Classes
Catering

Subject: Jobs and Occupations

🧩 10 Practice Tests & Quizzes 📘 2 Study Guides

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Introduction

Catering is the business of providing food service at a remote site or a site such as a wedding, hotel, hospital, pub, aircraft, cruise ship, park, filming site or studio, entertainment site, or event venue.

In a typical catering business there is are catering managers / directors at the top and catering assistants at the bottom and everyone else is in between.

 

Categring manager / Catering director
They are involved in menu design. They are good at managing budgets. They are excellent communicators, to staff and customers alike. 

Catering managers are responsible for planning, administering and supervising an organisation's catering operations and services.

Catering managers lead teams of chefs and catering assistants. They are responsible for running the day-to-day catering operations and services in restaurants, hotels and resorts. Catering managers are responsible for monitoring the quality of the food and service and for making sure that their outlets perform well. The most important part of the job is achieving good quality within a budget and maintaining high standards of hygiene and customer satisfaction.

 

A typical catering manager's activities include:

1. planning menus in consultation with chefs
2. ordering supplies
3. hiring, training, supervising and motivating permanent and temporary staff
4. organising staff rotas
5. ensuring that health and safety regulations are strictly observed, recorded and archived
6. monitoring the quality of the product and service provided
7. keeping to budgets and maintaining financial and administrative records.

 

Key skills for catering managers include:

1. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
2. Strong organisational and time management skills
3. Decision making skills
4. Ability to manage in a diverse environment with a focus on client and customer services
5. Good business and commercial acumen
6. Strong leadership and motivating skills including the ability to build strong relationships with customers and staff
7. The ability to think quickly, work in stressful circumstances and stay calm in a crisis
8. Financial, budgeting and stock-taking skills
9. Knowledge of food, food hygiene (including hazard analysis and critical control points) and food preparation.

 

Catering Assistant
Catering assistants help in the kitchen as much as they can, with preparing food, cleaning, checking stock, accepting deliveries and serving food.

 

Duties of a catering assistant typically include:

1. Taking orders
2. Cleaning the kitchen including work surfaces, walls and floors
3. Washing dishes and kitchen appliances
4. Unloading deliveries
5. Basic food preparation such as peeling and chopping
6. Plating up food, ensuring correct portion control
7. Serving food
8. Maintaining stock
9. Preparing the dining area such as cleaning and setting tables

Catering Assistant skills include:

1. Ability to work as part of a team
2. Ability to follow instructions
3. Good communication skills
4. Customer service skills
5. High standards of hygiene
6. Ability to keep calm under pressure

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Latest Practice Tests / Quizzes

📝 Catering Vocabulary 2

📝 WJEC GCSE Catering Glossary

📝 GCSE WJEC Catering: Job Roles In Catering

Latest Study Guides

📄 Catering Study Notes 2

📄 Catering Study Notes

Exam Survival Guides