Food & Beverage Operations: A Reflective Work Placement at Premier Inn

This project is a personal reflection on a work placement at Hotel Premier Inn, focusing on food and beverage operations using the GIBBS model. The reflection covers experiences in restaurants, bars, and breakfast service, detailing feelings, evaluations, and analyses of the internship. Key learnings include the importance of communication skills, patience, and discretion in customer service. The action plan involves improving language skills and referring to hospitality management literature. The reflection highlights the need for crucial skills in hospitality management, particularly communication, for effectively dealing with customers in restaurant and bar settings.

Food and Beverage
Operations

INTRODUCTION
The individuals studying hospitality management have to go through several work
placements to learn the principles at work, professional knowledge and skills (Wang, Gill and
Lee, 2022). This project is about personal experience of individuals for work placement at
Hotel Premier inn. It will reflect own experience of an individual about areas of restaurants,
bars and Breakfast using GIBBS model.
TASK
Personal Reflection on work placement at Hotel Premier inn through GIBBS model
The GIBBS reflective cycle has been developed to allow the users to learn and plan
from the things that have gone well and prepare an action plan to deal with similar situations
in the future (Lebor, 2022). The following is my personal experience of Work placement at
Hotel Premier Inn.
 Description – As part of my Hospitality management course, I commenced the work
placement i.e. on-the-job training at Hotel Premier inn i.e. UK based luxury 5 star
hotel brand headquartered in England (ASET, (2017)). During my internship, I was
assigned the task of preparing the rooms and tables for the service at restaurants by
the Head Hotel Server and to observe the diners and reactions of customers to offer
anything additional. I were to take orders from the customers and help to present the
daily specials and menus for breakfasts as per the directions of Head Chef. My tasks
also included to check and manage stocks of raw materials. At bars, I was to provide
the recommendations over dishes and drinks offered with respective languages of
customers. It was the internship of 6 months with an aim to develop communication
and language skills while maintaining customer relationships.
 Feelings – Getting an opportunity of doing my hospitality internship in a famous and
UK’s largest hotel brand provided quite happy feelings and excitement with the
expectation of getting high stipend and learning professional skills from the
experienced staff there such as Executive Chef, Food and Beverage manager, Kitchen
manager etc. (Hagg, (2013)) Initially, I started to feel inferior due to lack of
communication and language skills to handle the customers but later it all got settled
with the support of Hotel staff and other interns.
 Evaluation – The things that went well in this situation was the fact that all the interns
at the restaurant were under the mentorship of Head Chef and executive Chef.

Besides, the stipend offered was also satisfactory. I was able to understand the
fundamentals of management of stock provisions. But the thing that did not work well
was that I was good only at English and could barely understand the Spanish or
German customers (Johnson, Clark, Shulver, (2012)). The thing that didn’t go well
was the situation that cause exhaustion i.e. removing dishes and cutlery from tables
and rearranging the tables when the customers left.
 Analysis – My ability to understand the fundamentals of management of stock
provisions was due to the fact that I was good at accounting during my college days. I
had also studied Nutritional and Food science in my hospitality course. As I was
working with other interns, the tasks were allocated according to the strengths of
interns. I could have learnt Spanish and German from the other interns. I also
searched the literature about Hospitality and identified that communication skills are
the crux of hotel management education (QAA, (2018)).
 Conclusion – From the above situation, I learnt that to manage the restaurant or bar,
the characteristics like Patience, courtesy and discretion are needed in order to deal
with the customers. I need to work on my communication and language skills with
multitasking skills to handle the diners at restaurants. It could have been a more
positive situation if the task of arrangement of tables and removing of cutleries could
also be shared among all the interns as it was a big restaurant. I will continue to refer
to the literature of hospitality management to learn more about professional
knowledge of food and beverages in the hospitality management (Fanthorne, (2004)).
 Action Plan – To deal efficiently with the same situation in future, I will first increase
my proficiency in learning several languages mainly Spanish and German to welcome
the customers professionally with effective communication skills. I will refer to the
literature on Food and Beverage management in the luxury hotel industry (Wood,
(2013)). By the completion of my hospitality management course, I would be able to
deal with the customers to maintain customer relationships and provide them
recommendations in a professional manner.
CONCLUSION
It can be analyzed from the above project on Food and Beverage operations that the
students are required to develop certain crucial skills for making hospitality management as
their career path. It has been observed from the above reflection that communications skills
play most important role in dealing with customers of restaurants or bars.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
ASET, (2017), ASET Good Practice Guide for Work based and Placement Learning, ASET
Sheffield
Fanthorne, C (2004) Work Placements – Survival Guide for Students Macmillan,
Basingstoke
Hagg, E (2013) Internship Guide Eleven, The Hague
Johnson, R. Clark, G. Shulver, M. (2012) Service operations management : improving service
delivery, Pearson, London
Lebor, M., (2022). Teaching Resistant Learners in Post-School Education: A Guide to
Working with Challenging Behaviour. Taylor & Francis.
QAA, (2018) UK Quality Code, Advice and Guidance: Work-based Learning, QAA, London
Wang, J., Gill, C. and Lee, K.H., (2022). Effective mentoring in a work-integrated learning
(WIL) program. Journal of Teaching in Travel & Tourism, pp.1-19.
Wood, R. (2013) Key Concepts in Hospitality Management, Sage, London