Food Service Practices in Indian Hotel Organisations: an Investigation of F&B Managers’ Perceptions

The study is developed to explore the extent of inclusion of food service practices in the product offer by Indian hotel industry and to find if these services depend on the organisational demographic characteristics. The study was limited to the hotels that provide sleeping accommodations and meal options in India. The respondents were 200 food and beverage managers of these businesses. The findings show that the hotels are mostly sole proprietorship and most managers are college graduates and male. A structured instrument was developed to examine the food service practices. Based on a survey of 200 food and beverage manager’s perceptions on food service practices were assessed by a 19food service practices and 5 demographic characteristics. Factor analysis was performed to identify service practices, one-way ANOVA was employed to test the association of the demographic characteristics with food service practices. Results indicated that serving the guest within the estimated time given to the guest makes a guest delight’, ‘the way the food is presented and served in the tray to the guest creates an impact on the guest mind’, ‘quality holds more importance than quantity’, ‘training of employees should be carried out for serving complicated dishes’ and ‘ suggesting a complimentary dish if a guest is not satisfied with the service offered by you is a good idea, may constitute the most important food service practices in the Indian hotels. Further, the results revealed that there is a positive relationship between food service practice variables and category and type of sample hotels, but there is no relationship between food service practices variables and age, number of employee and size of capital. The study makes a modest attempt to add information to the very little empirical knowledge available referring to the food service practices in Indian hotel industry.