wise profitable. Market feasibility also means

COMPETITION ANALYSIS.
Definition-The definition of feasibility study means to do a thorough research work &
exploitation of the market. Market feasibility study is very important to understand the
market scenario.
Reasons-Market feasibility studies are done for-

The identification of gap in the eating out market and formulation of suitable
product for it.
The determination of most suitable product given a fixed location.
The identification of location for pre-determined product.
It is also important for the analysis of the organization & its external
environment.
Types & Stages of feasibility study-SWOT Analysis is the analysis of strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities & threats of the organizations. It involves the systematic
analysis of all aspects of operation,both internal & external. Strengths & weaknesses
are referred to as internal factor, Opportunities & threats are external factors.
Advantages of a feasibility study-There are several benefits of a feasibility study.It
includes identifying market area Characteristics, for example analysis of population,
levels of income and levels and type of employment, commercial And industrial
activity etc. Feasibility study is also done to analyse the competition.That means to
analyse the competitors Within a certain area.
Feasibility study is also done to analyse demand. Demand analysis is done for
identification & characteristics of existing markets & market segments, future needs.
So, one of the major advantages of feasibility study is that it is overall analysis.

DESIGN & LAYOUT

The planning process-The planning process is a very important process of
stocktaking. The planning of food service Facilities is more complex than many
othertype of planning projects. Planning is nothing but the prediction of future events
which are bound to happen.An inherent problem in food production or food & beverage
planning is that customer demand for food service facilities is not constant.
The team- The team involves food & beverage manager to the supervisers to
waiters.So the team needs to have competent. People for proper food & beverage
management.This team is known as the food & beverage team.Last but not the
least , the team should be able toframe strategies.

Stages involved-The management planning is done on a step by step basis.Such as

planning also involves budgeting and there are various stages to budgeting.The amount
of detail & subdivision into departmental budgets depends very much on type and
Size of business.For food & beverage planning, determination of the net profit required
for the business in relation to Capital invested & risk involved.The next stage is
preparation of sales budget.This determines the volume of sales Necessary to achieve
the desired net profit. or subsidy and also influences the budgeted cost of food,
beverages, labour & some overhead.Preparation
of administration and general budgets is the next stage.Then comes the preparation
of capital expenditure budgets which makes provision for such items as expenditure.
Last but not the least stages are preparation of cash budgets & preparation of master
budgets, both of which are very important.As stated previously master budgets are
prepared for trading account, profit & loss account and the balance sheet.
Functions of design & layout-Design & layout are done to aid in the total functioning
of the food & beverage management. The first impression of the outlet is very
important.The design & layout creates an impression of the restaurant, which is very
important.
Layout of production & service areas- The production & service areas should
follow a certain design and should not be clumsy.The necessary space should be airy &
should be easily accessible to people.Production area; it should be engineering wise
always on ground floor. There are generally various kitchens & restaurants Cuisine wise.
They should be generally spaciously arranged.

QUALITY IN FOOD AND

BEVERAGE MANAGEMENT
OPERATIONS
Operating research- This is nothing but to do a Prior research about operations.
Operations can reassess their labour utilization & efficiency.
Forecasting menu analysis-The menu analysis is something which is done on a
prior basis.It is done on a prior basis to know about the menu in general.Because
formation of menu always requires pre-planning. The responsibility of making a full
menu lies with the food & beverage team.The food & beverage team forecasts menu &
it is their responsibility to prepare the menu. The forecasted menu should be well
balanced. The language used should be easy to understand. The menus should be cost
effective.
Profitability- Profitabiliy is Something which cant be ignored in Food and beverage
Management. Profitabiity can only be achieved if proper costing is done and profitability
is also important for the sustainance of any organization.Profitability is related to
productivity improvement also & also depends upon the total sales of the department.
Quality management helps in earning huge profitability.
MARKETING & MERCHANDISING TECHNIQUES- Merchandising is done of each &
every thing. The menu is without doubt one of the things which is always merchandised
as because it is a sales tool & a very effective sales tool. Merchandising means the
detailed marketing which is being done.

Advertising & promotion-Advertising & promotion are various tools used for
promoting an outlet as well as Food and beverage Management. Sales promotion is a
form of incentive which is aimed at customers. Advertising is generally of various types-
print advertising ,visual advertising and digital advertising.Advertising influences
the customers behaviour & attitude. Advertising draws the guest to the product.
Advanced menu planning for food festivals-For food festivals advanced
menu planning is required.Advance D menu planning is done to plan for the food
festivals. The menu for food festivals will always be Elaborate & highly planned one.
Special guest catering-For special guest catering understanding the guest
is first & foremost important. Special guests are given special attention to because they
are major revenue providers. For head of states sometimes specialized silver service is
also provided.
Food & beverage purchasing & receiving-Purchasing can be defined as a function
concerned with search, Selection,purchase,receipt,storage & final use of commodity. By
wrong purchasing there can be overordering or under ordering.One of the main
duties of purchasing manager is to carefully observe the price specifications.Then
the receiving, cellar and storage areas also Needs to be checked. The purchasing
manager also needs to ensure the continuity of supply.
Ordering- Ordering tells us about the Quantity and specifications of an item
which needs to be purchased. Giving orders always need to be done as
per specifications.

Requisitions- Requisitions are the proper specifications or quantities , given

before giving any order. For proper Requisitions requisition slips are maintained.
 Managing Restaurants- Manager is the incharge of the restaurant and
takes care of his fellow staffs and immediate juniors.He prepares the duty rota
according to the work schedule.
Managing Bars- They are efficiently managed by the bar captain.Wines,
liquour,spiris,juices and aerated water,cigars and cigarettes.Restaurant staff coordinate
with each other to manage properly.
Managing Store-Store is generally managed by the store manager.He or
she manages the store and keeps a total Stock of things.The main job of store manager
is to ensure that an adequate supply of food is provided to all guests. The perishable
items go straight to the kitchen,where they are stored either in refrigerators or cold
rooms. depending on the item. Ideally meat, fish, dairy products and fruits should be
stored separately. The main objective of store manager is to do stock taking and
proper Food and beverage Management.

FOOD AND BEVERAGE

MANAGEMENT CONTROL
OPERATIONS
Planning & Budgeting-Planning & budgeting is an important aspect for Food and
beverage Management and has become an important aspect with the continual
increases in the cost of food, beverages , labour, energy, maintenance and other
overheads. Now budget is made on a half yearly, yearly basis.There are various type of
budgets including capital budgets,operating budgets etc.
FOOD COST CONTROL The analysis is solely concerned with the income &
expenditure related to food operations. Food revenue is one of the major Forms of
revenue. The analysis of costs include departmental food & beverage costs, labour
costs and portion costs. The performance of each outlets sales is then analyzed and
expressed in terms of gross profit and net margin.
BEVERAGE COST CONTROL- The beverage control is a difficult proposition because of
perishibility of the beverage items. The beverage cost control varies according to their
demand.It is therefore important to determine the beverage list prices in light of
accurate food and beverage cost and Food and beverage Management.
Inventory control-Inventory is nothing but the stocktaking. The amount is
recognized as the most accurate method of determining the amount of beverage sold.
Inventory control is done for auditing.
The main disadvantages of control system are:

1) The time required to analyse sales and to take stock levels daily.

2) The time required to calculate the daily consumption for each selling outlet.

Purchasing & receiving control- Purchasing is a significant procedure and control

should be definitely exercised while purchasing.The purchasing managers duty to
exercise control. When purchasing a food item it is necessary to consider the true
cost of the item is very important for Food and beverage Management.
Management information system- This is nothing but managing. Here informations
are gathered to Assist the managers in their management of hotels.This management
information system or (MIS)is very common nowadays and sometimes management soft
wares also assist the managers in their job.