Making it harder than it needs to be: August 2008 Morsel
Published: August 5, 2008
This, my dear readers, will probably be one of my shorter morsels. And yet, it may save you the most time, if hotel catering managers heed my advice.
Hotels, when you are writing your menus, please put your current service charge and sales tax at the bottom of every menu page. Don’t hide it somewhere, and don’t just put “current gratuity and sales taxes apply.” That annoys the heck out of me, because then I have to pick up the phone or e-mail my sales rep to find out the information you should have given me in the first place.
Catering managers, with the flexibility that we all have today to change prices on computer printouts, this should be a no-brainer. Put this information where it belongs: at the bottom of each menu page. This way, no one will ever have an excuse for not seeing it.
— Claire R. Gould
Claire R. Gould is the owner of Rx for Catering, LLC, a culinary and logistics company that works globally negotiating and designing menus for meetings and events. Her company has done work for Coca-Cola, IBM, Honeywell and Randstad, among others. Gould teaches and writes about culinary and banquet trends and topics, and publishes a quarterly online newsletter “The Claire Diaries.” If you have any feedback for her, please leave a comment.
Soapbox
Have an opinion, experience, knowledge or question about this story? Sound off below.
Note: This space is for comments about the story above. General questions to PYM should be sent via our contact page.
