As catering involves activities and variety of products and it provides a special challenge to the manager, it has certain characteristics which make it different from other manufacturing and service industries.
A wide variety of food services are offered to the customer, ranging from biscuits and tea, cooked and processed snacks; beverages and meals to the organization of complete events
The product and service are closely interlinked and cannot be treated in isolation
The product offered is not always taken off the shelf and served without further preparation.
Products are not easy to standardize, and the same dish varies in its shape, size and quality from one establishment to another.
Providing a personal touch to the food is an important selling point in catering, therefore special arrangements for their safe storage are necessary.
Customer tastes vary on different days and even at different times on the same day. These may also changes radically leaving a lot of people from varying backgrounds, cultural, religious, social and structural. This calls for greater skills in man power management both within and outside the establishment.
Food is more vulnerable to pilferage, theft, contamination, spoilage and waste. Therefore needs to be controlled at all stages of production and service.
The product is generally consumed at the point of production, but while some items can be prepared before hand and held safely. Others cannot and therefore and therefore have to be prepared on order. This results in peaks and through of activities.
The caterer also concerns himself with standards of hygiene and the health of customers as food once consumed cannot be retrained. While a product which is infected have the adverse effect only after consumption.
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