Catering management refers to enterprises, hospitals, schools and hotels contracting catering management services to professional catering companies to manage, and then choosing all kinds of catering provided by catering companies.

Food and beverage management is a business which integrates management and management, technology and art, upholding and innovation. Compared with the management of other departments, it has different characteristics. It requires hotels to have their own characteristics in food and beverage management in order to meet the requirements of management subjects.

Instant production and marketing, high income elasticity

The management of catering business is accomplished by planning, organizing, coordinating, directing, supervising and accounting the process of making dishes and serving customers. Its business process shows that production, sales, service and consumption are almost completed in an instant, that is, it has the characteristics of short production time, along with production and sale, service and consumption at the same time. This requires the catering department to produce immediately according to the needs of customers, produce and sell immediately, can not be prepared in advance, otherwise it will affect the color, fragrance, taste, shape, and even decay, causing economic losses. Therefore, it is an important subject for hotel catering management to do a good job of forecasting and analysis, grasp the needs of customers, improve work efficiency and strengthen on-site control. Moreover, as the main revenue-generating department, hotel catering has the characteristics of large income elasticity compared with guest rooms. The source of income of guest rooms comes from the guests in the hotel. The number of rooms and house prices remain relatively unchanged. The income of guest rooms is relatively fixed. The highest income of guest rooms is often a predictable constant. Besides the hotel guests, there are non-hotel guests in the catering service, and the per capita consumption of the guests is also a variable with greater flexibility. Hotels can increase the per capita consumption of catering by improving work efficiency, strengthening catering promotion and improving service quality, so that the business income of catering can be greatly increased. Therefore, catering is often the key item of hotel business income.

Business content is miscellaneous and difficult to manage.

The catering business is complex, including both external sales and internal management. It is necessary to choose the correct business objectives, policies and strategies according to the hotel's internal conditions and external market changes, as well as to rationally organize internal people, money and goods, improve quality and reduce consumption. In addition, from the perspective of personnel composition and nature of work, catering department has both technical and service types, as well as operation technology, cooking and service art, which is the combination of technology and art. This will inevitably make catering management more difficult. It requires us not only to organize catering management activities according to objective laws and enhance the scientific nature, but also to proceed from reality, adjust measures to local conditions, handle flexibly and improve artistry. At the same time, the composition of catering costs is extensive and varies greatly. From the cost of raw materials, some are fresh goods, some are dry goods, some are semi-finished products, some are vegetables, melons and fruits. There are obvious differences in picking and washing, slaughtering, disassembling, rising, cutting methods and allocation proportion of these raw materials. The degree of loss in processing varies, and the prices of some raw materials tend to follow the market and vary greatly. But the prices of restaurant dishes can not change frequently. In addition, there are fuel, power costs, labor wages, tableware and other consumables consumption, furniture, equipment depreciation, some of which are fragile, loss control is difficult. Therefore, how to strengthen the cost control of catering and reduce consumption is often an important subject of catering management.
There are many influencing factors and the quality fluctuates greatly.

Food and beverage quality is the central link of food and beverage management, but due to many factors affecting the quality of food and beverage, it is difficult to control the quality of food and beverage. First of all, catering is based on manual labor. Whether it is the production of dishes or the improvement of service, it is mainly controlled by people's intuitive feeling, which is easily restricted by people's subjective factors. Employees'experience, psychological state and physiological characteristics will have an impact on the quality of catering. This is obviously different from the work of the Housekeeping Department. It is difficult to standardize the service. Secondly, there are great differences among the guests. As the saying goes, "It's difficult to adjust people's tastes." Guests come from different regions, their living habits are different and their tastes are different. This will inevitably lead to the same dishes and services, producing completely different results. Thirdly, strong dependence. The catering quality of a hotel is a comprehensive index. The quality of catering depends not only on the supply of the market, but also on the relationship between various aspects of the hotel. The quality of dishes is directly related to the quality of raw materials, and the requirements for cooperation are very strict. From purchasing and supplying to rough processing, cutting, hearth, service, etc., all require ring tightening, close cooperation, a little teasing, will produce inferior products. Not only that, it also requires close cooperation from other departments such as engineering.

Low brand loyalty, difficult patent protection

In the general catering consumption, the customers'consumption psychology of seeking novelty and novelty makes them constantly pursue new products, new tastes and new services in catering consumption, and there is often a phenomenon of "eating new stores and new products" and "catching up with the new trend of consumption". On the other hand, it is very difficult for restaurants to apply for patents for their decoration and service methods. Therefore, if a product or service can attract customers, there are many imitators. Many "mysterious diners" in urban catering are actually "intelligence detectives" dispatched by major hotels and social restaurants. They shoulder the responsibility of "collecting new catering products, fancy products and special products", and imitate or create first according to the collected information. All these have brought great challenges to catering management. How to cultivate brand loyalty and how to seek patent protection has become an important topic in hotel catering research.