A hotel F&B Manager who has dived into his / her first pre-opening experience and that did pass the period of critical path to soft opening date, should also be aware that the next week to a Month would be loaded with a lot of challenges!
Here is what to expect in the first week of pre-opening and what type of challenges you might face :
1-Staff challenges :
For the ones that did travel and recruited staff from different countries around the world, these different cultures that didn't have enough time to blend and adapt to the new life and culture away from their home countries, which might be their first outside home adventure especially when it comes to the junior staff members, you should be expecting a lot of conflicts between the staff and you might be losing few team members as early as during the first week of operations mainly due to the pressure that everyone has with no days off and high management expectations from everyone to stay focused and keep on their toes at all times, This is where a good Manager can play the role of coaching and taking each case by case and get closer to team members by conducting daily briefings and listen to staff challenges and acknowledge the situation but also it is important to mention that it is critical to brief the staff about what is a pre-opening experience about at the time of interviewing them , this would help reduce the cost of turnover after a tough opening period.
2- Equipment challenges :
In many cases, there is little time to test and ensure that all equipment and machinery are well checked and well installed, therefore, during the first week to two, you should expect getting some complaints about some equipment that aren't operating or causing some problems, therefore it is important to note the contact numbers of the supplier of each - Kitchen, coffee machine, Bar dispensing, etc...
3-Unfinished parts of the project :
The reason for calling an opening by "Soft opening" is because in most cases the contractor might not be able to handover all of the venues/hotel areas and facilities at the same time, so you might open the hotel and still construction is ongoing in some areas and venues that might be handed over at a later stage, this is normal during all openings and it shouldn't be a surprise if this is your first opening!
4-Update & adapt SOP's :
Remember that all the SOPs and sequence of service steps were drafted before entering into the venues; therefore, this week is a critical week where you do a debrief daily and ask your venue managers to adjust/update their SOPs and sequence of service based on feedback received from management and customers!
5-Time to set the culture!
One important note that you should keep in your mind is that this first period is also the period where you might need to shuffle the staff around between the different venues based on observations and feedback! Slow staff members might be moved to banquets. One that might not be able to stand for long hours might be moved to order taking in the room service, another that is so talented and smiley might be moved from banquets to a casual/fine dining venue, etc...However, the most important part of building a successful F&B culture is to create awareness among all staff members that they need to be open to stepping in and helping/working in other venues as needed in the first period.
Some hotels might higher more than needed as they expect a turnover after opening and some others might hire less and work on adding more as needed after the opening, so in the second scenario you might be challenged if your sales people start booking events/banquet parties in addition to the busy first period where sales would be inviting a lot of PR & press in parallel to serving your paying customers, so the day when you need some staff from other venues to come and help in serving in the banquet department, you should be expecting many staff members not expecting you to ask this and say we weren't informed about helping in other venues and this is the biggest challenged that you will have in the way of building the culture where everyone should be available where they will be needed!
6-HOD responsibilities :
As an HOD, you should expect doing other duties than your job as an F&B Manager, specifically staying in the hotel for a night or more during the first few weeks, where normally HOD's do a rotation as there should be one HOD on duty at all times in the first month until the hotel manages to have a permanent duty manager on duty or assign the role to one of the HOD's who can stay later at night where most of the issues normally happen.
7- Owners and VIPs visits :
In the first period, you should expect that the hotel owners and a lot of their VIP invited friends and families will come to experience the venues, and this will be a daily communication coming to you from hotel GM or owner's reps, and this might put pressure on you on top of all the other responsibilities that you might be busy thinking about in the first few weeks of opening! However, this is the biggest opportunity for you to shine, as if you pass this period serving all of them successfully, this would build a strong connection between you and the owners and in my experience the F&B Manager is the one that gets the closest to the owners with time due to the many interactions that they might have in the first period!
8-Inspections and Governmental visits :
You should expect some unannounced visits from the Municipality / Hygiene authorities in the first period, checking on your operational compliance. this is where your HACCP plan and safety procedures that you put in place during the pre-opening stage should help you to pass this period successfully.
Any staff members whose papers aren't yet legal shouldn't be allowed to work on the floor and should be getting their training in the back of house in order to avoid getting penalties!
9- Conflict with the kitchen
In the first week to month, you should expect some pressure coming from the executive chef & his/her team members, as this is the period for adaptation to everyone, you should play a big role in daily communication and passing the details of reservations to the kitchen so they can adjust their forecast of orders. If one of your hostesses, for example, fails to inform her manager/chef about a group booking due to xyz reason, you should expect a fire between both departments, and this might happen with inexperienced staff members who might be new to the game, and that might require extensive training in the first period, also some of your staff members might be caught eating in the back area since many will be working long hours and the staff cafeteria was closed when they went for their bread, end up picking food and getting creative their way and when caught by the chef is going to fall on your head, this is also where you would need to coordinate with the chef and HR for having enough food in the cafeteria at all times during the first period of opening.
10- Pressure from Finance!
Expect a lot of comments coming from the finance department in the first period about missing cheques & reports, as your closing staff members are still new to the closing procedures, and this leads to many mistakes and missing documents. Therefore, you will need to assign the same staff member in each venue to look after the closing duty consistently in the first week to 10 days, and these guys to train a number 2 so you can avoid getting a lot of complaints from finance in this critical period.
11- High breakage!
Oh yeah! i remember a chief steward that was creative about handing all the breakages during opening period on a board inside the staff cafeteria and adding the cost of each broken item during the first week of operations and this was a 7 star hotel with baccarat & highest quality of chinaware and glassware that resulted in 50 K USD of losses in breakages due to staff mishandling and lack of training and accidents in the back area especially at the "Debarass" area in the back of house! Once again , training should be the guide during this period, as training should never stop after the opening date and daily briefings are so important!
After the first week or two, things will start to stabilize, you will need to look at each and every schedule in order to ensure smartly giving your staff their accumulated days off and rest that they deserve while keeping the standards of serving your paying customers and daily increasing hotel occupancy!
You should openly discuss all the challenges in your morning HOD's meeting so they can support you during this critical period, each from their respective part, as F&B with a large operation will be the most complex to manage with minimal complains in the first period and you should remember that you aren't alone in this!
In my next article, I will write more specifically about what to expect after 3 months of opening, if your operations aren't as busy, and you start getting pressure to reduce staffing and expenses if you don't attain your budgeted figures!
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