Search

×

Gostelow Report: High energy at Wynn Las Vegas

“Feeding your team properly is win-win,” says Wynn Las Vegas’ Executive Vice President and General Manager Brian Gulbrants, who has a total of 12,500 employees at his two hotels.

Wynn provides free meals to those working at the 2,716-room Wynn Las Vegas, its adjacent 2,034-room Wynn Encore, dozens of restaurants and other outlets, and working the massive casino floors. They share a superb subterranean dining facility that operates 24/7: It has restaurant furniture, with tables and chairs at a choice of heights, and small semi-private areas for those who want less buzz.

“We brought in a nutritionalist to look at what we were offering in the dedicated servery room,” Gulbrants recalled. “The assessment was that our offerings were superb but we should give more nutritional advice.” Some dishes were tweaked, so that now frozen yogurt replaces ice cream. In the main, however, all foods are calorie-counted. Above trays on the counters are prominent green (best), yellow (all right) and red (be careful) signs. 

“Sometimes there might be only one red label, above hamburgers, but all the labels do make everyone think. Would you rather have a slice of tomato, at 4 calories, or a slice of American cheese, which is 110?” he asked.

Brian Gulbrants practices what he preaches. This very month he goes into his 50th year, and last January he thought it was time to take his body in hand. He worked with coaches to wean him away from regular cycling into always-different Cross Fit activity.

Everyone he spoke to agreed that wellness starts, however, with what you put in your mouth. At lunch in the complex’s new Jardins restaurant, he might well choose a berry smoothie, with reduced maple syrup, and a quinoa-base healthy salad with chopped chicken. “I do feel so much better overall,” he admitted.

Just as with his teams, he needs to be at peak fitness for the next couple of years. In October 2017 the complex doubles its retail space, which already takes up 75,000 square feet. Around that time, too, ground will be broken for Steve Wynn’s next project, Wynn Park.

The 18-hole Tom Fazio golf course will be replaced by a gigantic curvilinear pool, a 45-acre man-made lake, with two islands in the center. By the time this opens in 2019 the lake, offering proper watersports, will be surrounded by sandy beaches, and of course there will be another hotel, but only with 1,250 rooms.  “Steve Wynn is truly amazing. I have never worked with an owner who is so creative, and so hands-on,” Gulbrants declared.

Steve Wynn actually lives onsite, in one of the golf villas, so he is in and out the whole time. “We have to redo bedrooms a year before they begin to need refreshment. Everything must be perfect,” Gullbrants shared. Every day at 9 a.m. a meeting of eight to 10 executives discusses yesterday, and today (“we have three royal families arriving…”). A trends team analyzes social media comments, daily. 

“It was not as detailed when I started all this,” he recalled. At 7 years he was cleaning up in his parents’ Phoenix restaurant (he later joined Ritz-Carlton as a waiter and, 20 years afterward, left as corporate VP operations). He learned long ago to treat everyone, guest or team member, as a VIP, and in his continual lightning-pace walking the joint, he addresses many employees by name without looking at their name label. “It sounds corny to say it but they really are our greatest asset.”

Comment