By Abdul Kader Saadi, Special to Gulf News
Food and beverage (F&B) operators constantly face challenges in all avenues of their business. From increased competition to supplier costs, there is no shortage of factors forcing them to be diligent to ensure their very survival.
In light of recent trends, F&B outlets are seizing upon new ways, which promise to sustain their business models and improve their market position. A technique that has been employed with successful results in the West is a reliance on part-time staff to mirror seasonal changes in demand. This model, if properly implemented, can bring significant benefits to local F&B outlets to help combat the UAE market’s particular set of challenges.
It needs two main factors to make it the perfect market for deploying part-time staff as a viable option. The first stems from the extremely seasonal nature of the F&B market and the second, is due to the high costs associated with issuing resident visas and salaries to full-time staff for restaurants.
If we look at the F&B sector model in the West, their entire premise is based on utilising part-timers and students as their staff pool. This works in sync with travel and seasonal patterns, whereby people move from mountain or ski resorts to beachside properties in the summer and vice versa in winter. This pattern correlates to demand patterns in the F&B sector, where a substantial number of individuals seek part-time and seasonal work to fill the void at outlets seeking staff.
In this fashion, a perfect synergy is formed between young staff seeking income and F&B operators who can pay for staff when it is most prudent to do so, i.e., in their respective busy periods.
This is an important observation because seasonal outlets would otherwise be paying full salaries all year round.
In the UAE, seasonality plays a big part for many restaurants. Our summers have a direct negative effect on demand for out door locations and patios. Summer is also when residents tend to travel, making the period considerably slower for the sector. In addition, the months during Ramadan greatly impact upon the nature of demand.
Venues themed around an outdoor dining experience either have to shut the entire premise down or alternatively close their outdoor dining section reducing both their capacity and part of their marketable appeal.
Aside from the debate of how to combat seasonality, hiring part-time staff can also benefit an F&B outlet’s standard business model all year round. Even in an average week, restaurants will have their good days and the slow ones.
In terms of costs, having the flexibility to move staff around — those not necessarily on the same trade license — and part-timers will definitely decrease staff cost for restaurants and F&B outlets by a factor of at least 20 per cent.
In conclusion, the main benefits associated with implementing such a model are the reduced costs and utilising staff in direct correlation with seasonality. At the very least, this approach could potentially aid F&B operators by providing them with an additional mechanism to allocate resources more efficiently.
Abdul Kader Saadi is the founder of Glee Hospitality Solutions.
