What’s on the Menu? |
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New brands spice up their food and beverage service for the next generation
Hotel
companies are always trying to get away from the boring
image of a “beige” hotel with no personality.
Many new brands aspire to meet the needs and preferences of Gen-Xers and business travelers who want something that’s both practical and stylish. NYLO Hotels, Starwood’s aloft, InterContinental Hotels’ Hotel Indigo, Global Hyatt’s Hyatt Place and Choice Hotels’ Cambria Suites are all targeting this modern traveler. As William Edmundson, vice president of brand management and strategy for Choice, puts it, “We feel like this is the right segment of the market to be in. We see the Gen-X group outspending the baby boomer, and they don’t want to stay in their parents’ hotel.”
When it comes to F&B, the traditional hotel model doesn’t cut it for this group. A business traveler getting off a plane at midnight needs an available dinner option, and a sit-down restaurant for breakfast is often too slow. Trends are moving toward on-the-go options; comfortable public spaces where guests can eat, work and socialize (sometimes all at once); and 24-hour food options.
NYLO
NYLO Hotels, which plans to open its first property in Plano, Texas, by the end of the year, is aiming to create hotels that are high end, but highly affordable, with a residential, urban-loft design. “We fall into a new category of lifestyle brands,” says CEO John Russell. “Customers are telling us they’re looking for the next new thing.” The company hopes to attract consumers who are drawn to brands such as Starbucks and Jet Blue.
NYLO, which is targeting such tertiary markets as Savannah, Ga., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., will offer a casual restaurant serving three meals a day along with a limited hot-and-cold, 24-hour menu. A high-energy bar will be designed to “provide a vibrant, fun area for guests and the local community,” Russell says.
The restaurant menu will focus on soups, salads, sandwiches and simple entrees, with a heavy emphasis on hors d’oeuvres. “It’s not a white-tablecloth, two-hour experience,” he explains. “Our customers want it to be fast and offer variety.”
A limited grab-and-go menu will be available at all times. Russell says the company’s research showed that guests wanted something available at all hours but could live without in-room dining. “Guests said ‘If it’s there, we’ll go get it,’” he notes, adding that the company will reconsider in-room dining if guests express a need for it once the properties open.
The bar/restaurant/lounge will be on the same floor as the business center, fitness center and meeting rooms. Russell says this helps increase awareness of the F&B options and allows the property to serve these areas with fewer people. “From a cost standpoint, it’s good,” he says, “which translates into a lower price point for the guest.”
Cambria Suites
Choice Hotels’ Cambria Suites, the first of which opened last month, is also targeting the “upscale select-service market,” with an approach Edmundson says combines form and function. The properties’ two-story lobbies consist of three areas: refresh, reflect and refill. Refresh is a large fitness area with an adjoining indoor pool and spa—not the typical “old linen closet retrofitted with a bike, a treadmill and a TV,” he adds.
Reflect contains the main F&B operation, including a restaurant serving breakfast and dinner, a bar and a barista bar selling Wolfgang Puck beverages. “It’s an area where travelers can just reflect on the day,” Edmundson says. “Much like you see with a Starbucks, people like to congregate. They like to be around other people, even if they don’t interact with them.”
Washington, D.C.-based Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group was brought on board to help develop an F&B program that would fit the brand and be profitable. “They really get it,” Edmundson says. “We spent a lot of time walking them through our model: the target guest, style and design.
Breakfast is served as a hot buffet with “everything from organic-type choices like steel-cut oatmeal to comfort foods like Belgian waffles,” he says. The dinner setup includes full service, with appetizers, soups, salads and sandwiches. The kitchen uses a ventless Wells cooking system, which Edmundson says is affordable for operators and very efficient. Most of the menu items require assembly, but not cooking from scratch. Operators can also use the kitchen to support meeting rooms, but they have the option of using outside catering as well.
Refill is Cambria’s 24-hour convenience store, which offers some health-conscious snacks and fresher food options. “Today’s business traveler might not just be looking for a Coke; they may want an energy drink or an organic snack or a salad that was made on site,” Edmundson says. Like other areas of the hotel’s F&B operations, it offers recognizable brands, such as Terra Chips, Izze soda and Newman’s Own popcorn.
Edmundson’s goal is also to create a profitable F&B department. “In a lot of hotels, traditionally, the food area has been a hole that you pour money down,” he contends. “And I’m not a fan of that.”
aloft
Starwood’s aloft is about choice and empowerment, says Brian McGuinness, the brand’s vice president. “For instance, we have check-in/check out kiosks, where you can select the room type and the room you want and get the keys. It’s very much like the JetBlue airline concept.” Rather than demographics, the company uses psychographics to look at who its customers are. In aloft’s case, travelers are tech-savvy, early adopters looking for the next thing and people who like to explore.
The F&B concept for the hotel focuses on grab-and-go, trying to create the convenience and experience of a deli in an urban area. McGuinness says the “refuel” area is more than a typical pantry, and will offer “good-quality salads, sandwiches and signature elements like the best scone, the best cinnamon bun, that kind of thing,” in addition to juices, water and energy drinks.
Other food offerings include an expanded continental breakfast and a bar that opens at 4 p.m., which will serve hot offerings such as spring rolls, tapas and personal pizzas. Most of the items will be prepared off-site, so very little staffing is involved. “There’s minimal assembly on site. Ninety percent of it comes in and is ready to be placed in the display cases,” McGuinness says. “If we need a little assembly on site, we require the hotel to do that. They might have to put the glaze on the Danish.”
Communal tables and lounge areas seat 70 people, and the space can easily be rearranged to suit guests at different times of day. For example, all of the beverage alcohol is on swiveled walls, which flip open when the bar opens but aren’t visible the rest of the day, so guests don’t feel like they’re eating breakfast in a bar.
McGuinness estimates a property would need one full-time employee working the grab-and-go area and two working the bar. He says that while the original goal was to break even, he feels F&B will turn into a profit center for aloft properties. Individual hotels would have the option of having a separate restaurant, provided it had its own branding and was clearly separate from the aloft brand.
Hyatt Place
Hyatt’s select-service brand is aimed at travelers who live a 24/7 lifestyle, often blending work and leisure time. So around-the-clock food service was a must when the company was ironing out the brand concept.
Guests in the properties (they expect to have 120 open by the end of the year) can purchase coffee drinks, sandwiches, salads, pizza and snacks at the gallery café in the hotels’ lobbies. A complimentary continental breakfast is served from 6:30 to 9:30, but guests can choose to pay for a hot breakfast.
Technology is at the forefront here, both for the guests and behind the scenes. Customers order through a touch-screen system (or from a host) and pay using their room keys or credit cards. Ovens from Merrychef, Lincoln Foodservice and TurboChef simplify preparation and keep costs down by reducing preparation time and staffing needs. The goal is to deliver efficient, fresh foods, which the company does by working with vendors to reduce waste. “We asked manufacturers to package these items in pre-specified sizes so that we only open and use what we need, so our waste is bare-bones,” says Edwin Rios, vice president of food & beverage development.
Hotel Indigo
InterContinental Hotels’ Hotel Indigo, which has eight properties open and about 40 more deals in the works, aims to offer the functional attributes of a branded hotel with the style of a boutique hotel, according to Jim Anhut, IHG’s senior vice president of brand development. He says the company envisions the average customer as on the move, tech-forward and tech-savvy. IHG’s research showed that guests want the convenience of F&B in the hotel for breakfast and dinner, but often don’t have the time or desire for a full-service restaurant.
“We created the food and beverage model around the perspective of the guest, as well as the owner who doesn’t want to lose money on F&B,” Anhut says. “So we looked in the marketplace to see where we could lift ideas from, not necessarily in our industry. We turned to the fast-casual gourmet dining concepts that are out there, from Wolfgang Puck Express to Panera Bread and others.”
IHG liked that these establishments offered quality food with limited staffing and a service model where the patron was involved in some aspect of the service. To incorporate those concepts into the hotels, the company had to “merge a supply chain with a cooking technology and that service platform,” Anhut says.
Looking at F&B at other hotels, the company saw a well-supported supply chain for food items that have already been prepared and just need the finishing touches. Speed- cooking technology from TurboChef, which combines a conventional, convection and microwave oven, filled in the technology question. “It allows us to deliver a freshly cooked, freshly prepared high-end food product in a very short period of time,” says Anhut, noting that an entrée can be prepared in as little as three to five minutes.
The result is the Golden Bean, which serves breakfast and dinner at every property (lunch is optional) as well as 24/7 room service with a relatively small staff. Even cross-trained front desk staff can prepare many of the entrées for in-room dining after hours. Properties also feature the branded Phi Bistro & Bar with a high-end wine list and name-brand beverage alcohol.
“This is a unique time in our industry and the food preparation industry,” Anhut says. “You couldn’t have created this concept 10 years ago.”
