Intra-Department relationship

INTRA-DEPARTMENT RELATIONSHIP

No individual department in any hotel can work in isolation. To achieve positive moments of truth in any service provided to the guests, no specific department can be responsible: in fact it should be a collective responsibility of all the departments concerned. Each department is equally important for proper functioning of hotel. The food and beverage service department is one of the major selling points of the hotel.

All sections under the umbrella of the F&B department coordinate and cooperate with each other to achieve objectives of the department that are customer, management, and employee focused.

The following shows the intra –departmental relationship between sections.

1. Food Production

In a food and beverage outlet, the F&B production has the most important role to play. Items prepared/dressed here are the ones that the service personnel sell. To be successful in its operations, it coordinates with the other F&B Sections.

Purchase and Stores: 

Kitchen Stewarding:

Food service outlets:

In the planning of the restaurant, the first thing that comes to mind is the menu. F&B department being the 2nd most revenue generating department next to rooms, has to take care while developing the final menu which in turn is understood, seen and tasted by the service personnel and consequently sold in a large organization.

The Food Production itself is divided into various sections; they are hot kitchen, pantry/still room, garde- manger, bakery & confectionary, butchery etc.

2. Kitchen Stewarding

The dept is primarily concerned with the storage, maintenance, cleanliness and issue of cutlery, crockery, hollowware and glassware to the restaurant & kitchens. It is responsible for the cleanliness of kitchen and washing of pots & pans.

It usually has a pot wash where large vessels are cleaned and a wash area where service equipment is cleaned, washed & stored.

This dept also deals with storage & issue of all kitchen & service equipment and hence the controls are also the part of the purview.

Kitchen stewarding is an important function to maintain the strict standard of hygiene & sanitation of the municipal and health authorities.

At the most this activity can be contracted to cleaning companies though the equipment like dish washing machine, which will be owned by the property.

3. Purchase and Store

This dept like the name suggests stores all supplies for all the depts. This may be divided into separate area as food, liquor, materials; perishables etc. It may get its supplies through the purchase dept buy floating tenders.

The INDENT BOOK plays a very important role connecting the stores & F&B svc area. The F&B dept gives its requirements like proprietary sauces, seasonings, material like doilies, paper napkins, candles, office material etc to the stores in the form of an indent which is counter signed by the corresponding departmental manager. Also purchase indents for items are sent to the purchase dept and routed through stores.

4. Front Office

This is a front of the house position & deal with the guest directly. The check in, check out, reservation, billing, information, telephones etc all come under this dept. The front office is also responsible for health club, beauty parlor, business center and travel desk.

All communication related to the status of the guest (HWC, VIP etc), their billing instructions, direct payment can be obtained from front office dept.

The dining room (a room where food is served to guests on a certain plan), coffee shop (for breakfast etc)and room service ( for breakfast , billing instructions, amenities  for special guests, lounge service etc)need to coordinate with front office for guest lists, billing instructions, amenities placements in room. Problem handling during night shifts, paging & other allied services.

5. Housekeeping

This dept takes care of general upkeep of the hotel. It undertakes periodic cleaning of all public areas including cleaning of carpets and polishing of fittings.

Service personnel may call on housekeeping staff to take care of spillage, accidents etc. in the vent of guest’s clothes getting spoilt, they will be getting laundered, thus helping retain the customer.

The housekeeping dept has a uniform room which deals with uniforms, restaurant linen etc of the food & beverage svc. In a hotel various F&B outlet may have different uniforms & different linen. The book used in connection with the housekeeping is the LINEN BOOK which lists all service linen used and exchanged as a one on one basis of the costly items in the overheads.

This dept also organizes to have flower arrangements placed at various F&B outlets as per standard.

6 Account/Finance

The service dept is directly or indirectly related to accounts dept through cashiering.

Some F&B outlets have a separate cashier at each outlet that raises the guest bill through the KOT provided to them.

They also have detailed information regarding credit card hot lists, discount policies blacklisted companies, credit policies etc.

In the present scenario the waiters or stewards act like cashiers and raise the guest bill according to the consumption. This new trend has started due to the various point of sale system introduced in outlets by management.

The night auditor at various outlets does the days closure at night to conclude the day’s sale. He has to check each voucher its entry and payment into the system, basically tallying the reports. The vouchers are sent to the F&B controls every day after the day’s closure.

In general the accounts dept deals with payments of the employees like employee salary, payments to various tenders, bill settlement, vouchers, paid out etc. The control of KOT books, vouchers and discrepancies with regards to entries in KOT’s, bills, authorization of signature etc is done on weekly basis.

7. Food And Beverage Controls

This department regulates the expenditure and revenue of food service areas. It analyses the portion costs, beverage costs, revenue of the outlet, sales mix, and number of guests served in a particular meal period. It audits the KOTs, duplicate guests’ bills sales summery sheets, and other cashier’s reports on a daily basis to prevent frauds and pilferage. All POS (Point of Sales) systems in food service areas are interconnected to the controls department for effective control on all the revenue transactions