FOOD AND DRINK

Buying food in

Particularly in the early stages, it is very easy to chase around getting various food products from the places you feel give you best value for money. Don’t! It is right you should want to do the best by your guests, but your objectives can be achieved without spending all your precious free time going from supplier to supplier. To be able to look after your guests properly, without making mistakes because of fatigue, you need some time for relaxation.

Make a weekly or fortnightly visit to the wholesale cash and carry. If you can’t get all you want there, invite a few suppliers to quote, or speak to your new friends in the Association and find out who delivers the best.

‘Delivers’ is the key word. Meat and fish products can, if required, be supplied ‘portion controlled’ to your specification. If anything substandard is delivered, send it straight back and require an immediate replacement. After a very short time, you may be known as ‘that awkward...’ but you will get exactly what you want.

Choice of menu

It is impossible to provide a wide choice of freshly prepared dishes without enormous wastage, meaning you have to charge astronomical prices. Twenty guests do sometimes all ask for the same main course.

Without wastage, a large choice of dishes has to be supplied from the freezer and defrosted, taking but a matter of minutes with a good commercial microwave oven. Since many restaurants use the same supplier of frozen foods, it is possible to recognise the ‘duck a 1’orange’, the ‘chicken supreme’ and so on in a number of places. Although such food is often prepared by chefs and is of good quality, it can also be prepared in your kitchen and frozen for future use.

You could fall in line with several prestigious restaurants which provide just one, freshly cooked main course per day, an alternative being served only with prior notice. With this system, everyone gains. Less wastage and fewer staff for the hotel; tastier, healthier food for the customer.

Alternative dishes

What happens, though, if a guest is allergic to your carte du jourl? This is where the frozen alternative comes into its own. Many dishes supplied by frozen food companies, eg the ubiquitous ‘duck a 1’orange’, come as ‘boil-in-the-bag’. Dropped into a pan of boiling water, it is ready to serve in 20 minutes and is very useful to have as a stand-by. (It has been known for restaurants to use nothing but ‘boil-in-the-bag’ food!)

Staggered mealtimes

To provide properly cooked food at different times takes a lot of time and trouble. Some restaurants stake their reputation on taking such pains. In others, it often means food which has been kept hot, sometimes for long periods, or warmed up. It is much easier for the cook, who can ensure for example that vegetables retain their ‘nutti-ness’, if meals are cooked ready to be served at a specific time. Much depends on what your clientele expects.

In the dining room

Cutlery and crockery

It is no good creating the right atmosphere with subtle background music, soft lighting and crisp tablecloths if the cutlery and crockery are poor quality. Use the best available commensurate with the standards you have set for your hotel. If you have a dishwasher, make sure everything you buy is ‘dishwasher-safe’.

Serviettes

Paper or linen? What would you expect in a hotel like yours? Good-quality paper ones are available and are infinitely preferable to putting out a linen one that has been used before. Guests might ask themselves, by whom? Is this the one I used last night? Have they got them mixed up?

A compromise is to use a fresh linen one each day for dinner and a paper one at breakfast. Laundry and replacement are costs that have to be considered if linen ones are used.

Metal pots

Providing they are kept clean and shiny, metal pots for tea, coffee, hot water and milk are by far the most practical. They don’t chip, nor do they crack if you put boiling water into a cold one. Unless pottery is an essential part of the scene in your hotel, stay with metal pots.

Pre-packed goods

‘Messy’ is a word that immediately comes to mind with the wide range of products available in individual portions. They always seem difficult to open, particularly for elderly guests, and with preserves and butter it’s difficult to avoid getting sticky fingers. The advantage, of course, is that it saves a lot of preparation time. Use the minimum you find necessary.

Providing wine

If you hold a liquor licence, wine can be sold only in specific quantities: 25cl, 50cl, 75cl or 1 litre. If by the glass, the measures have to be: 125ml, 175ml or in multiples thereof. Wine lists will need to show the quantities, also wine glasses and carafes must have a line showing the relevant measure. There is no longer a legal requirement to show the alcoholic strength.

Although it can be fun compiling a wine list, especially the tasting... (so you can describe the wine accurately!), the amount you need to invest might be unjustified in a small hotel. The Which? Wine Guide will help you put the subject into perspective, give you ideas which wine to keep and show you how to describe it.

Since it is air coming into contact with the wine that causes deterioration, once a bottle has been opened any that is unused will quickly become undrinkable unless a closure method, now widely available, is used to expel air from the void area. Wine boxes overcome this problem since the aluminium container in the box collapses as wine is drawn off, so keeping the air out.

The range available has improved enormously in recent years. Try keeping two or three whites in the fridge as your house wine ready to serve by the glass, half carafe or carafe, bearing in mind the legal quantities. There is never a need to serve dreadful plonk as house wine, yet many hoteliers do.

Price the quantities competitively to encourage the bargain hunter. As a guide, start with a bottle or carafe and double what you paid for it. For example, from a 3-litre box costing £16, a one-litre carafe (8 x 125 ml glasses) could be priced at £11, a half-litre at £6 and each 125 ml glass at £2.

If you don’t hold a liquor licence, you may allow guests to provide their own wine. Be prepared for requests to chill it and to provide glasses (which need washing up).

Smoking

Irrespective of any other rules about smoking, it is reasonable not to allow it where other guests’ enjoyment of the food you have gone to so much trouble to provide may be spoilt. Whether this means a total ban in the dining room or the provision of ‘no-smoking’ tables depends on your circumstances and the space available.

How do you run a bar?

The legal requirements

These are set out in the Licensing Act 2003, which (see page 25) creates two forms of licence, (i) a personal licence and (ii) a premises licence. It is expected that the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1976 will be amended to contain similar provisions.

Personal licences

It is a requirement of the Act that new applicants for a personal licence must:

• be over 18
• have an approved qualification. The British Institute of Innkeeping (see page 184), one of the organisations which provide training, issue the National Certificate for Personal Licence Holders, an accepted qualification
• have a Criminal Records Bureau check to screen for relevant offences
• pay a fee (set by central government at £37 for a 10-year licence).

Premises licences

In order to apply for a premises licence (this can be in respect of anywhere, from a pavement to a beach, any building, to a boat), applicants must submit an operating schedule which, in addition to specifying the style of business they want to run and the hours they want to open, will need to include how they will achieve four ‘licensing objectives’ set by the government:

• public safety – a statement showing awareness and compliance with fire legislation and health and safety issues should normally suffice
• prevention of public nuisance – a statement addressing any possible noise or nuisance to neighbours would be appropriate
• protection of children from harm – a statement should include if children are allowed on the premises, any age restriction, also if there is a children’s play area what stipulations apply
• prevention of crime and disorder – much more applicable to public houses and clubs than to small hotel bars but any appropriate issues, such as staff training in licensing law, etc might be mentioned.

Showing how these four objectives will be achieved is the cornerstone of the new Act. Providing these criteria can be met, it will be possible for premises licences to allow for 24-hour drinking. If there are no objections the local authority must grant the licence in the form applied for.

Also in the operating schedule, an applicant must appoint a ‘Designated Premises Supervisor’, whose role has yet to be fully defined. Suffice it to say that person, who must hold a personal licence and need not live on the premises, will be responsible for all aspects of compliance with the law as far as operation of the premises is concerned. In a small hotel it will almost certainly be you!

How to run it

Running a small hotel bar, you will almost certainly not be tied to a brewery, meaning you are free to buy your supplies from the cheapest source available and to take advantage of special offers.

Beer in casks and bottles may be obtained from a licensed trade wholesaler who will loan you any necessary equipment.

Depending on circumstances, think carefully before serving beer on draught. It has a very limited life, needs to be served cooled and the beer pipes must be cleaned through at least once a week. Wastage results. Dregs in glasses, which are the result of dirty beer pipes (let no one tell you different), are unacceptable. However, if you have the necessary quick turnover, draught beer at a reasonable price is what may keep guests in your bar.

In spite of decimalisation, the UK pint (.57 of a litre) looks safe at the moment. Optics, however, can be only 25ml, 35ml or multiples thereof and the customer must be able to see the top of the liquid in the optic.

Intoxicating liquor may be served to residents 24 hours a day, but only if specified in your new premises licence. If you have a replacement licence issued under ‘grandfather rights’, all conditions applicable to the old licence, probably a Residential Licence, will apply. (Residents, under the old licensing system, were permitted by law to be served alcohol 24 hours per day.) However, if you are applying for a new licence and you think it possible you will want to provide entertainment, or open your bar or restaurant to the public, or hold functions, eg a wedding reception, in the future, it would be wise to enter all these details on your operating schedule, listing how you will apply the four ‘licensing objectives’, so that you are covered from the outset. The alternative, bearing in mind the premises licence lasts the life of the business, is that you would have to submit a Temporary Event Notice. This is more complicated than it sounds and numerous conditions apply.

Children

You will have noticed one of the ‘licensing objectives’ refers specifically to children. Apart from a regulation that requires children under 16 in a typical hotel bar to be accompanied by an adult between 12 midnight and 5am, there are few restrictions, whereas their presence in bars was previously strictly regulated. It is therefore incumbent on applicants for a premises licence to show clearly how children on their premises will be protected from harm.

Further advice regarding the Licensing Act 2003, certain aspects of which, at the time of writing, have yet to be fully formulated, should be sought from the Licensing Authority of your local council.