9.2. Food Quality

The health and comfort of tourists during their trip is partly determined by what they eat every day. The art of fine and healthy cooking contributes to making the guests to enjoy their stay. Typically, the food quality is made up by 3 elements: quality of ingredients, hygiene, and professional skills of the person in charge of cooking.

The entrepreneur has the responsibility for staff recruitment and supervision of the menu diversity and the offer, food quality and reaction of guests to the products coming out of the kitchen. The selection criteria for the kitchen personnel who are responsible for quality, variety and visual appeal of food are quite obvious - they should be professional in cooking and presentation of courses, fulfil hygienic and safety requirements.

The meals served and variety of the menu should depend on the needsof the target clientele, their specific preferences and the price they are ready to pay. The availability of ingredients and your costs are of course decisive factors as well.

The taste of any particular dish must be excellent. For this reason, if you only start the business, it is better to kick off with serving simple meals, e.g., simple breakfasts of a high quality rather than attempt unsuccessfully at sophisticated dinners.

The main prerequisite of quality food is the ingredients. It is quite easy to make sure that the products are safe – you and your staff only need to follow several rules. Firstly, the products should always be fresh and of a good quality. For instance, vegetable salad does not look attractive if it is made out of wilted lettuce and unripe tomatoes. The so-called convenience food – pre-cooked food products that are sold canned and only need to be warmed up - can be of a poor quality (though this differs from country to country and does not refer to France, for example). If your food is not fresh and tasteful, the tourists might prefer to use cooking facilities in their rooms or to live on sandwiches.

The products shall be used before the expiry date and only if stored in proper conditions (temperature, humidity). A fisherman’s platter prepared out of fish that was improperly frozen might not only have a weird taste and odour, but also can cause strong digestive problems.

Generally it is recommended that such food as meat or fish be thoroughly cooked. Raw fish and raw meat should be avoided at any cost or at least treated carefully if they represent a local specialty. When basic food safety precautions are taken, the local produce and cuisine can be a healthy and pleasurable choice for tourists.

The hygienic aspect of the kitchen and staff should not be left out. The EU rules regarding the production and preparation of food are becoming tighter all the time, since the problems with food safety are growing. You should secure that the food products you buy are safe and without pathogens(pay attention to the contents and the producer), while your staff keeps personal hygiene when working in the kitchen or serving meals to guests. The most basic rule is that every person in the kitchen and the serving staff start the work with washing their hands, do the same after handling a dustbin, visiting the restroom, etc.

National legal requirements differ from country to country. It can be very important to check specific food safety and hygiene regulations in your country. In the UK, for instance, anyone serving food to people other than the family is required to have completed a hygiene food handling course. In most countries, the Ministry of Health has compelling requirements to prevent food poisoning. If food-poisoning occurs because of non-compliance with such standards, you may face severe legal action. This is why it might be worth taking the effort to fulfil the food safety requirements at the international level, e.g., HACCP.

HACCP:

The abbreviation HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points. Complying with these rules helps you to prevent the problems, and protects you if you run into trouble with, let’s say, food poisoning. Shortly summarised, the supplier of food is obliged to work hygienically and safely; the furniture and equipment have to meet certain standards. Besides, the entrepreneur is obliged to:

Analyse the potential risks for food supply when processed;
Determine at which stage during the process these risks occur;
Decide which of these stages are dangerous for the food safety (critical points);
Write down and execute a system of effective controls and safety procedures on the critical points;
Make at regularly times and when the processes are changed, new analysing schedules by which the critical points are being watched over;
Indicate what will be done when controls find products not meeting the required standards.