Basic Skills and Characteristics of a Food & Beverage Director

Restaurants and small business ventures do not usually require the services of a food and beverage manager. However, big establishments like hotels and country clubs definitely do. A food and beverage director should be knowledgeable in food hygiene, health and food safety regulations.

He/she must have strong leadership and team management skills as he/she usually has a big team of kitchen and store staff the director oversees. This implies that without such skills the director might encounter difficulties at work.

Excellence in communication skills  coupled with  good organizational and problem solving skills are usually good ingredients in a good food and beverage manager, since he or she needs the communication skills to work properly with other people, good organizational skills to organize tasks and responsibilities for the colleagues he/she works with, and problem-solving skills to help him offer solutions to his own official and personal problem, and then the same problems for the colleagues he/she leads.

How can managers and supervisors increase employees’ productivity and interest in their work?

I do not think that managers and supervisors can motivate employee. This is because motivation of an individual is driven mainly by one’s psyche. One’s perceptions, attitudes, lifestyle and approach any situations are key variables that influence human motivation.

However managers and supervisors simply help to create a general environment that is suitable for employees to get motivated and increase productivity and interest of employees’ work. The managers and supervisors take in creating an environment to stimulate employee motivation may include creating avenues for understanding the employees a person, creating an avenue of helping the employee meet the needs and wants of the employees. Otherwise employee motivation is mainly stimulated or lost within an individual to the extent that a manager or supervisor at work can really do little to uplift it.