Geneva State Park Hotel

Delaware North Companies had a Control Evaluation Guide that field units were required to complete and send to Corporate. The Internal Audit Department used this checklist as the basis for conducting its audits. While established units generally did fairly well when audited, the new units often did poorly because the staff was new and unfamiliar with the Company’s policies and procedures.

As Director of Operations Support, the Parks Division often asked me to go into a new operation after it had been open for a few months, and conduct a mini-audit, going through the controls listed in the Control Evaluation Guide and determine whether the operation was in compliance with each of the controls.

A few months after Geneva State Park Hotel opened, I was asked to travel to the park and conduct a mini-audit. As part of my review, I ate in the restaurant and had a couple of beers in the bar while observing the servers and bartenders at work. My objective was to determine whether they were following Company procedures in taking orders, bringing the order to the guest promptly, ensuring the food was hot, charging the guest for everything ordered at the correct prices, and providing excellent customer service.

After dinner, I sat down at the bar and ordered a draft beer. When the bartender opened the tap, it was obvious that something was wrong. There was a lot of foam coming out of the tap and the bartender was pouring a lot of it down the drain. Then he let the glass sit on the bar for another minute before attempting to fill it again. It took two to three glasses worth of beer to fill my glass.

He apologized to me for taking so long to fill the beer. I asked him how long they had problems with the draft beer. “Almost since we opened three months ago,” he replied. He also said that at night the taps were shut off and the beer in the lines coming from the basement turned flat. The first few beers each day were thrown out so guests wouldn’t get flat beer.

That night, I looked at the most recent P&L in my hotel room and noted that the Beer Cost was running 38%, while planned Beer Cost was 20%. The equipment problems were costing the Company a lot of money!

The next morning, I reported the problems with the beer dispensing to the General Manager who contacted the beer distributor. The beer distributor sent a technician to the Hotel later that day and adjusted the CO2 pressure until the beer flowed correctly. In my report to management, I also recommended that beer locks be installed on the taps at night so the CO2 would not need to be shut off, thus preventing the beer in the lines from turning flat.

Upon implementing my recommendations, the Hotel Bar Beer Cost dropped to 22%, a much more reasonable Beer Cost.

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