Food and Beverage Plan Portfolio: Industry Analysis and Strategies

This Food and Beverage Plan Portfolio provides a comprehensive overview of the food and beverage industry. It begins by categorizing various types of food and beverage businesses, including fine dining, family dining, fast food, cafes, buffets, and pop-ups, highlighting their unique characteristics and examples. The portfolio then delves into national and international rating systems, such as star ratings and the Michelin Guide, and discusses the role of online reviews in influencing customer choices. A significant portion is dedicated to the impact of digital technologies, such as social media and websites, on marketing, customer service, and payment methods within the industry. Furthermore, the portfolio examines current trends, including the consumption of locally sourced ingredients and the shift towards healthier eating habits, discussing their implications for both existing and future food and beverage businesses. The portfolio concludes with a bibliography, citing relevant sources to support its findings.

Food and Beverage Plan Portfolio 1
FOOD AND BEVERAGE PLAN PORTFOLIO
By Name
Course
Instructor
Institution
Location
Date

Food and Beverage Plan Portfolio 2
FOOD AND BEVERAGE PLAN PORTFOLIO
Types of Food and Beverage Businesses
The Food and Beverage business is among the oldest business sector in the world. Food
is a basic need for every human being and the high demand for this necessity has attributed to the
growth of the industry. With technology advancement and innovations, new recipes are created
to give the customer an exciting experience that meets or even surpass their expectations. The
food and beverage business has been divided into different types of models with each having
unique characteristics.
There are many types of food and beverage businesses, depending on location, stars, table
settings, menus, and price.
• Fine dining
• Family dining
• Fast food
• Buffet
• Pop-outs
• Ethnic restaurants
Fine dining
Fine dining caterer premium, high-end customers with silver service, Michelin kitchen
providing the best quality of food. Most of them have dress codes. They offer excellent wines, a
la carte menu, and best-sourced ingredients. Fine dining restaurants have a formal atmosphere
and the menu is always fancier compared to the other types of restaurants.
Examples of fine dining restaurants in London:
• The Goring Dining Room
• The Ritz
• Club Gascon
• Le Gavroche
• Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester
French cuisine at The Dorchester(bookatable.co.uk)

Food and Beverage Plan Portfolio 3
Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester (alainducasse-dorchester.com, 2019)
Family dining
Family dining is service with enjoyable, friendly, reasonable price and casual dress code.
The picture below shows a family restaurant, specialized in Mexican and Japanese cuisine. They
offer a la carte, wines, dessert menus and take away service. They use social and traditional
media to attract new customers. Family dining restaurants usually have an inviting ambiance
style that is comfortable for the customers.
Examples of Family Dining are:
• La Casita Mexicana
• Hard Rock Café
• Herman Ze German
• Masala Zone
Fast food
Specialized in convenient and affordable food served in and take away. Most of the fast-
food restaurants are part of a restaurant franchise or chain with a controlled supply chain that
ensures that they provide standardized ingredients to all the outlets. They can offer menu, digital,
counter service and delivery.
• Emphasizes on
• Quick service
• Counter service
• Drive-thru service
• Self-service
Examples of Fast food restaurants:
• Five Guys
• Mc Donald’s
• KFC
• Burger King

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Café
Cafes have counter service and plate service. They usually open for breakfast and
lunchtime. They can serve coffee, tea, pastries, and hot and cold sandwiches
People often work or socialize in cafés.
Examples of Café are:
 Caffe Nero
 Starbucks
 Costa
 Dark Sugar
Buffet
A buffet restaurant offers a choice of convenient food at a set price and set-menus a counter or
self-service.
Examples of buffets restaurants in London:
 Rodizio Rico
 Mr. Wu
 Dragon King
 Hi Sushi Salsa
 Tara Tari
 Bengal Cuisine
Pop-Outs
Characteristics
-They are operated temporarily from a few hours to a couple of months
-They offer counter service, food truck service or full table service
Example of pop-ups in London (Open)
• The Big London Bake
• Rekorderlig Cider Lodge
• Street Food (Timeout.com,2019
Rating Systems Are Used Nationally and Internationally in F&B
There are several rating systems used locally and internationally. The ratings are used to
identify the Food and Beverage business based on the quality of products and services they offer
to the customers. There are local ratings used within a country the most used is the international
ratings used. The star rating is a popular type of rating used for the restaurant business with the
scales of one to three or five stars depending on the place. The Good Food Guide is a local rating
used only in the UK. The common star rating for restaurants in London is on a scale of one to
five. The highly coveted restaurants in London are five stars rated implying that they have high-
quality food and beverage as well as the service offered. The Michelin Guide is used both locally
and international to give restaurants ratings based on their products and services. The Alain
Ducasse at The Dorchester is an example of a 3 Michelin Star restaurant in the United Kingdom.
Some countries such as Dubai have seven-star ratings. The Good Food Guide is a local rating
used only in the UK.
In our technology-oriented world, the internet through trusted websites provides an
avenue for customers to rate restaurants based on their experience. The reviews given by the
clients help restaurants offering good products and services to attracts new customers. The
picture below shows the online of La Casita Mexicana in London through TripAdvisor.

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Digital technologies in Food and Beverage Businesses
Technology is evolving very fast making it a challenge for the business sector to keep up
with the current technology trend. Technology advancement has infiltrated almost all aspects of
human life with the Food and Beverage business not spared either. Some emerging enterprises
have used technology to offer unique food or beverage products and services thus creating and
maintain a competitive advantage.
The internet and social media are revolutionizing how the restaurants are advertising their
products and services. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are used
by the food and beverage business to reach a wide range of customers. The internet allows
advertisement and promotion of products and services across a wide demographic. Social media
marketing is a strong tool that is gaining popularity and has the potential of substituting
conventional stream media marketing (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). For instance, restaurants have
social media sites where they post their products and services together with captivating pictures
and captions thus luring potential customers to their premises. Also, some restaurants use
celebrities’ social media accounts to advertise their products thus easily reaching the large fun
base of the celebrities. Furthermore, social media allows businesses to respond to customers'
queries and complaints thus ensuring good customer service which is essential in maintaining

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and attracting new customers by promoting customer satisfaction. For instance, Twitter handles
for the businesses helps in offering instant and up to date response to queries and complaints by
customers. Therefore, the food and beverage business should reform their marketing strategies
and incorporate social media marketing as it is an essential tool in the contemporary world.
The internet has enabled businesses in the food and beverage sector to create and manage
websites. Apart from social media, websites offer a platform where businesses can have an
interactive engagement with their customers. In fact, through the websites, restaurants have
introduced new services such as online table reservations as well as online ordering and delivery
of food. This has enabled the restaurant business to exploit a unique marketing niche. For
instance, customers can order food mostly fast foods such as pizza and burgers and they are
delivered right at their doorstep within stipulated time duration. This diversification of outside
catering has been made possible due to the websites run by the restaurant businesses. Also, the
websites allow clients to offer their reviews on the food, beverage and service offered by the
businesses. This is essential as it helps the business organizations to assess their quality of
products and services based on the customer satisfaction levels required. Furthermore, the
websites and social media platforms offer an opportunity where the customers can give their
comments and preferences about the service and products (Sajid, 2016). This helps the
businesses in improving existing products and services as well as creating new products that
meet customer demands and preferences. Consequently, this promotes business sustainability
and development in a dynamic, competitive environment.
Technology has also revolutionized the payment methods used by the restaurant business
all over the world. Cashless payment methods such as master cards and visa cards have enabled
customers to dine at any outlet and pay by swiping their cards. The same applies to the home
delivery services offered by restaurants. The cashless payments offer customers convenience as
well as help the businesses in tracking their cash flows efficiently (Davis et al 2018). Again, the
internet has enabled the running of trusted websites that market and review businesses in the
food and beverage sector. TripAdvisor is an example of such websites that market, review and
rate business in the sector. The websites also offer the public, (the potential customers) the most
preferred restaurants to visit based on their budget and other preferences. Such trusted websites
also help in reservation and booking thus acting as an important link between the customers and
businesses.
Trends in the Food and Beverage Business
The business environment is dynamic and the F&B sector has not been spared either.
There are trends disrupting the F&B businesses and the trends are predicted to have an impact on
present enterprises as well as have a future impact. The most popular trends include the
consumption of locally sourced ingredients and eating “healthier” foods. These trends are
prevalent in several countries including in the United Kingdom and the United State of America.
The trend to use locally sourced ingredients disrupts the food and beverage sector
especially affecting the sales of large international food processing companies. The trend to buy
and consume locally produced food has several advantages to the local economy and the people.
First, it ensures that the local economy grows by offering employment and source of income to
the local people. Secondly, locally sourced ingredients are considered fresh as they don’t have to
spend time in shipping and other logistics that consume a lot of time. Also, it strengthens the
community and improves food safety as it eliminates the contamination risks involved during

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transportation and logistics. Therefore, existing and future food and beverage businesses should
consider this trend as they create strategies to dominate the market.
The other trend that is gaining momentum as days go by is the shift to healthier green
foods. This trend as a significant disruption impact on the fast-food restaurant chains in the
world. Health concerns have been raised over the excessive consumption of fast foods and how
they affect public health and wellbeing. Fast foods have been attributed to a number of chronic
conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular disorders (Farhud,
2015). This has raised concerns and activists have come up to support to oppose the consumption
of fast foods. A survey done in the US shows that eighty-three percent of Americans believe that
traditional fast food is unhealthy (Bambi, 2018). Consumers are urged to reduce the
consumption of fast foods by shifting toward healthy eating habits.
The health department in most countries also encourages the consumption of organic
foods and beverages. Fast food brands should focus on how to deal with the shift into healthy
eating habits and the branding of fast foods as being unhealthy. There are several ways such as
introducing organic foods in their menus and cutting down the calorific content of their foods.
They should research the customers' preferences as well as incorporate organic ingredients into
their meals to deal with the emerging trends in the sector.

Food and Beverage Plan Portfolio 8
Bibliography
Alainducasse-dorchester.com, 2019. Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester-private dining
room. [online] Available at:
https://www.alainducasse-dorchester.com/en/private-dining/information [accessed
4Nov.2019]
Bambi Majumdar, August08, 2018. Fast food trend shift as consumers seek healthy offerings.
MULTIBRIEFS. Retrieved from: http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/fast-food-trends-
shift-as-consumers-seek-healthy-quick-offerings/food-beverage
Davis, B., Lockwood, A., Alcott, P. and Pantelidis, I.S., 2018. Food and beverage management.
Routledge.
Dorchester Collection. 2019. The Dorchester restaurants and bars |Dorchester Collection.
[online] Available at:
https://www.dorchestercollection.com/en/london/the-dorchester/restaurants-bars/ [Accessed
4Nov. 2019].
Farhud, D.D., 2015. Impact of lifestyle on health. Iranian journal of public health, 44(11),
p.1442.
London, 2019. Casual Restaurants in London. [online] DesignMyNight. Available at:
https://www.designmynight.com/london/restaurants/casual-restaurants-in-london
[Accessed 4 Nov. 2019].
Sajid, S.I., 2016. Social media and its role in marketing.
Time Out London. 2019. London’s best pop-ups. [online] Available at:
https://www.timeout.com/london/clubs/londons-best-pop-ups [Accessed 4 Nov. 2019]
TripAdvisor. 2019. LA CASITA MEXICANA, London - Spitalfields - Updated 2019
Restaurant Reviews, Photos & Restaurant Reviews -Food Delivery & Takeaway –
TripAdvisor. [online] Available at: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant Review-
g186338-d12354023-Reviews-La Casita Mexicana-London England.html [Accessed 4 Nov.
2019].
Tuten, T.L. and Solomon, M.R., 2017. Social media marketing. Sage.