If you are working in food and beverage and thinking about entering the hotel industry, your ultimate goal should be to be a Food & Beverage Director. In TV shows and movies, this role is often portrayed by someone in a nice suit, bringing down a major paycheck, who just chats with the hotel guests, but the role requires far more than that. It also takes significant experience and success all the way through the ranks to achieve this lofty position in the hostel industry.
Getting the Experience
There isn’t a soul alive that can walk in off the street and take over as Director of Food & Beverage and do it successfully. This is a position where you absolutely have to pay your dues if you want to be successful. Where you will earn your stripes will be in the following departments:
- Restaurant manager
- Chef
- Banquet manager
While it is very possible to be a successful F&B Director without working all three of those departments, success is far more likely for someone if they work in at least two of those areas, with banquet manager being one of those positions. I say this because that particular position requires you to work hand-in-hand with the head chef as well as the sales team in order to ensure a successful and well-run operation. Additionally, you simply need to understand the daily operations of the banquet department if you are truly going to be successful as an F&B Director.
F&B Responsibilities
In general, your job duties will fall into four main categories:
- Customer Service
- Managing Staff
- Menu Planning and Development
- Financial
However, the job is so much more than these categories. As an F&B, you need to serve as the glue that holds it all together. It is your job to hold your team accountable, protect the integrity of menu pricing, and provide your team with the facility and equipment needed to properly do their jobs. And, from time to time, you will need to roll up your sleeves and get dirty simply to get the job done. Oh, and there is also a MOUNTAIN of paperwork due on a weekly and monthly basis.
One of the most important aspects of your job, though, is to train. While you may not be directly involved in the training of line staff, you will be responsible for developing the programs in place as well as monitoring the results.
Another important aspect is obviously customer service. You will need to get out there and talk to the guest to get their direct feedback on the operation. As part of “customer service,” you will also need to monitor the satisfaction of your internal guests, which can be somewhat of a tricky situation. You do not want to go behind the back of your department heads, but you will need to ensure the entire food and beverage team is happy and satisfied working at the hotel.
F&B Skills
Excellent Verbal and Written Communication Skills – you will be called on to do presentations, run meetings, and represent the property at outside functions.
Be Proactive a Good Problem Solver – it is not always enough to figure out the problem after the fact, but you will also need to be able to diagnose it before it ever happens.
Accounting, Forecasting, and Budgeting – get ready to become best friends with Excel spreadsheets. A significant part of the job is creating and monitoring weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly budgets as well as setting up templates for the department head to break down menu items and individual functions.
Be a Politician – you will never like everyone you work with, but you must respect and get along with them. At times, you are also going to have to sell your staff on the overall good of the operation, even though you may personally disagree (like a discounted function that brings in a massive profit on the rooms side).
Inventory Management – at larger properties, you may have a purchasing manager, but at smaller properties, purchasing and inventory duties will fall directly on your plate. Even with a purchasing manager, though, properly managing the inventory is essential to ensure you do not have wasted money sitting on the shelves or worse, inventory walking out the door.
Leadership Skills – it would seem like a no-brainer that you would need strong leadership skills to take on this role, but I have seen individuals rise to this rank that was simply incapable of running multiple departments from a leadership perspective. You not only need to be able to provide leadership, but you also must be able to understand the “big picture” while leading without pitting different departments against each other. Honestly, this could be one of the more significant challenges the position requires.
Interested in F&B Director positions in the hospitality industry right now or do you need an F&B for your property? To see job postings we have available or to work with our team for placement, click here. If you are in need of an F&B Director and the local talent pool is not providing you with the right candidates, JDI can help. As a top hotel recruiter in the United States, we don’t find candidates, we find the ideal candidate! For more information about our recruiting services, please click here.