Canteen or Hotel costing

Canteen Costing

The government organizations, factories, companies, offices, colleges, schools and even hospitals have canteens to provide affordable foodstuff like meals, refreshment, snacks, etc. to the staff, students and patients.

The canteen manager or supervisor keeps control over the costs and performs service costing to ascertain revenue of these business organizations. The costs involved in canteen services include the cost of material, labour, services, consumable stores and miscellaneous overheads.

The object of canteen costing is to ascertain the cost per meal, cost per cup of tea etc.

In a canteen, the expenses are generally classified as follows:

• Wages and salaries of staff e.g., cooks, helpers, waiters and supervisors.
• Provisions like meat, fish, fruits, flour, oil, milk, sugar, cream, tea, coffee, and soft drinks.
• Services like steam, gas, electricity, power, water etc.
• Consumable stores like cutlery, crockery, glassware, table linen, mops and washing up clothes, drying up clothes, cleaning materials, dust pans and brushes.
• Miscellaneous overheads like rent, rates, depreciation and insurance.

A monthly operating cost statement is usually prepared to ascertain the total cost and cost per meal. As most factory canteens are subsidised by the employer to some extent, the amount of subsidy is deducted from the total cost.

Hotel Costing:

The hotels provide accommodation to the guests as services; thus, it involves a high maintenance cost along with the fixed cost. The fixed cost includes depreciation, staff salaries, interest on capital, taxes, etc. Whereas, variable cost involves electricity charges, temporary staff salary, etc.

A hotel is engaged in providing food, accommodation and other comforts to its customers. Costs incurred by a hotel may be fixed or variable. Fixed costs may include salaries of staff, depreciation of fixed assets etc., while variable costs may comprise lighting and power charges, wages of room attendants etc. The object of hotel costing is to ascertain the cost per room or cost per man.