There has been a sharp hike in food prices all over the world because of a food crisis, increased prices of food ingredients caused by their short supply, and the increased cost of supplying them due to rising oil prices and distribution cost. Even if...
There has been a sharp hike in food prices all over the world because of a food crisis, increased prices of food ingredients caused by their short supply, and the increased cost of supplying them due to rising oil prices and distribution cost. Even if there are several problems like these, the most important thing to remember is that businesses should make a healthy profit by providing the finest food with safe food ingredients and through a standardized process. A hotel is a business which makes profits and returns through administration and management. Hotels are not operated for small profits and quick returns with cheap unit costs like local markets' but offer the best both tangible and formless service and get returns based on them.
Restaurants, which are the hotels' food and beverage parts, shows a difference compared to other parts in hotels. In there, fresh food ingredients are ordered and consumed everyday. When a season is changed, they should attract customers with an event in accordance with the change, and sometimes exotic and distinctive food from other countries should be a part of the event when anything from the country becomes a big fashion in Korea. Therefore, the demand for the hotel's food and beverage department is more flexible than somewhat fixed demand for its rooms. Also, compared to the rooms' fixed profit making, the hotel's food and beverage department has more possibilities of cash flow and profit making from its gains as it has enormous customer turnover.
With priority given to five-star hotels in Seoul, this study, thus, examines the importance of standardized standard amount set in hotel restaurants in order to decrease the cost of food through practicing standard amount for cooking and figures out its effect on food ingredients management, menu management, and job efficiency. Plus, this study involves not only documentary study but also positive study, which is for including the reality of the research in balance. The documentary study begins with an idea of basic standard amount set and proceeds to a study on the idea of food ingredients management, the definition of menu management, and the national/international technical books, previous studies, theses, papers, articles, scientific journals, publications, and previous statistical data related to theories about job efficiency. Based on this work, it was possible to use a device designed for this study and to draw a hypothesis accordingly.
With the documentary study and positive analysis, all data were analysed by SPSS WIN 12.0 statistics package, which includes frequency analysis, regression analysis, descriptive statistic analysis, reliability analysis, and factor analysis, and were used to draw a conclusion. The hypothesis of this study was examined by regression analysis. Five-star hotel restaurants in Seoul were set as a population and total 350 copies of a questionnaire were distributed to workers in a kitchen of those restaurants from September 15th to October 8th, 2008. 340 sets were returned and, without 28 sets which lacked some answers, finally, 312 sets were determined to use for the final positive analysis. The following shows effective factors of the standard amount set of the hypothesis in this study, the food ingredients management, and the menu management on job efficiency.
First, the result tells that the standard amount set has something to do with the food ingredients management. It reveals that the standard amount set is surely necessary according to menu development in case of emergencies through the experience of figuring out the amount of food ingredients and of practicing the standard amount set. Also, the standard amount set influences menu management, which means that handling menu information, maintaining the same taste all the time with the standard amount set, sharing menu information with other workers, and making and managing accurate standard amount set increase reliability. It turns out that these factors play an important role in menu management. Furthermore, the standard amount set effects on job efficiency; therefore, it is found that the workers would work better and more professionally when they decrease their mistakes while cooking.
There are several effective factors on the relationship that food ingredients management influences menu management and job efficiency. Those factors are a) administrators in kitchens place an order for the food ingredients in person, b) the quality of goods is kept by consistent purchase of goods, c) there is close cooperation system between the kitchen and the purchase department, and d) comparison management purchase system on each purchased item satisfies the workers.
Menu management effects on job efficiency as well. The effective factors are its help for the decision of menu prices, consideration of sales prices when developing them, its help for determining standards of the quality of the menu, computerization of menu sales system, consideration of profitability and contribution when developing the menu, and easy purchase of food ingredients in manu planning.
It turns out that good communication between workers in the kitchen and in the dining place enables them to get better job efficiency and that the accurate standard amount set enhances reliability, and rapidity and improves workers' service level in the end. This eventually raises cooperation between workers, efficiency of taking over duties between day and night shifts, and customer respond measurement. Services in hotel restaurants will certainly not be provided well enough to customers and it will be a problem in managing the cost of the menu if hotels' food and beverage department fails to manage food ingredients well, to prepare the standard amount set for its menu well, or even to manage menu without it. In order to increase efficiency of this work, accuracy and reliability should be raised so that the organization could pursue computerized system