Good To Great
Abandon plain amenity restaurants in favor of dashing signature concepts that court guests and locals.
By Lisa Bertagnoli, Contributing Editor -- Hotels, 9/30/2008 11:00:00 PM
|
| Schlossstern, the gourmet restaurant at Capella Hotels and Resorts’ Schloss Venden in Austria, has already earned its first Michelin star. |
Good enough never is. Food and beverage executives seem to have that adage in mind as they rethink their restaurants, moving from nondescript, three-meal cafés to signature restaurants with menus fashioned by high-profile chefs. The goal is twofold: To better serve guests, and to court non-hotel business as well.
Give some credit for the trend to travelers who, more than ever, want road food to be good food. “People know what fresh foods are, what healthy eating is,” says Patrick Albrecht, president of Great Food Group Inc., an Atlanta-based restaurant and consulting firm. And, of course, the lagging economy is setting off creative sparks as well. “People get very efficient when business is down,” Albrecht says, noting that a similar trend surfaced in the United States during the recession of the late 1980s.
American hotels, Albrecht adds, are catching up with the international model: “In Europe, the best restaurants are in hotels,” Albrecht says.
|
| Starwood is using F&B and the expertise of Jean-Georges Vongerichten to as one way to revitalize its Le Méridien brand. New dishes include (above) a smoked salmon and steamed tofu with fresh raspberry vinaigrette; (top r.) spiced oatmeal soufflé with fresh berries. |
|
That is true at Casa Munras, a luxury hotel in Monterey, California. Its restaurant, Estéban, is regarded as serving the best tapas in the city, says Nathan Tanner, vice president of restaurants for Larkspur Hotels & Restaurants, which owns Casa Munras. Larkspur deliberately created Estéban to be an “outside” restaurant, depending more on local traffic for sales than on hotel guests. The results are stunning: the 65-seat Estéban is on track to gross US$2 million a year, Turner reports.
Larkspur is one of four F&B success stories profiled here. Read on to see how other hotel companies are repositioning foodservice to become a lucrative point of difference, rather than a “good enough” amenity.
Le Méridien Begins With Breakfast
Two years ago, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., White Plains, New York, purchased Le Méridien, a luxury brand whose reputation had suffered a bit. Starwood has closed 15 of the 135 Le Méridien properties and is now focusing on F&B as a way to restore cachet to the brand.
First stop: breakfast. Le Méridien executives enlisted Jean-Georges Vongerichten to create a breakfast menu of six à la carte dishes and eight signature fruit drinks. No omelets or banana smoothies, though; the breakfast menu includes espresso-steamed eggs with brioche toast, and the drinks, served in shot glasses, come in combinations such as honeydew-passionfruit-chili and cherry-lemon-black pepper. Branded coffee and signature breads such as a green tea-coconut braided loaf complement the à la carte items.
The decision to begin with breakfast was not difficult. “We asked ourselves, 'Where do we start to create a point of difference?’ And the answer came back, 'breakfast,’ because it is a high-impact area—most of our guests have breakfast in the hotel,” says Eva Ziegler, global brand leader for Le Méridien. Choosing Chef Vongerichten to create the inaugural menu was easy, as well; the famous French chef has ties to Le Méridien and is known for his inventive yet approachable cuisine.
Research identified crucial breakfast basics for the brand. “You need to have fresh eggs, fresh juices, high-quality coffee and a wide selection of fresh fruit,” Ziegler says. “We understood then that, yes, the basics matter, but we wanted to show the European-ness of our brand.” The signature breads program, developed via a contest for the hotel’s chefs, also underscores that European approach, Ziegler says.
|
| Jean-Georges Eye Opener, an explosive juice elixir that encompasses a bounty of fruits and aromatic herbs and spices |
The breakfast menu was tested in seven hotels: Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, Bangkok, Warsaw, Monte Carlo, Dubai and Sunny Isles Beach, Florida. The program will be available brand-wide by the end of this year and, for a finishing touch, breakfast servers will be outfitted in chef’s jackets. “Our people will feel chic and sophisticated to serve these new elements,” Ziegler says.
So far, the breakfast program seems to be hitting high notes with guests. During the pilot, Ziegler overheard several general managers talking about guests’ reaction to Vongerichten’s fruit-juice shots. “They said they were a subject of discussion and comments, and really created intrigue,” Ziegler says. “That’s great.”
Larkspur Does The Math
Larkspur Hotels & Restaurants considers its restaurants one of two things: either freestanding or hotel-focused. Freestanding means the restaurants rely heavily on non-hotel traffic; hotel-focused are just the opposite.
|
| Larkspur Hotels & Restaurants focuses on its hotel guests at the Second Story res-taurant at The Belamar in Manhattan Beach, California. Meanwhile, Larkspur deliberately created Estéban (below) at the Casa Munras Hotel in Monterey, California, with locals in mind. |
|
“We have qualifiers for both,” says Nathan Tanner, vice president of restaurants for Larkspur, which operates 24 boutique hotels. If the restaurant could succeed without the hotel, it is destined to become a freestanding location, with more than half of its revenues derived from non-hotel traffic. If the restaurant depends on the hotel for survival, it becomes hotel-focused, with more than half its revenue coming from guests.
With those guidelines in mind, Larkspur opened Estéban at Casa Munras Hotel in Monterey. Larkspur bought the property, a former Travelodge, two years ago. It is built around the circa-1824 hacienda of Don Estéban Munras, the last Spanish diplomat to the republic of California. “We wanted to bring it back to its grandeur,” Tanner says. The 140-room upscale hotel reopened last fall.
Estéban, a 65-seat Spanish tapas concept that serves lunch and dinner, replaced a small café. “We approached Estéban as a freestanding restaurant that happened to be connected to a hotel,” Tanner says.
The restaurant, Tanner says, has opened to rave reviews, and has been called the best tapas in Monterey and the best new restaurant in the seaside city. Checks average US$12 to US$14 at lunch and US$18 to US$24 at dinner. The restaurant grosses about US$2 million annually.
Larkspur took the opposite approach with Second Story, a restaurant at the 120-room Belamarin Manhattan Beach, California. The upscale hotel is located several miles from the beach, definitely not in a heavily trafficked area. So, Larkspur realized that the restaurant, which really is on the hotel’s second floor, had to be a guest-focused operation.
The three-daypart restaurant, which opened in February, seats 40, and another 20 at the bar. The all-day check average runs US$18 to US$24, and the menu features contemporary American food. The restaurant, which also offers banquets and executive dining, is on track to gross between US$2.5 million and US$3 million a year, banquet sales included.
Second Story is, Tanner points out, as successful as Estéban, but in a different way. “Oftentimes, we try to force restaurants into something they don’t want to be,” he says. “It’s a matter of focus.”
Capella Reaches For Stars
Mere months after opening in May 2007, Schlossstern, the gourmet restaurant at the Schloss Velden Hotel in Velden, Austria, was awarded a single Michelin star. Capella Hotels and Resorts, which owns Schloss Velden, holds confidence that within five years, Schlossstern will hold a coveted three stars.
|
| Capella is using the wine cellar at Schoss Velden to attract private parties, show off its wine expertise and further create a destination appeal for locals. |
The experience at Schlossstern, a 60-seat restaurant whose menu is overseen by chef de cuisine Silvio Nikol, matches that of the 105-room luxury hotel in which is located. The restaurant offers a daily menu based on market availability of foodstuffs; the check averages €80 per person. The atmosphere is casual-upscale, allowing diners a view of the hotel’s gardens or Lake Woerth, on which the hotel is situated.
Not surprisingly, the restaurant draws from the surrounding communities as well as hotel guests. “We wanted to make Schlossstern not just a hotel restaurant, but a destination for people from Salzburg, Vienna and Munich,” says Peter Schoch, vice president of F&B for Capella’s parent company, Atlanta-based West Paces Hotel Group. To capitalize on its culinary acclaim, this month the hotel is planning a food and wine festival, including cooking demonstrations and wine tastings.
Schlossstern exemplifies Capella’s approach to restaurants: Good food in an atmosphere that matches the property’s location and ambience. Food stars, no matter what style of cuisine the restaurants serve. “To us, there is no difference between a great burger or a great goose liver,” says Schoch. “If cooked correctly, both are a great dish.”
For instance, the Capella Pedregal, scheduled to open in Cabo San Lucas this winter, will not offer continental cuisine. “People don’t want a great French restaurant in Cabo,” Schoch says. Instead, the restaurant will offer a hacienda feel, with an open kitchen and communal table, and a menu created from foodstuffs indigenous to the region. And, Schoch says, the restaurants are price-sensitive. “We charge a market-appropriate price, but we don’t want to take advantage of guests.”
The hotel restaurants, he adds, are not built as amenities for guests. “We want to be the social center of the community with our restaurants, wherever we are in the world,” Schoch says.
Direct comments to: lbertagnoli@comcast.net
No related content found.
