1. What are some of the latest trends in the F&B domain?
Food and beverage across the globe plummeted for over two years and had to pick up from 2020 where every chef, food and beverage personnel changed their outlook toward both business and experimenting trends. The first decision after the pandemic was to make up for the lost time and to unravel cost effective ways to create food trends attractive enough for the post pandemic diner. Even though the fear of dining has disappeared to normalcy there is still a sense of fear in business owners and operators. We at the Courtyard by Marriott Mahabaleshwar are trying to tap the needs and expectations of the new traveller by creating immersive local experiences focusing majorly on the local flavours and produce grown in sustainable ways. In the beverage front with the increase in the Instagramable beverage ideas and trends of creating visually appealing cocktails in every nook and corner, we are focusing on the taste and quality of the beverage. Using freshly grown herbs and spices to create tasters instead of large cocktails. Our bartenders have unlocked a new way of chilling the beverages without the use of ice which negates splitting and dilution of the beverage.
2. What untapped opportunities can hotels explore by utilizing their existing F&B infrastructure?
Every square foot area is an opportunity to make a sale! Hotels lose out on a lot of space when it comes to having a large empty lobbies and landing spaces. The opportunity lies in identifying hotspots across the property creating areas to make a sale. The age old guéridon service is slowly returning to a few outlets creating portable visually appealing point of sales. Hotels should stop limiting themselves to elevator posters and posters outside their restaurants, every empty wall is a canvas to showcase food and beverage offerings to entice a guest toward a dish or a beverage. Rather have walls of glass showcasing the kitchen than large paintings trying to bring out a theme in the restaurant hotels need to understand the story lies in the art of creating experiences and food and not on walls with expensive artwork.
3. How is the hotel handling food wastage?
We at Courtyard by Marriott Mahabaleshwar has limited wastage by ensuring that the menu and the scrumptious buffet is inspired with local fresh produce to negate the high purchasing cost for meats and vegetables. Our chefs are also trained in batch cooking for the buffets to make sure they have complete control on portioning and quality of the food as compared to bulk cooking.  
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?
Leasing out hotel spaces to standalone restaurants and cloud kitchens should ideally be avoided as it creates challenges in the long run. Indian pioneer hotels have created a name in the market by operating the restaurants with a certain amount of standard operating procedure and quality. Leasing out the restaurant dilutes those standards and allows the business to create opportunities of revenue leakage as with a revenue sharing model the hotel loses control on how the business is done on premise. If the asset is being run by the hotel and its team, then the opportunity to both success and failure in the business is controllable. However, to allow cloud kitchens and standalone restaurant is to allow depletion of the asset and the maintenance of the area without having complete control over the business. Finally, it also creates a premise if competition within the hotel by itself based on comparison and feedback
5. How are training and development being taken up by the hotel for its F&B division?
Most hotels are facing the challenge of high attrition especially amongst the youngsters owing to multiple opportunities available in the market. The need of the hour is to create holistic development of our team that enables them to foresee a more lucrative future for themselves in their current organisation that is line with the business expectations. Creating a career track for a trainee to an associate is what is most essential to gain loyalty amongst employees that leads to talent retention. As leaders, it is imperative that we make each working day, a new day of learning and growth that is above just adapting to the nuances of a particular outlet’s menu understanding. Here at Courtyard by Marriott Mahabaleshwar, our objective is focussed on learning new skill sets and mastering F&B standards from best practices adapted by hotels around the world. We strongly believe that Food & Beverage training is a culture that inculcates continual learning on a daily basis in addition to those 10–20-minute classroom sessions. The leaders of departments at Courtyard Mahabaleshwar conduct the training based on lesson plans for 365 days with continuous tests and simulations to be able to manage all sorts of situations.
