Food-Service-Manual-for-Health-Care-Institutions

Food Service Manual for Health Care Institutions
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Exhibit 15.1. Customer Survey Form for a New Menu Item
We need your assistance in helping us to meet our goal of serving you high-quality food that tastes
good. Please share your comments with us about this new menu item by filling out this questionnaire
and dropping it in the suggestion box located in the cafeteria.
1. Menu item
2. Menu item served at proper temperature? Yes No
3. Menu item cooked properly? Yes No
4. Did the item have eye appeal? Yes No
5. Did you like the taste of new menu item?
Enjoyed
Acceptable
Disliked
6. Did size and shape enhance product? Yes No
7. Is there anything you can recommend to improve this menu item?
engineering have been proposed. One method categorizes menu items based on both profitability
and popularity. One of the more popular methods uses three categories based on the
contribution and volume of each menu item. The category in which a menu item is placed
determines whether the item will be retained (on the current and future menus), repositioned
(perhaps as a side dish), or eliminated (from all present and future menus). These techniques
can be time-consuming without the assistance of a computer software program.
Computer Applications
Computer-assisted procedures are used for menu planning in some facilities. To take advantage
of the computer’s speed, accuracy, and capacity, menu-planning information must be expressed
in quantitative terms. Programs can be designed to plan menus that consider labor and raw
food costs, nutrient content, color, consistency, frequency, and other factors. However, two
variables—nutrient content and raw food cost—are the most widely used in current computerassisted
menu-planning programs.
The greatest obstacle to computer-assisted menu planning has been the absence of sufficient
data about each variable. Unless the food service department uses standardized recipes for
every item produced, there is little point in planning menus that accurately fulfill nutrient
requirements and meet cost limitations. The ingredients used in each recipe must be issued
through a controlled procedure, and production workers must follow recipes exactly.
Food composition data must be available for each food item. However, values for some
items on the market either are not available or differ from those stated in government handbooks.
Nutrient data for many products must be obtained from their manufacturers. In some
cases, the food service director must develop the data.
The menu planner must specify such variables as the frequency with which menu items
may be served and the food combinations allowed on one menu. This process involves coding
for ingredients, color, flavor, shape, and other factors in such a way that the computer can identify
these considerations and deal with them. Menu cost is a combination of raw food cost and
labor cost. Yet, because accurate production time data are not available for most food items
and are difficult to obtain, precise planning for labor costs may be impossible. Flexibility in
adjusting to the special needs of customers or incorporating new items is severely limited as
well. These are a few of the problems involved in computer-assisted menu planning that have