Penggerakan

Dalam proses manajemen, penggerakkan merupakan bagian yang fundamental, tindak lanjut dari fungsi perencanaan dan pengorganisasian. Fungsi ini berkaitan erat dengan manusia dan merupakan masalah yang paling kompleks serta tersulit dilakukan di antara fungsi-fungsi manajemen. Ia akan bersinggungan dengan perasaan, harga diri, dan tujuan yang berbeda-beda.

Penggerakan merupakan fungsi pembimbingan, pengarahan, pemberian motivasi, menggerakan orang-orang yang menjadi bawahannya agar dengan rela, suka dan mau bekerja secara sadar dan bertanggung jawab terhadap tugas yang harus diselesaikannya tanpa menunggu perintah dari atasannya.

Disesuaikan dengan kondisi yang berlangsung, terdapat beberapa istilah bermakna sama dengan fungsi penggerakan, di antaranya:

• Actuating.  Tindakan untuk mengusahakan agar seluruh anggota kelompok berusaha mencapai sasaran-sasaran sesuai dengan perencanaan dan usaha-usaha organisasi
• Motivating.  Pemberian daya rangsang agar muncul gairah kerja untuk mencapai tujuan
• Staffing.  Pemberian bantuan dalam penyusunan upaya pengurusan, pengaturan dan penempatan sumber daya manusia beserta fasilitasnya
• Directing.  Bagaimana cara memberikan pengarahan, petunjuk, dan perintah yang perlu dilakukan
• Coordinating.  Usaha menyatukan kerja sama sehingga terdapat keselarasdan pekerjaan yang sedang berlangsung
• Leading.  Menggerakkan orang lain dengan memberikan teladan baik kepada para bawahan sehingga mereka mau bekerja mengikutinya
• Disiplin.  Tindak perbuatan atau peraturan untuk menjamin ketepatan, keseragaman, kepatuhan dan ketaatan dalam menjalankan pekerjaan. 

Restaurant Training Checklists Are Important Tool

quoted from John Foley

Training tools and aids make the difference between education and knowledge. Education, the act of imparting information, isn't difficult for those who are familiar with the subject. Yet, learning the subject may take more than a quick training session.  Knowledge comes from learning and retaining what was taught and is expected to be clutched. Simply, training tools make the difference between learning and forgetting.

Every restaurant staff deserves a variety of tools to help make them successful and to perfect their professionalism. These tools need to be strategically posted throughout the restaurant for the staff to reference, throughout their shift when they are not sure about a certain procedure.

I couldn't help notice the recipe card for one of the company's drinks. The well defined card (pictured, right) outlined the steps to drink perfection. I have always wondered how the baristas can create drinks that are being called out faster than a Gatling gun without missing a beat, pump, or steam wand. The refresher recipe card explains a lot.

Now to create these cards once the game has begun is not an easy task. In the perfect world they would have been developed and filed on your computer for ease of editing. But that most likely was only a dream that ended just after the doors opened.

And, if you do have them placed throughout the restaurant, now is the perfect time to check and edit the cards.

Here are 10 tips on training tools.

1. Plating consistency is imperative. Plating pictures help.  Photos of each plate, including salad, appetizer, entree, or dessert should be placed on a board and labeled near the plating station. Styling the food on the plate exactly the way the chef created it makes this an efficient way to achieve consistency. 
2. Coffee recipes and tea service. Recipes for coffee drinks and the procedure for serving tea – (one bag or a selection; a pot of hot water or just a cup) are all steps that need to b defined. 
3. Dessert plating. use a picture, especially for daily dessert specials. Also define the amount of ice cream and whipped cream to be served. 
4. Opening checklists. Even the smallest restaurant is too large to run without an opening checklist. Laminate them and have the assigned server initial each task. You can divide up the checklist. 
5. Closing checklists. If you are so slow you don't need a closing checklist to close, find a real estate agent. Closing procedures save you money. Turn down the air conditioning, turn off the kitchen fan, turn off the stereo are all music to the accountant's ear. 
6. Server station setups. New servers forget to set up the server station with pens, water pitchers, coffee cups, saucers and other items that break the rhythm of the dining room if they are not around. 
7. Bar setup. Bar customers hate to wait. Describe how many limes, lemons, olives need to be cut diced, sliced, and kept under the bar. Explain fruit and juice rotation. It may sound elementary today, but wait until the bartender doesn't show up, and Steve the server has to stand in for Johnny the bartender. 
8. Cooler map. If nothing else this will alleviate any violations from the health department when the inspector realizes the raw chicken does go on the bottom shelf. With today's computer programs, designing and designating cooler shelf space is a breeze. Define rotation on the sheet and don't forget to post an inventory checklist in the cooler. 
9. Glass stacking. Make sure the bussers and the dish know how many, where they go and ho to check for spots. 
10. Batch and deposit checklist. Your manager is sick. You're on vacation. And the deposits have stopped going into the bank from American Express. Nobody had the batching instructions. Go over the deposit procedures with one or two trusted employees, and leave the instructions in a drawer, just in case. It will make that vacation a lot more enjoyable. But then, what restaurant owner can take a vacation? 

The World's Best Hotel 2013 – Top 50

Which hotels deliver the most extraordinary experiences?

The results of Travel + Leisure’s 18th Annual World’s Best Award :

1. Mombo Camp and Little Mombo Camp, Moremi Game Reserve, Botswana

2. Castello di Casole—A Timbers Resort, Casole d’Elsa, Italy

3. Singita Kruger National Park, South Africa

4. Nayara Hotel, Spa & Gardens, La Fortuna, Costa Rica

5. Four Seasons Resort Bora-Bora, French Polynesia

6. The Lodge at Kauri Cliffs, Matauri Bay, New Zealand

7. Ritz-Carlton, Berlin

8. Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur, India

9. Sabi Sabi Private Game Reserve, Kruger National Park Area, South Africa

10. Singita Sabi Sand, Kruger National Park Area, South Africa

The World's Best Airline Awards 2013

Ranking 1 to 20

The World Airline Awards are a primary benchmarking tool for Passenger Satisfaction levels of airlines throughout the world, delivering a unique survey format based on analysis of business and leisure travellers, across all cabin travel types (First Class, Business Class, Premium Economy Class and Economy class passengers).

Air travellers completed an online survey questionnaire about their experience with airlines on the ground and onboard, during a 10-month period. The survey measures passenger satisfaction across more than 40 key performance indicators of airline front-line product and service - including check-in, boarding, onboard seat comfort, cabin cleanliness, food, beverages, inflight entertainment and staff service. The Survey covered over 200 airlines, from the largest international airlines to smaller domestic carriers.

1	Emirates
2	Qatar Airways
3	Singapore Airlines
4	ANA All Nippon Airways
5	Asiana Airlines
6	Cathay Pacific Airways
7	Etihad Airways
8	Garuda Indonesia
9	Turkish Airlines
10	Qantas Airways
11	Lufthansa
12	EVA Air
13	Virgin Australia
14	Malaysia Airlines
15	Thai Airways
16	Swiss Int'l Air Lines
17	Korean Air
18	Air New Zealand
19	Hainan Airlines
20	Air Canada

The World's 50 Best Restaurants Award 2013

list from San Pellegrino

The World's 50 Best Restaurants list has been announced, and the big news is of course that Noma's three year reign as the number one restaurant in the world has come to an end. That title now goes to El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain. Noma holds tight at second, while third goes to Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana.

World's 50 Best also announced they'll be doing Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants in September in Lima; more details on that can be found in a press release below.

1. El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Catalonia, Spain 
2. Noma, Copenhagen 
3. Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy 
4. Mugaritz, San Sebastián, Spain 
5. Eleven Madison Park, New York City 
6. D.O.M, Sao Paulo, Brazil 
7. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London 
8. Arzak, San Sebastián, Spain 
9. Steirereck Restaurant, Vienna, Austria 
10. Vendôme, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany

How to Do a Breakeven Analysis

Breakeven analysis helps determine when your business revenues equal your costs

By Daniel Richards

If you can accurately forecast your costs and sales, conducting a breakeven analysis is a matter of simple math. A company has broken even when its total sales or revenues equal its total expenses. At the breakeven point, no profit has been made, nor have any losses been incurred. This calculation is critical for any business owner, because the breakeven point is the lower limit of profit when determining margins.

There are several types of costs to consider when conducting a breakeven analysis, so here's a refresher on the most relevant.

• Fixed costs: These are costs that are the same regardless of how many items you sell. All start-up costs, such as rent, insurance and computers, are considered fixed costs since you have to make these outlays before you sell your first item.

• Variable costs: These are recurring costs that you absorb with each unit you sell. For example, if you were operating a greeting card store where you had to buy greeting cards from a stationary company for $1 each, then that dollar represents a variable cost. As your business and sales grow, you can begin appropriating labor and other items as variable costs if it makes sense for your industry.

Setting a Price

This is critical to your breakeven analysis; you can't calculate likely revenues if you don't know what the unit price will be. Unit price refers to the amount you plan to charge customers to buy a single unit of your product.

• Psychology of Pricing: Pricing can involve a complicated decision-making process on the part of the consumer, and there is plenty of research on the marketing and psychology of how consumers perceive price. Take the time to review articles on pricing strategy and the psychology of pricing before choosing how to price your product or service.

• Pricing Methods: There are several different schools of thought on how to treat price when conducting a breakeven analysis. It is a mix of quantitative and qualitative factors. If you've created a brand new, unique product, you should be able to charge a premium price, but if you're entering a competitive industry, you'll have to keep the price in line with the going rate or perhaps even offer a discount to get customers to switch to your company.

The World's 50 Best Restaurant Award 2011

quoted from William Reed Business Media Ltd

The much-anticipated S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards 2011 was held on Monday 18th April at the historic Guildhall in the City of London, in the company of the world's finest chefs, international media and the world's most influential restaurateurs.

The S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards and List is organised and compiled by Restaurant magazine, and sponsored by S.Pellegrino. The Awards are now in their tenth year.

Marketing Strategy

Approach and Concept

Marketing is far more than just selling, although higher sales are obviously the ultimate aim. Rather, marketing is a whole collection of activities including advertising, selling and sales promotion, marketing research, introduction of new products, pricing, packaging, distribution and after sales service.

Approaches to Marketing

One approach to marketing is to regard it as the process of finding customers for goods which the firm has already decided to supply. In this case there is much emphasis on face to face customer contact, price cutting, heavy advertising and sales promotions. It might be assumed that customers will always want to purchase well-constructed items that are made available to them at low cost: that all a firm needs to do is offer for sale high quality, sound value product with many attractive features, provide effective after-sales service, and then the goods will ‘sell themselves’.

The Marketing Concept

Alternatively, the firm might seek to evaluate market opportunities before production, assess potential demand for the good, determine the product characteristics desired by consumers, predict the prices consumers are willing to play, and then supply goods corresponding to the needs and wants of target markets more effectively than competitors, business adopting the latter approach are said to apply the marketing concept.

Adherence to the marketing concept means the firm conceives and develops product that satisfy consumer wants. Note however that:

• consumers demand can be and frequently is created and manipulated through advertising campaigns

• unquestioning adoption of the concept could lead to the productions of items that are highly attractive to consumers but which nevertheless are expensive to supply and thus generate negligible profit.

Practical application of the marketing concept implies the full integration of marketing with other business activities (design, production, costing, transport, and distribution, corporate strategy and planning) so that the marketing department assumes extraordinary importance within the firm. Numerous conflicts with other functions arise from situation.

The Marketing Mix

In 1965 Professor N. H. Borden coined the phrase ‘marketing mix’ to describe the combination of marketing element used in given set of circumstances. Appropriate mixes vary depending on the firm and industry, and over time. Professor E. J. McCarty subsequently summarized the

Human Resources Strategy

Human resources management concerns the human side of the management of enterprises and employees’ relations with their firms. Its purpose is to ensure that the employees of a company, i.e. its human resources, are used in such a way that the employer obtains the greatest possible benefit from their abilities and the employees obtain both material and psychological rewards from their work.

Human resources management has strategic dimensions and involves the total deployment of human resources within the firm. Thus, for example, human resources management will consider such matters as:

• the aggregate size of the organization’s labor force in the context of an overall corporate plane (how many divisions and subsidiaries the company is to have, design of the organization, etc.)

• how much to spend on training the workforce, given strategic decisions on target quality levels, product prices, volume of production, and so on

• the desirability of establishing relations with trade unions from the view-point of the effective management control of the entire organization

• the wider implications for employees of the management of change (not just the consequences of alterations in working practices).

The strategic approach to human resources management involves the integration of personnel and other human resources management considerations into the firm’s overall corporate planning and strategy formulation procedures. It is proactive, seeking constantly to discover