ASSIGNMENT: CASE STUDY REPORT
Description
The Gold Coast Convention Centre offers as part of its operation, a newly created catering service for the various events and conferences held at the facility. The initial year of operation has seen an annual turnover of $800,000; represented by a 70% of food and a 30% of beverage sales.
The Food and Beverage (F&B) manager of the catering service was appointed to the job as a temporary replacement, which lasted for the whole first year. He came to this role with very limited food and beverage experience. While he is aware of exactly how the sales revenue is made up by each component of the service, he does not know what margins they make. Being an inexperienced F&B manager he has decided that, there was no need to introduce any system for controlling stock or purchases, relying instead on employees and his own experience. He always assumed that employees are honest and know their job and therefore only checked the final yearly results.
A brief look at the accounts identifies the following:
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Food sales
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$510,000
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Cost of food sales
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$315,000
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Beverage sales
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$290,000
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Cost of beverage sales
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$112,000
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While it is considered successful in the eyes of the F&B manager, this operation is not performing as well as it could. Some negative feedback has been received by the General Manager, from customers participating in various events and conferences. The following are some examples of feedback:
1. We have attended at least three functions in the last few months as well as receiving some catering services from the kitchen. However, we decided not to come here as often as we would like because often what was ordered and organised was different from what was delivered. It is especially embarrassing when we have a private function for our guests and you cater for it, as we rarely get what we expected.
2. Food quality and presentation is inconsistent and varies considerably e.g. meal sizes are big one time and very small the next.
3. The last time we booked an event most of our participants reported being ill afterward and complained to our organisation that they will never participate again.
Your task
You have been hired by the General Manager as an expert to advise him on what procedures they should adopt in terms of purchasing, receiving, storage and production that would mitigate these customers' comments and generally improve the performance of the catering service. Your task for this assessment is to analyse the information provided above, critically evaluate current procedures, and make recommendations for improvement to the GM in the form of a report. In your analysis you should also consider the accounting figures presented above which will help you further understand the situation and the difficulties management is facing.