As part of HOTELS 50th anniversary issue, the editors spoke to F&B leaders to chronicle their opinions on trends to watch as well as ignore, keys to profitability, the future of room service and what hoteliers might be ignoring at their peril.
HOTELS: What is one F&B trend you are watching and why?
Markus Schueller, vice president, food & beverage operations – Asia Pacific, Hilton Worldwide, Singapore: A trend that isn’t new but increasingly popular: Customers are more interested in learning where their food is coming from, and building a connection to the source of their food.
Increasingly, we’re looking into sustainable sourcing, whether it’s fish and seafood or vegetables, and looking at sources that are truly local. For instance, we have been working with our hotels in Singapore to source local suppliers and are hugely encouraged to learn that despite the size of the country, there is an amazing variety of local producers.
Peter Karpinski, co-founder and COO, Sage Restaurant Group, Denver: The explosion of high-quality, fast-casual restaurants. Guests may pay a little bit of a premium, but they are getting really fresh, flavorful food in a more convenient way. Hand to mouth eating versus knife and fork. This is a huge driver of what consumers want, and the segment will continue to grow.
Martin Chung, senior vice president global development food and beverage, Kerzner International, Dubai: More fusion, such as Korean-Mexican from Los Angeles, and then reimported into Seoul. More Peruvian and South American, in general. Hong Kong has a place called Cino, fusing Japanese and Mexican. Also, Persian food is on the rise. It is more delicate and refined than Middle Eastern cuisines.
Stefan Trepp, executive chef, Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi: The wave of South American food. Whether it is Europe, South East Asia or the Middle East, restaurant concepts with a South American approach have started to emerge and will continue to do so for the future.
H: F&B is often a loss leader. What is the key to profitability?
Schueller: At Hilton, it comes down to a few guiding principles: Build a restaurant that caters to people who live and work in the city, not only for hotel guests; develop flexible concepts that allow us to flex up or down, depending on the meal period; and empower restaurant managers and outlet chefs to take real ownership of their restaurant or bar.
Loh Lik Peng, director, Unlisted Collection, Singapore: Bring in an independent operator and be a landlord. Ninety-nine times out of 100 the independent restaurateur does a better job and gives your guests a better experience.
Trepp: Running the outlet like the owner. Put yourself in the owner’s shoes and it will condense operating decisions. Although we are cooks, we can’t hide behind the stove and ignore the importance of understanding a profit-loss report.
H: What does the future hold for room service?
Karpinski: We are starting to see room service offerings shift from the full-service model to in-room delivery. With the growing prevalence of restaurant delivery, hotels are seeking to use room service to replicate the feeling of being at home and ordering from a favorite restaurant. We will begin to see more thoughtful selections for different meal periods, and the lower-tiered segments will eventually fade away completely.
H: What is the industry ignoring at its peril?
Trepp: The importance of hiring the right people. The best hardware is of no use if you’re hiring cheaper, inexperienced staff, which results in a lack of luxury and ultimately customer service. Teaming up with the right people can position an establishment for the maximum prospect of success.
Loh: The desire of their guests to consume services outside of the hotel. This is inevitable and a losing battle for hotels. From Uber to independent restaurants, guests are choosing to bypass hotels altogether and they can do so with assurance and wide choices now. Hotels need to respond unless they are content to just sell rooms.
Chung: The industry lost its way with food and beverage 20 or so years ago when some finance person highlighted the fact that rooms were more profitable. Leading companies started to scale down F&B and de facto turned hotels into bed-and-breakfasts. There is light, however, with the resurgence of companies like Hyatt that manage to do exceptional stuff.
Now, some chains pretend to reintroduce real hospitality and experiences into a guest stay with boutique and design hotels – all fake anyway as very few real hotels remain. But that is another article and another story.
H: What’s the most misguided trend or misconception you’re seeing in hotel F&B? Why and what needs to change?
Chung: One meal period where hotels really can make a great impact is breakfast, and still many aren’t paying enough attention to it. Coffee and tea should be the most important aspect as well, but employees don’t know how to make coffee. There has been a resurgence in baristas and the art of making coffee, and this should become a standard in hotels.
Another problem is that when hotels invest or renovate. They should renovate cheap or even use pop-up space to experiment and become more flexible and fast when there is a need to change concepts.
Loh: Fine dining with all the frills is coming back into vogue in markets like Singapore, where the Michelin guide is about to launch. This defies logic in a market like Singapore where skilled labor is tough to recruit and retain.