The Nature Of Food And Menu: Hospitality Industry

In the hospitality industry, food plays a vital part. Any hotel, serving delicious, healthy, and hygienic food at an affordable price automatically gains the attention of the customer. All the hospitality destinations appoint talented and skilled chefs and souse-chefs that can create delicious food that can be served to the customer (Chakrabarti and Scholnick, 2007). The food comprises a lot of diversity. It includes the vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes as per the choice of the customer. The customer decides his choice of food with the help of the menu provided to him by the serving restaurant or hotel. The menu is a presentation of the food that would be served to the customer. A menu comprises the name of the dish, a small detail about what the dish is and along with that the price that would be charged by the restaurant for that dish. The food,  if not presented well in the menu, then the customer could go for something else. Hence, the presentation of the menu along with the details of the food need to very thoughtful (Fernandes et al., 2015).

Every hotel or a restaurant has a pre-decided cuisine that is served to the customers. Food comprises of thousand of dishes and cuisines that can be served to the guests. The food that needs to be served is decided by putting a through the thought process. The food that is required to be served should be according to the liking of the targeted customers. Every restaurant has a type of customer that frequented it more than others. For example, a restaurant started servicing in an old Australian neighborhood will try to serve native Australian dishes to attract more customers who are living nearby. This can be the specialty of that restaurant. The food served need to be delicious, hygienic, fresh, and healthy (Hwang and Lorenzen, 2008).

Food is not limited to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It is a vast gallery to be explored. When talking about food, then it can be a small diner serving street food, a café serving coffee, a desert bar, a multi-cuisine restaurant, or a road-side food truck, restaurant cooking the food in front of the customer and serving, and a fast-food center. They all serve different nature of food. Some serve quick bites, and some an elaborate meal, at one place a formal dress is required to have a meal, and another place welcome all type of customers, some have timings for the service, and some are open throughout the day for the guests. Food is the attraction that brings guests again and again to the restaurant. People can adjust to the accommodation, location, the seating, or the atmosphere if the food is nice and bright which satisfed the customer’s taste buds. Many countries are famous for the cuisine they serve like, in Hong Kong sea-food is a specialty, India is famous for its curries, Japan is a well-known place for sushi, and Australian cuisine includes Kangaroo meat. People specially visit these countries to explore the type of food that country offers. Many people take their country’s food to other countries and sell it as a cuisine of their country (Kim, 2014).

In renowned hotels, it is necessary to have at least two restaurants and a coffee shop. One of these restaurants has to serve the upscale and formal food; other can be as per the liking of the hotel management. Restaurant in a hotel may serve multi-cuisine nature of food, or a single cuisine like sea-food, Indian delicacies, Japanese cuisine, or a Chinese cuisine. People wanted to explore particular kind of cuisine can go to that restaurant to enjoy that food. Five star rated hotels have a separate department of food & beverages that deals in only food and related departments (Lee, Lee and Kim, 2013). This department decides the nature of food that has to be served to the guest, how it will be served and at what time. It also decides the choice of food that should be served to the customer. It also keeps the hygiene of the food in check and makes sure that food is fresh. While exploring the hospitality management a person need to learn everything about food including other parts of the hospitality management. This is done as food is an important part of the hospitality industry and to find success in the hospitality industry one need to be well-versed with the nature of food, and the customers and their demand and choice of food (Lee and Cranage, 2007).

When a guest arrives at a place to have food, then the first thing presented to him is the menu. A menu is a presentation of the food that is going to be served in the restaurant. A menu holds the various details about the food like, a small specification regarding particular dish, the price of various dish that are served in the restaurant. As it is said first, impression is the last impression. In a case of a restaurant, its menu is the first impression that reaches the customers. That makes it compulsory that the menu should be designed with great detail (Manning and Soon, 2016).

It is quite true that the primary product of a restaurant is the food it is serving which includes the atmosphere, management, and social factors. The menu cannot be considered as an overall product of a restaurant, but it is an important part of it. It acts as a key factor that attracts and satisfies the customers and thus affects the performance of the restaurant firm. A menu has various parts which require proper analysis. A menu is designed as per the atmosphere of the restaurant it can be on a paper, hardboard, or a common menu placed on a wall. Some cafes display their menu outside on the entrance to attract customers (Peplow, 2013). The pricing of the food that has to be served has to be mentioned on the menu and this is known as menu pricing. The pricing of the menu has to be a well-thought process as customers prefer to check the pricing given in the menu before placing an order. The pricing should be such that it includes the over-all expenses and profit should also be included in the prices. If there are any extra tax charges, then that should also be mentioned in the menu. Menu analysis is the process that helps in giving a final look at the menu. The planning, pricing, designing, operating, and the development of menu come under the menu analysis (Thompson, 2012).

A menu is a multi-dimensional part of the restaurant and needs to be well detailed. If a restaurant is serving the sea-food, then the menu of that restaurant displays all the sea-food dishes that the restaurant serves to its customers. An interesting menu always attracts extra attention. For example, a hotel with a name of ‘Lake of Woods’ hand over their menu on a small wooden log, another restaurant which is famous for its banana recipes has printed their menu on an artificial banana leaf. Some menus are prepared with different and stylish names of the dishes, for example, a simple chocolate Sunday is named as ‘Death with Chocolate’ which makes the guest intrude about the ice-cream and would like to order if he is a chocolate buff. Using gourmet language in a menu also attract guests to explore those dishes like souse-vide chicken, a chocolate ganache, a vanilla rosemary sorbet, or a parfait. All these stylish and gourmet words attract a lot of attention from the guest, especially in a formal restaurant. A menu should be changed time to time. This brings new customers and gives a chance to old customers to explore something new from the menu (Zhang, Wang and Zhang, 2014).

In hospitality industry food and menu go hand in hand as the menu is the first presentation of the food that is going to be served to the guest. This essay discusses that proper planning is required to create some delicious, fresh and hygienic food along what to serve, how to serve and when to serve. Same goes with the menu; it has to be well presented, designed, detailed, analyzed, and planned. When both food and menu is exceptional, then the customers automatically get attracted to the restaurant and want to try the food served by it that is mentioned in the menu. The importance of both food and menu is equal to each other. Both are incomplete without the other part. Hence, it is concluded that the menu has to well present as it is the first impression of the food that would be served to the customer and then the food has to be delicious to become a success amongst the customers (Zirfas, 2013). 

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