Department: Food & Beverages
Supervisor: Food & Beverage Manager (Director)
Responsible: All F&B Employees

Plate Service: 

  • Plate service, also known as American service, is a style of restaurant dining where food is fully prepared, portioned, and arranged on individual plates inside the kitchen before being brought to seated guests by the waiting staff.
  • Kitchen Plating: The chef or kitchen staff handles all the food arrangement and portion control.
  • Table Delivery: Waiters carry the finished plates from the kitchen and place them directly in front of each guest.
  • Efficient Flow: It requires minimal tableside handling by servers, making the meal service fast, clean, and orderly.
  • Key Benefits - Speed and Control: It allows large numbers of people to be served quickly while keeping food portions consistent and controlled.
  • Visual Presentation: The chef retains complete control over how the dish looks, ensuring the presentation is neat or artistic.
  • Versatility: It is widely used in everything from casual family restaurants to formal dining rooms and large catered events.

Cart Service:

  • Cart service (also called French service) is popular internationally.
  • Cart service is an elaborate service style in which menu items are prepared on a cart or guéridon beside guest tables by specially trained staff members; menu items are cooked—sometimes +ambéed—in front of the guests via the cart’s portable heating unit (réchaud).
  • In dining rooms that offer cart service, a maître d’ who knows the intricacies of cart service is required to seat guests, supervise the dining room, and perform other duties.
  • A sommelier typically helps guests select wines and then serves them. At least two food service staff members are needed in each dining area station for cart service: the chef du rang and the commis du rang. The chef du rang is generally responsible for taking orders, serving drinks, preparing food at the table, and collecting guest payments. He or she must be very experienced and skilled. Nor- mally, production staff members partially prepare the food in the kitchen, then the chef du rang finishes preparing it at table side.
  • The commis du rang assists the chef du rang. He or she is responsible for taking food orders to the kitchen, placing the orders, picking up food in the kitchen, and bringing it to the table side carts, often on silver trays. When the chef du rang is busy with preparation duties, the commis du rang also delivers drink orders and serves food to guests.

Platter Service:

  • Platter service requires servers to deliver platters of fully cooked food to the dining room, present the platters to guests for approval, and then serve the food.
  • This type of service is featured in many of the best international restaurants and hotels.
  • Platter service can be as elegant as cart service, but it is more practical because it is faster and less expensive.
  • Platter service can provide a special touch and still allow managers to control labor and product costs closely. Li)e cart service, plat- ter service incorporates many traditions that mean elegant and superior service for guests.

Family Style:

  • Family style in a restaurant means that food is served on large, shared platters or bowls placed in the center of the table rather than as individual plates.
  • Communal sharing: Servers bring large portions of food to your table, and guests pass the dishes or help themselves directly.
  • Fixed or flexible pricing: Some places charge a set price per person for an all-you-can-eat spread, while others let you order specific large-format dishes to share among your group.
  • Table service: Unlike a buffet where you stand up and walk to the food, servers bring everything directly to your table.
  • Main BenefitsSocial atmosphere: Sharing food from the same platters encourages conversation and bonding.
  • Variety: Everyone gets to taste a little bit of everything without committing to a single individual meal.
  • Custom portions: Diners choose how much or how little they want of each item on their personal plates.

Buffet Service:

  • Buffets display food on counters or tables, and guests help themselves to as many and as much of the items as they wish to eat.
  • There are many popular layouts for buffet service that can be used in place of the traditional straight-line setup.
  • Buffets can range from a simple offering of several basic food items to elaborate presentations of more sophisticated menu items that appeal to guests with those tastes.
  • Foods are usually placed on buffets in the following order: salads and other chilled meal accompaniments; hot vegetables; and meats, poultry, fish, and other hot entrées. Some buffets feature whole beef filets, whole hams, racks of lamb, or turkey breasts that servers or production staff carve as guests request a portion.
  • Such items as crepes and omelets are sometimes cooked to order on a buffet line at so-called “action stations.”
  • Sauces, dressings, and relishes should be placed close to the menu items that they accompany.
  • "Scramble system": The term “scramble system” was first used to describe cafeterias in which guests could go to separate stations to be served, rather than waiting in a single line. For example, hot foods might be at one station, beverages at another, and desserts and salads at still others.


Important things to pay attention to:

  • Each service style has its unique advantages and considerations, and the choice often depends on the restaurant's concept, target audience, and occasion.