Menu planning strategies of chefs in hotels. A survey of some selected hotels within the Kumasi metropolis

Abstract

The study investigated the menu planning strategies of hotel chefs. The specific objectives of the study were; to identify the factors influencing the menu planning strategies of hotels within the Kumasi Metropolis, to identify the main menu design techniques that informs hotel chef menu planning strategies and to examine the influence menu has in determining the amount of money consumer spend at a hotel restaurant. The population came from all hotel facilities operating within the Kumasi Metropolis. The core employees of the hotels that is, the chefs and the hotel managers formed the study population. In this study, two employees from each given hotel was targeted. Accordingly, 50 hotel institutions with restaurant facilities were targeted. This suggests that 100 employees within these 50 hotel institutions formed the study population. However, to determine the sample size of the population, the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sampling table was used to calculate the sample size. Based on the table, the sample size for the study stood at 80 at 95% confidence level and 5.0% error of margin. The study employed a cross-sectional design hence, distributed questionnaire to the selected chefs and the hotel managers. The study employed SPSS tool to analyse the study data on the basis of descriptive (i.e. frequency and percentages) and inferential analysis (relative importance index). Results from the study suggest that the main issues chef gave much credence to when developing their organization menu are, meal ingredient sources or its availability, facility image, competitor offering, kitchen makeup and cooks skills and capabilities. Interestingly, other prominent issues such as age of their target consumers as well as customers demand were found to have minimal effect in most chef’s menu planning decisions. Again, results from the study suggest that customers demand, which tends to look at the meal’s consumers prefer most or order had minimal effect in the menu planning decisions of most of the chefs. Generally, since knowledge on customers demand facilitate proper inventory, it is prudent for chef to give adequate attention to customers demand in their menu planning decisions since it will go a long way to prevent unnecessary purchase of food stuffs and also save the organization resources that may come from storage and food waste.