The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-08-03
SERVICE CHIEF ITEM OF COST
 I AT BIG HOTELS
Food Itself Is Only 40 Per Cent Of Dining
 Expense

NEW YORK, Aug. 2-When gem tleman sets off to be a genial host for three other persons at simple dinner in one of the leading New York hotels he usually tucks a fifty-doliar bill in his wallet. to foot the check.
 "A good dinner and a lot of hum HIbug r he'll say contentedly at the end #lof the evening. Yet were he to cha1- |lenge the maitre d'hote1 where he had Idined with this comment that dignitary wouh respond
 Certainly, it'was humbug, if you like Ito call service by that name, but New 5 Workers demand this kind of humbpg. { Tn fact they are So badly spoiled they'd be miserable without it"
 I At the Waldorf Astoria, for instance, &fn Oscars office, they've worked out the percentage until they know that the zIactual. cost of dinner to the hotel Is sforty per cent for food and sixty per 5scent for service.
 When food has reachedfSa certain \ Equality it cannot be improved" says #lOscar. 'eThe leading hotelse all main tain. that high standard in flood. Our scompetition is in service, or, if you lwant to be flippant about something that all diners take seriously our com q
 Many Help Prepare
 From fifteen to twenty men on the hotel staff haxe a part in the prepara- 2 ition of a simple dinner-n0 matter if it hs only one of those unassuming roast beef, brown gravy and string beans me lls, In the service charge for that #meal must be included thes salary of the hotel food buyer, who starts off for the markets about o'clock in the morning when many of the guests are just starting to bed. Then we must include, too, the salary of the meat cook. the vegetable cook, the salad cook, and the pastry cook, all of whom have 2 defenite part in preparing this typi- cal dinner. Finally there are the bus boys who. look after/ the table linen and silver, and, last, the captains and walters who serve the meal
 Americans are such specialists them selves that they like to think of spe- cialists preparing the different items of their dinner. A New Yorker would not think of complaining about a serv- ice for his dinner in hotel no matter how high the charges was fixed; for he Is convinced that he is being given the best attention that can be provided anywhere. The visitor from out of town, even if he still wears the tradi- tional shiny. yellow shoes and bright blue store clothes, is .lm in the face of unexpected hotel dining room cheeks, E too. He has been prepared for them and he either wants to exper. ,nce a genuine metropolitan meal with it's theatricAlly perfect service or he for goes the whole institution teof hotel dining and takes to the marble top lunch room down one of the side streets. Occasionally a protest on the price of a dinner comes from a foreigner, who believes he knows food values and feels that he. is being robbed. Usually he isn't familiar with the exchange rates of money, and when he begins to un- derstand labor values n American dol lars he becomes subdued when hotel dining room prices are mentioned"
 The Pennsylvania hotel claims as it's daily share six thousand of the persons who. dine in New York hotels, With this number of patrons to cater to they have worked out a system Of. degrees of dining service and corresponding dining prices. The Pennsylvania has five diff ferent dining rooms, but each serves exactly the same quality of food.
 "With our five dining rooms the pub lie has a chance with us to determine before hand just how much service they'll have" explains Emil Kopp, maitre d'hotel of the Pennsylvania. F'The diners may have their meals with music in one dining room, and without music in another. They may require speed and find it in one dining room, pr they may require leisure and be as- sured of that atmosphere in another room.
 Prices of food, which, of course, means prices of service, increase from ten to twenty cents for each article on the menu in each dining room. A dinner that costs five dollars in the first lining room wound cost ten dollars on the roof-five degrees superior in serv- ice.