- What are some of the latest trends in the F&B domain?
Plant based foods
With consumers being more conscious about the environmental impact of their food choices; more and more restaurants are launching plant-based meals as an alternative to intensive farming; lowering their carbon footprint.
The new Fast Casual
Á la minute cooking, fresh and healthy options cooked live in front of you, convenience food without the full service of fine dining having a high customer engagement and a variety of choices in the dish preparation process have proven to be successful in the fast casual segment in recent years.
One dish restaurants
Taking tips from the local shawarma shop or hot dog stand, single dish restaurants are still up and coming. It’s all about specialization, finding, and exploring niches that few if any players have ventured into yet, staking a claim and providing for a unique experience while optimizing inventories and bringing about greater profitability.
Adoption of Technology
As more and more restaurants embrace contactless ordering, payments, rewards, and aggregators, simplifying kitchen processes may aid in the delivery of a consistent guest experience, which in turn is critical for business growth. Many restaurateurs are investing in digital technology to automate back-of-house operations.
The Sober Curious Movement
Alcohol use and subsequent hangovers are no longer fashionable. Mocktails and cocktails with little or no ABV (Alcohol by Volume) are becoming increasingly popular as people strive to live healthier lifestyles and the alt-cult of ‘Sober Curiosity’ appears to be enjoying its moment in the sun among Generation Z. Even well-known companies in the alcohol industry, such as Kingfisher, Heineken, and Budweiser, have recognized the importance of the trend and have introduced alcohol-free beers.
Alcohol companies seem to be aware of the “sober curious” trend. Industry players should see this increase in interest as an opportunity to invest in the non-alcoholic drinks category, expand their product offerings, and improve market share.
2. What untapped opportunities can hotels explore by utilising their existing F&B infrastructure?
- Hotels can pursue an omnichannel approach by providing different services on the back of the same infrastructure. For example, restaurants can keep their high-touch experience and premium offering while making a virtual brand around the top-selling items. They can cross utilize all ingredients and have different ghost brands that come out the back, and offer a well-made affordable dish that’s high volume at the back of a fine dining restaurant.
- We even saw some restaurants pivoted to selling groceries to survive pandemic lockdowns while offering much needed provisions for the neighbourhood. This could form part of the business model and help reduce food wastes from hotel kitchens.
- We are seeing more and more hotels offering culinary classes during off peak hours to those looking to learn.
- Partnering with ghost kitchen companies to service catering needs in the neighbourhood.
3. How is the hotel handling food wastage?
- Overproduction like for buffets are the largest source of food waste in most hotels, we steer clear of any buffet style service.
- We order food supplies just-in-time, this allows us to work with the freshest ingredients and predictably forecast our consumption.
- We adjust our menu to eliminate slow moving – non moving items.
- Inventory management software helps us better cycle through produce to make sure we are not allowing perishables to idle until expiry.
4. Should hotels consider leasing kitchens for cloud kitchen requirements during non-peak hours? What about hotels leasing their F&B spaces to standalone marquee restaurant brands on a revenue-share model?
Whether we call them ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, dark kitchens or virtual kitchens, the assurance of supplementary revenue is a great part of the value proposition for urban business hotels. If hotels could tap into the shared infrastructure of the cloud kitchen operators without having to additional capital outlay and staffing costs it would help unlock new revenue streams. This could be especially true for city centre business hotels, or hotels located in high density residential neighbourhoods.
For luxury hotels, especially so in the leisure/ resort segment the in-person dining experience is hard to replicate when ordering takeaway food. Elements in the atmosphere such as food display, music, service, lighting, décor and theme that play a role in creating the overall dining experience are what people look for.
Hotels leasing their F&B space to standalone marquee brands can lower their operational overheads significantly; rendering a larger contribution margin to the hotels overall profitability. Luxury hotels would especially stand to benefit from this arrangement however they would need to place adequate measures and importance on quality, brand standards and a seamless guest journey.
5. How are training and development being taken up by the hotel for its F&B division?
- We have gamified the learning & development experience for our team members, making learning not only exciting but also encouraging team work and retention.
- This helps us transmit and reinforce the company culture while increasing team member engagement and generating a positive workplace environment.
If our team members imbibe our culture, vision and mission, they are more likely to pass this on subliminally to our customers in an authentic way.
