Reading

CATERING: RESTAURANT, CAFE

Lesson 1. Catering

Pre-reading

Work in pairs and discuss what catering services are available in Ukraine.

Reading

Catering, providing food and drink for transients, has always gone together with accommodations. Food services are a feature of hotels. The typical modern “packaged hotel” includes a restaurant, a coffee shop for quicker and less expensive meals, and a bar or cocktail lounge. Many larger hotels have several restaurants, often featuring different kinds of foods, as well as different prices. Hotels also normally provide room service – food and drink that are brought to the guest’s room. In addition, catering is usually provided in the hotel’s recreational areas. The poolside bar and snack bar, for quick food, are normal parts of the service at a resort hotel.

Restaurants, bars, and nightclubs outside the hotels are a standard feature of the resort scene. Indeed, many resorts could not really operate without them. They provide not only catering, but also some kind of entertainment for the tourist who is bored with the limits of hotel life. In some areas, like Miami Beach, they have sprung up without any apparent design, but in others, like the Costa Smeralda, they are carefully coordinated features of the total plan. In cities, like New York, London, or Paris, restaurants and other catering establishments that serve the resident population obtain additional business from the tourists who flock to those cities.

Food, in fact, may be one of the reasons why people travel. Many people go out of their way to visit France, for example, because of the gourmet meals that are served there. Similarly, the excellent restaurants of Hong Kong constitute one of its principal tourist attractions.

It should also be pointed out that many grocery stores, delicatessens, and liquor stores make money from tourism. This is true in large tourist cities like New York and in resort areas like Miami Beach. There is usually a food store at or near most marinas and camping areas.

The accommodations and catering service industries employ large numbers of people. At a luxury hotel, there may be as many as two or three employees for every guest room. At a large commercial hotel, there are usually about eight employees for every ten guest rooms.