Hilton Garden Inn Integrates
Breakfast With Marketing Message

New Big Day Breakfast menu offers healthy items featuring energy-enhancing ingredients

By Derek Gale, Senior Editor -- Hotels, 8/28/2008 11:10:00 AM

Why stay at a Hilton Garden Inn tonight? Because “tomorrow’s a big day.” So goes the advertisement for HGI in North America. It is one thing to convey the message, but HGI is now backing up that messaging with tangible offerings like a new breakfast menu—the Big Day Breakfast, featuring items designed to give busy travelers the energy, stamina and nutrition they need to tackle their day.

“The program supports our campaign and what differentiates our brand,” says Jim Cone, vice president of marketing for HGI. “We help our guests prepare for tomorrow—that’s why they stay at our hotels. And feedback shows that 85% of our guests eat breakfast.”

Available as of September at HGI locations throughout North America, the brand teamed up with celebrity chef and former professional volleyball player Chris Jacobson (CJ) to create the healthy, energy-enhancing breakfast offering.

“We decided to partner with CJ for the Big Day Breakfast not only because of his culinary talents and his dedication to healthy living and eating, but also because he has an understanding of travel and time on road thanks to his time as a professional volleyball player,” Cone says. “Having that understanding from someone who travels constantly and needs energy to compete and win, and bringing that to everyday business travelers, [HGI] will help them that much more.”

The new breakfast menu features three signature items that “go beyond the proverbial egg-white omelet,” including a multigrain waffle with freshly made blueberry thyme compote; brisket or tofu hash with fresh kale, grilled whole grain bread and poached egg, served with oven roasted sweet potatoes; and granola and flaxseed parfait with yogurt, fresh strawberries and honey.

“Most breakfast offerings out there feature more traditional kinds of ingredients,” Cone says. “We wanted to feature flavors and ingredients not found in your typical hotel breakfast—different things so that every day on the road is not the same. These ingredients—blueberries, grains, granola—provide energy and endurance.”

At the same time, Cone notes, from an operational perspective, the new menu items have to be prepared by cooks in many hotels, so they needed to be simple to execute for consistency purposes. To that end, CJ worked closely with HGI’s director of F&B to ensure the recipes he created would work for the brand, from the sourcing of ingredients to the actual execution in the kitchen.

In addition to the tree signature items, new menu offerings will be added over time, and “as we look for ways to enhance our breakfast, lunch and dinner menus, we will continue to look at [partnering with] different chefs with different ideas that allow us to enhance our ‘Eat Well’ pillar,” Cone says. “One thing that really differentiates Hilton Garden Inn from our competitors is the plethora of F&B options and the fact that we are able to provide guests nutritious, satisfying meals and snacks throughout their stay.”

He references the brand’s restaurant (offering three meals at many locations) and Pavilion Pantry mini mart offerings, and notes the attractive selection of items within the pantry thanks to brand partnerships with food and beverage manufacturers like Coca-Cola, Vitamin Water and Odwalla.