As every hotel manager knows, a good buffet can be a tremendous marketing tool for promoting a hotel's banquet and catering services, as well as being a magnet to attract a constant crowd of discriminating guests willing to pay for great food, attentive service and pleasant, relaxed surroundings. But what defines a good buffet? And how does one realize healthy profits while avoiding huge losses, including those suffered through employee theft or carelessness?

To answer satisfactorily, we must consider what comprises each of these components.

Host Staff - Greeting, Seating, & Logging Hard Checks

For our purposes, we'll pretend we're guests arriving at the ever popular hotel Brunch Buffet when no menu service is offered. If everything is as it should be, we are pleasantly greeted by neatly attired host staff, escorted to a well-appointed table, and a hard check is placed on the tabletop. This hard check will later be paired with the check presented to the guest with payment by the cashier to be tracked. Why the use of a hard check? Without buffet check controls, servers on the 'honor system' have the opportunity to reuse checks, presenting the same check to more than one table, pocketing cash payments, until the ...