Performance checks
1 Quick quiz
Answers to these questions can be found on pages 126–7.
2 Workbook assessment
Read the following case incident and then deal with the questions which follow, writing your answers on a separate sheet of paper.
Pat is the catering supervisor of an organization which has decided to provide lunch for its 300 employees.
Senior managers have estimated that 80 per cent of their employees will use the restaurant for a meal on five days a week for 50 weeks in a year.
The menu, with limited choice, will be offered at a self-service counter.
An average meal is not to exceed £1.20 in materials cost to the restaurant.
The following estimates have been made.
Gas, electricity and heating: £10,000. Crockery, cutlery and replacements: £2,000. Cleaning, laundry and sundries: £3,000.
Pat, as catering supervisor, is paid £18,000 a year.
Wages for kitchen and other staff are £5,000 a month for 12 months in a year.
1. How many meals will Pat need to provide daily?
2. What is your estimate for the number of meals per year?
3. Identify and quantify the following costs for a cost statement.
a Labour costs.
b Material costs.
c Overheads.
d Total sales required to cover the costs.
e The average selling price per meal needed to cover costs.
4. If the organization decides to charge £2 for a three-course lunch, how much is it going to have to subsidize each meal?
5. What percentage will this organizational subsidy be of the annual sales through the restaurant?
6. As catering supervisor Pat has many areas of the restaurant and kitchen to control. What are they? Explain as fully as you can what Pat will need to control and how.
3 Work-based assignment
The time guide for this assignment gives you an approximate idea of how long it is likely to take you to write up your findings. You will need to spend some additional time gathering information, perhaps talking to colleagues and thinking about the assignment. As you research and report, you should aim to develop your personal competency too in focusing clearly on results and influencing others with the aim of improving cost control. Ensure that you talk to people at mutually acceptable times so that the information you receive is of the best quality and that people are fully committed to helping you. You may need to convince them of the value of your work, for instance.
This Activity may provide the basis of evidence for your S/NVQ portfolio. If you are intending to take this course of action, it might be better to write your answers on separate sheets of paper.
There may be some form of cost control in your workplace. The following questions ask you to find out something about it and your role in the cost control system.
Take any product or service which your workplace is involved with and discover the following:
1. The cost of the product or service. If it is a service, explain the cost in the form of an appropriate cost unit.
2. The prime cost of the product – this is all the direct costs.
3. The overheads content of the product/service cost broken down into:
a factory or production overheads;
b administrative overheads;
c selling and distribution overheads.
4. The cost centre that you are connected to and the total cost of that cost centre for the year broken down, where appropriate, into departments and overheads.
5. The way in which the importance of cost control is communicated and how the workforce is motivated towards cost awareness. What is your role in this?
If this is not possible, use the checklists for keeping costs down to provide data for a report to your manager or trainer.
Prepare a report entitled ‘Improving our control over costs’ after analysing the effectiveness and relevance of present systems. Make appropriate recommendations for improvements and discuss your findings with your manager or trainer.