The old adage of ‘home away from home’ for a commercial city hotel holds completely true. The focus today for any F&B professional is to focus strategies into this segment to ensure optimum cover and space utilisation.
Today the product offering has evolved to the next level. Local food will take predominance on preservative-laced exotic foods from faraway lands. Cooking methods will become simpler, where steaming and roasting will take over frying and sautéing.
The focus will shift towards ‘sustainable kitchens’ which organically grow their own produce and serve them fresh. Organically grown foods from local sources will ensure menus are seasonal. Molecular gastronomy or Culinology was a fad. People still like to see and taste their food rather than some laboratory concocted dishes.
Hotels and restaurants no longer control what’s said about them, or who says it. The old experts – travel and food journalists – are disappearing, almost an endangered species. Instead, authority is dispersed among the ‘Instant Opinion Makers’; bloggers, texters, twitterers, facebookers. So we’re swapping good gastro-journalism for dubious opinionating. However, these social networking sites are the PR manager’s best tool to sell restaurants to the right mix in the most cost effective, fastest manner.
Events and conferences today are major factors in achieving revenues and filling rooms. F&B will need to integrate this into its meeting spaces and, wherever possible, restaurants. With new advances in POS technology, an MIS report become more meaningful and user friendly. Integration of software like RESPAK and Open Table make systems more streamlined; software like this will enable a customer to choose a table online.
There will be greater emphasis on service styles. Further, live or open kitchens are here to stay, where a patron can not only see his food being cooked, it also gives a sense of security from the hygiene point of view. Open forums for chefs will ensure sharing of recipes and standardisation of products.
Post recession, everyone is talking about downsizing and budgetary cuts. This is the time to give value-for-money to the guest. Globally expensive steak houses have lost business by 30-to-35% however, fast food chains dishing out innovative ways to sell the humble hamburger have not felt such a dent. What I see as emerging trends in the food service world are, firstly, where luxury becomes more meaningful. Secondly, extravagance will no longer define luxury – simplicity is the new luxury. Thirdly, frills will no longer be required; customers will instead ask for the bare minimum to be done perfectly every time. In this case, a highly trained, motivated team will ensure more productivity.
Today, wines have become commonplace with more and more people trying it out. The French and Italian will stay but only for the elite; the trend is that new drinkers will patronise Australian and Californian. Taking a leaf from fast food joints, up-market restaurants will reinvent pricing strategies. The way forward is to make dining out common in this country. Small samplers such as Tapas and antipasto will be the new ‘in’ thing.
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