Your university’s Department of Hospitality Management hosts several gourmet dinners throughout the year. To show how OM concepts are useful in the service industry, the department has asked you to help manage the next gourmet dinner from the standpoint of materials planning.

The dinner is typically a five-course meal: appetizer, soup, salad, entrée, and dessert. Your Internet challenge is to develop the menu using the many cooking Web sites available and then to calculate the kinds and quantities of raw material you will need. Assume that the facility where the dinner is hosted will take care of the beverages and that the kitchen and staff have enough capacity for your menu selections. The gourmet dinner will have 300 attendees. If any menu items need more than 12 hours of preparation (remember you are planning for 300 guests), be sure the items arrive in time. Based on your menu, make a list of the raw materials you will need. Specify delivery dates for each item. Calculate how long each item on the menu will take to prepare for 300 guests. Decide what time the staff needs to start preparation for the dinner to be served beginning at 8:00 p.m. Calculate the time the staff needs to start preparing each item, assuming that the appetizers will be  served at 8:00, the soup at 8:20, the salad at 8:35, the entrée at 8:50, and the dessert at 9:15. Bon appetit!