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Providing meals and drinks in the guests' rooms is another service extended by most hotels. Room service is ordered by telephone from a menu that is placed in each room. The menu itself is some cases is the same as the one for the dining room, but more often it is simplified to make for easier preparation and service.

Special employees take the orders and special waiters carry them to the rooms. To cut down on orders for ice and soft drinks, many hotels nowadays have machines on each floor to dispense these items.

Room service in most hotels closes down at the same time the kitchen does, normally ten o'clock and midnight. Some hotels, however, are prepared to provide sandwiches even during the late night hours. Some luxury hotels have small kitchens or pantries on each floor that are used either for warming food or for preparing breakfasts. More room service orders are for breakfast than for any other meal. In some hotels, the guest can order breakfast before he goes to bed by filling in a slip which he leaves outside his door. The meal is then served at the time the guest has specified.

Even in hotels with more than one restaurant, there is usually just one central kitchen. The special types of food served in the various restaurants are normally prepared by different chefs and cooks rather than in separate kitchens.

Like the housekeeping department, the food and beverage department needs additional space for storage of the many items that must be kept on hand for the restaurants and bars. These items include not only the food and beverage themselves, but items such as table linens, dishes, knives, forks, spoons, plate warmers, trays, ashtrays, aprons and dish towels.

One food and beverage facility that is often not connected with the main hotel kitchen is the snack bar.

The snack bar is a small unit that provides fast-order food and drink service to guests who are using the hotel's swimming pool or some other recreational facility.

Snack bars are a prominent feature of resort hotels. Where the recreational facilities are in great demand, the snack bar often has its own staff of cooks, usually of the short-order variety, and waiters and waitresses.

Hotels generally employ a large number of workers in proportion to the number of guests. The restaurant business as a whole is one of the most labour-intensive of all industries, and this is true whether the restaurant is in a hotel or not.

Much of the activity in connection with food and beverage service is invisible to the guests, but many of the employees in the department have frequent contact with them.

These especially include the dining-room and room service personnel. They must adhere to the same standards of hospitality and courtesy as all other employees who meet and talk with the guests in the hotel.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16