First of all, outsourcing is a practice often used by the human resources department, in various companies and organizations. Outsourcing means turning over an entire function to an outside specialist. That function may be anything important to the company, whether it refers to payroll, shipping, security, benefits administration or computer networking. There are cases when such outside consultants work side by side with the regular employees within the company, or cases when a specific function is moved entirely to a different place, a remote location away from the office. Sometimes, the remote location is even outside the country.

This practice of outsourcing outside the country is more commonly known as offshoring, and has generated many economic and political debates in the past few years. However, outsourcing is far from being a new process, although it has brought more public attention recently. In fact, small companies and family businesses have been outsourcing since forever, even before the practice actually had a name. The practice is old, but when large companies, that have previously used their own personnel for certain functions, turn to outsourcing, it is news. However, it has proved to be an extremely useful staffing strategy, increasingly popular these days.

Why do companies choose to outsource? Because of necessity or choice, but for either reason, outsourcing saves time and money. Let’s take them one at a time. Necessity is the generating factor when a certain business requires a certain function to be dealt with, but without buying new equipment or facility or affording to hire new staff. For such situations, outsourcing is often a very convenient and efficient solution. Choice comes to be the driving factor when companies prefers to focus all their resources and internal energy on critical and essential operations, while outsourcing the ones that are necessary, but can be done from the outside.

As a human resources specialist, it is your responsibility to grasp all implications of outsourcing in order to provide strategic counsel throughout any hiring process. You need to assess all advantages and disadvantages, and contribute to the final decision, whether to use this practice or not. However, keep in mind that outsourcing often affects directly the HR function itself, as companies are frequently outsourcing some of their HR services.

The kind of service and fare you wish to offer to your patrons. These include:

- Take out, with no or limited dining facilities. These are the ones where you mostly order foods to be consumed off site. Many have just one or two chairs where customers can sit while waiting for the order to be prepared, and a select few might provide a table or two at the front of the establishment for the patrons to grab a quick meal. Many do not provide tables because in many places, if there is a table for dining in, it then becomes necessary to maintain a customer-accessible bathroom in order to meet municipal requirements. Many specialty places that serve ethnic or limited menu selections like submarine sandwiches and pizza fall into this category. Although not technically in the same category,
ice cream shops and bakeries or delis can be included here due to the types of pre-prepared fares offered.

- Family style/casual dining. This type usually has few, if any, wait staff where the patrons can either order take out or choose to dine in at provided tables. Some include small salad or other buffet choices where the customer usually waits on himself or just eats what he purchases at a counter.Trays are provided that a customer can dispose of at a given station upon completion of the meal. The most the staff would have to do is keep any garbage emptied, collect use trays for washing, and keep the tables wiped down regularly.
Most food would be served in disposable containers rather than on dishware that needs to be washed after use. Many smaller family diners and restaurants fall into this category even though they require nominal wait staff to bring food selections to the customers wherever they are seated,
be it at a counter or a booth.

- Full service/formal dining. This particular style of restaurant is usually what one thinks of when going out to a “fancy” restaurant. This is also the type of restaurants require the largest number of staff. In this type of restaurant, the patron’s party is usually met and seated by a host/hostess or member of the wait staff and seated at a table in a designated dining area. Food and drink orders are taken by the wait staff, prepared in an area the patron does not have access to,
and is delivered to where the customer is seated. Dishes are usually cleared from the table in between courses by the wait staff, and for this type of service a gratuity of at least 15% of the total bill is expected for the wait staff who did the actual service. This type of restaurant may or may not have an attached cloakroom, and is expected to have restroom in keeping with the décor/level of service for the establishment. It may or may not also sponsor special services like live music with dining, valet service for patrons’ vehicles and a bar where wines and mixed drinks may be ordered.

Of course, there are degrees to what each main type of establishment offers, but the above list is just a generalized overview of the types of things you might want to offer to your potential customers.