Mr. Ferrone

Food & Beverage

Hilton Hotels Corporation Eat Right

By Al Ferrone, Sr Director F&B Marketing, Hilton

Food is not only supposed to be good for you, but it is also supposed to taste good. I often think about why the Europeans aren't as enthusiastic as the Americans about the new diet fads. Can you imagine going to France or Italy and telling their residents to stop eating bread or pasta? They would run you out of the country on a baguette and revoke your visa.

As I travel through the supermarket's precious aisle space, I notice that items are being replaced with reformulated products that have been altered for the low-carb fad that food makers are convinced is here to stay. There are low-carb potato chips, low-carb cookies, low-carb ice cream and even low-carb pizza. Since I'm Italian, this goes against everything I understand about food. Give me a break! Do the manufacturers of these foods think that people who eat these kinds of products are really looking for a lifestyle change or if they are just looking for a temporary indulgence while they're on temporary diets?

Beverage companies have ventured down the same path. There's low-carb beer, lower-than-low-carb beers and soft drinks that went from diet to zero everything.

Other diets have also become popular. The South Beach diet is one of the more popular ones that add to the diet confusion. What if I don't live in South Beach Miami and live in Minnesota? Is the South Beach diet right for me? Of course, that's a rhetorical question, in case you were wondering.

I am not saying that these diets do not work. They do. The question I have is "How long can the public remain on these diets?" As we now know, not very long. Fad diets can be very strict and regimented, and the moment a person stops adhering to them, the battle of the bulge starts all over again. In the height of fad diets, fast-food chains are still seeing healthy sales. The only ones who really complained about the Atkins diet were certain doughnut manufacturers whose problems ran deeper than the low-carb hype.

To further confuse matters, a high-carb diet fad had the government announcing that it was in the process of reworking the nutrition food pyramid. Subsequently, since the new pyramid was introduced, things have become more confusing.

As we know by now, the hot diet fads have cooled off. Manufacturers who chased them were stuck holding the bag on a lot of unsold products. In some cases, companies who took a long view of these diet fads had their earnings affected negatively and took write-downs on products. Now as I walk through the supermarket, the ubiquitous low-carb products are down to a few items.

As you read this article, you may say anyone can predict the past; all you have to do is read the daily papers and watch the news. In the beginning of this low-carb frenzy, there were a lot of hotels trying to catch the low-carb wave. We were no different. There was pressure for us to do something to follow the trend. We resisted. I thought of myself having high cholesterol and knew that these fad diets were not for everyone. How could a diet high in protein and rich in animal fat be good for someone who has high cholesterol or high blood pressure? The last time I heard, heart disease was the number-one killer. How about all the other people who have diabetes? What do we do for them? What we decided was that people are individuals with special needs.

We learned that people want to be informed as to what their recommended intake should be of certain items and make their own decisions. As you walk into any grocery store and observe how people shop, you will take note that most people pick up products and read the labels. They want to know what they are getting before they pay for it. We also realized that after the low-carb buzz died down, people still wanted to eat right.

That is how we came up with the Hilton Eat Right initiative. Before I tell you what Hilton Eat Right is, let me tell you what it is not. Realizing that we are all different, we did not try to conform to any one person's individual needs.

We put together a group of our top chefs and spent a week at Johnson and Wales University. We worked with the chef instructors and registered dieticians to create healthy foods. We focused on a number of categories such as carbohydrates, calories, fats and proteins. We created menus and recipes to address a reduction for each of these categories, not necessary reductions in all items at the same time for each recipe. We were not trying to conform to the government requirements to achieve the "healthy" claim. In order to do this, we felt that we would be forced to sacrifice flavor and take too much enjoyment out of the food we were trying to prepare. We are, after all, a hotel company, not a hospital. We worked with a company to analyze each Hilton Eat Right recipe to provide nutrition information similar to the labels that are seen on packaged products. Our goal is not to tell people what to eat. It is to inform them about what they are eating.

We also understood that we could not create a menu with 10 items and send it to each hotel to implement. We know that all of our hotels are in different markets and not all hotels can be treated the same. Therefore, we created an online repository of over 100 menu items that can be used for all three meal periods in our casual-dining restaurants. Hotels can go online at the "Flavors of Hilton" site located within our company Web site and create custom Hilton Eat Right menus online. We provide each hotel with custom Hilton Eat Right menu paper, allowing them to print their online creations in-house. Hotels select items that best fit their hotel and market needs. Under each Eat Right menu item are nutrition values listing calories, saturated fats, proteins, carbohydrates and cholesterol. By having this nutritional information, our guests can make their own choices as to what they should order.

Since the beginning of the program, we have had great success. As taste profiles and eating habits change, Hilton's Eat Right has the flexibility to change. We will continuously add updated recipes to our "Flavors of Hilton" site reflecting new and better nutritional information. This format will prevent us from chasing fad diets and allow us to provide our guests with what they really crave - more nutritious menu options without having to sacrifice flavor.

Al Ferrone is a Graduate of the Culinary Institute of America (C.I.A.) with 27 years of experience. Al is the Senior Director, F&B Marketing/Operations Hilton Hotels. He oversees the marketing functions for food & beverage. Prior to Hilton, Al served as Senior Corporate Director of Food & Beverage for Promus Hotel Corporation, Doubletree Hotels and Red Lion Hotels. He has served as an Executive Chef and worked for large four and five-star hotels in New York including the Wardorf-Astoria, The Place, Marriott Eastside/NYC, and the Marriott Marquis/NYC. Mr. Ferrone can be contacted at 901-374-6097 or Al_Ferrone@hilton.com Extended Bio...

HotelExecutive.com retains the copyright to the articles published in the Hotel Business Review. Articles cannot be republished without prior written consent by HotelExecutive.com.