Super Casino
Inside the "New" Las Vegas
Excerpt
Food and beverage director John Thacker found a wad of messages waiting for him
after the department-head meeting. He still had thirty telephone calls to return
from Monday. Like other managers, he no longer had an assistant to field them
because of Alamo's budget cuts. His department served a minimum of nine thousand
meals every day and he oversaw a staff of 1,100, which included 25 chefs, 290
cooks, and several hundred busboys, cocktail waitresses, bartenders, and food
servers. He personally signed $1.8 million worth of purchase orders per month.
Because the Luxor was not generating the profits its executives expected,
Thacker had been told to reduce his payroll even more by firing the equivalent
of 55 full-time employees. He didn't know how he was going to do that without
sacrificing service.
"Everyone always complains about food," he said. "It's always too hot, too cold;
there's not enough, there's too much; it's too salty, it's too sweet; it's too
cheap, it's too expensive. But the truth is that the actual preparation of food
is eas ... read full excerpt from: Super Casino ebook
