Mr. Salazar

Food & Beverage

Beyond the Hotel Restaurant: Bringing in the Locals

By Fernando Salazar, Vice President, Food and Beverage, Wyndham Hotel Group

Hotel restaurant.

What comes to mind when you read those two words? Perhaps you think, “Reliable.” Or maybe you think “uninspired, gets-the-job-done or cookie-cutter.” Many hotels in the United States build restaurants and bars with the exclusive purpose of providing meals, snacks and drinks to hotel guests. Usually, they are a convenient place to grab some breakfast or have a glass of wine.

The locations of these food and beverage establishments are also often in hidden, out-of-the-way corners of hotels. Some are housed in basements, euphemistically known in hotel parlance as the “lower level.” At times, they are located on the mezzanine level or on the second floor but very seldom are they front-and-center in the lobby of the hotel.

In all of these instances, hotels miss a tremendous opportunity to generate more revenue. Why, I ask, would we choose the most hidden corner of a hotel to build a restaurant? What should be a revenue center and profit maker for a property becomes a room occasionally visited by guests. But alas, it happens. And it happens often. Think of the last five hotels you’ve visited and try to remember where each restaurant was located. I bet that very few were in the lobby of the hotel or had their own outside entrances.

The hotel lobby is the “Times Square” of the hotel. By that, I mean, it is the most trafficked area of the hotel -- People checking in or out, guests arriving from a shopping spree or going out on the town. Why not put your restaurant as close to the lobby as possibly? Why not do your best to capture all of that traffic? Also, once a hotel opens or renovates its restaurant, very often no one makes any noise about it. Why invest in the restaurant or bar and spend money staffing them only to not tell guests and others in the immediate vicinity that you are open for business and that your food and beverage outlets are not “hotel guest-only” establishments? Why not employ the same strategy used to let people know about the availability of your hotel rooms? A restaurant will not do nearly as well as it can if the only customers are a percentage of the guests staying at the hotel.

A Day in the Life of a Hotel Restaurant

At breakfast, a typical restaurant opens at 6:30am and offers a buffet and a small a la carte menu. At 72% occupancy and an industry standard 35% breakfast capture, from 6:30 – 11:00 the restaurant will do 100 covers on average before the restaurant begins to serve lunch. At peak time, the restaurant will be only half full. For lunch, using the same occupancy, the hotel will capture a small percentage of guests because whether it is a corporate or leisure-driven hotel, many guests are either conducting business somewhere else or sightseeing. And they will usually have lunch at a local restaurant, not at the hotel’s facilities. To those covers you can add a few more from guests checking in early or those heading out of town after check out. If there is a meeting in house with no planned lunch, the restaurant may see a few more covers, but on average, the lunch period is very slow for a hotel restaurant.

At dinner, with many guests returning from their daily activities and new guests just arriving to check in, the restaurant will see some activity but not as much as a good local restaurant would get. The industry average for dinner capture ratio is 14% or about 44 covers. Can a free-standing restaurant survive with this level of business? The answer is no. However, this is typical activity for some hotel restaurants and it will not change unless we decide to build local restaurants and not “hotel” restaurants.

The Hotel Restaurant Versus the Local Hangout

Why do many hotel guests choose to dine somewhere other than a hotel restaurant?

Many leisure travelers want to get out and visit the city they’re in and having lunch or dinner in local restaurants is part of the way they savor the city. They want to be where the action and excitement are so they usually choose to have only breakfast or a snack or drink on property. If the hotel restaurant is nearly empty, it is not appealing. Travelers want to eat in interesting places that are vibrant and busy. Often, the busier, the better.

Similarly, business travelers typically leave the hotel early in the morning, maybe after catching a quick breakfast, and typically do not return until after dinner with business associates at a local restaurant. How many business people staying at a hotel encourage their business associates to have dinner at the restaurant at their hotels? Not many. Why? Hotel restaurants can be uninspired and locals typically do not frequent them.

Those hotels that have success with their restaurant and bar operations are those that have conscientiously decided to treat their restaurants and bars as free standing, local hangouts.

As a long-time advocate of hotel restaurant as local hangout, I am happy to see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Some hoteliers are finally understanding that it makes great sense to build local restaurants that will attract locals and keep the place busy. The fact that these establishments are located inside a hotel is just a geographical happenstance.

I am not talking about hiring celebrity chefs and paying them tons of money to put one of their concepts into a hotel, although sometimes, in the right market this approach makes sense. What is important is creating a restaurant with a strong food concept – one that is backed by a creative local chef and one which delivers quality service. Forget about generic, uninteresting menus. So many hotel restaurant menus have no theme, no concept. The menus are an amalgam of a little of this and a little of that because, “we have to cater to all type of guests.” Caesar salad anyone? What about a Club or BLT sandwich or Fettuccine Alfredo? Oh, and let’s not forget chicken wings and a quesadilla…All of the offerings found in practically every hotel restaurant.

Creating a Strong, Local Restaurant

Where do we begin? First and foremost, don’t just think in terms of hotel guests. Concentrate on the locals. Focus your research on the local community and determine the concept that makes sense for the area where the hotel is located. What type of establishment will be favored by the locals? Find your niche. Hotel guests like to go where locals go, therefore build a restaurant for the people in your community and your hotel guests will stick around and spend money inside your four walls instead of at other local hangouts.

Once the concept has been decided, develop an aggressive Marketing and Public Relations campaign exclusively for the restaurant. Every effort should be made to separate the restaurant’s identity from that of the hotel. Failure to do this will result in the local perception that the restaurant is just another hotel food and beverage outlet.

Hotels spend quite a bit of their dollars promoting rooms to increase occupancy and rightfully so. However, funds should also be allocated to restaurant and bar operations. Creating a discount coupon for the restaurant is not marketing – it certainly isn’t enough.

A restaurant’s awareness and engagement campaign should mention the restaurant name and address. Avoid mentioning that it is a part of the hotel. Let locals discover this for themselves. Once in the restaurant, let the creative menu and quality service make the statement that this is not your run-of-the-mill restaurant. This is a fun, sexy and energetic spot where locals will come time and time again.

Be sure to utilize the social media channels available to you. Ensure that someone on your restaurant management team is proficient and that information about the restaurant is updated regularly –daily is best! - so as to keep locals informed and interested. Use online channels such as Facebook and search sites like City Search and Urban Spoon to your advantage. At the very least, ensure that the restaurant has its own web page and maintain it daily.

Raise awareness by engaging local press and bloggers. Arrange tastings and visits and send relevant news about special events, partnerships and more. Also, ensure that the restaurant features a robust calendar of events. From partnering with a local winery or organic farm to hosting a comparative tasting of new world and old world wines– the sky is the limit...Oh, and lose the nametags! Simply put: nametags = hotel restaurant.

Fernando Salazar, a 30 year lodging veteran, was appointed vice president of food and beverage for the upscale Wyndham Hotels and Resorts brand in July 2007. In his role, Mr. Salazar is responsible for the conceptual development and management of food-and-beverage operations for all Wyndham Hotels and Resorts properties. Additionally, Mr. Salazar recently assumed oversight of food and beverage for the select-service TRYP by Wyndham brand. Mr. Salazar, a frequent speaker at national conferences on topics related to food and beverage, received the 2010 Silver Plate Award as Hotel Operator of the Year from the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association (IFMA) for his contributions to the industry. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) proclaimed him Ambassador of the CIA and awarded him the Gold Medal of Honor for creativity, leadership and mentoring efforts. Mr. Salazar can be contacted at 973-753-6590 or fernando.salazar@wyndhamworldwide.com Extended Bio...

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