hotel f&b bistro c article

Plan A: Bistro CMorphing outlet into B&C success is Clarion’s call, page 36

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Royal Caribbean’s global wine menus, pg. 32

36 Hotel f&B | January february 2013

id-Scale

orphenu M

Clarion’s Bistro C branches core outlet menu to B&C without adding labor or equipment. By Denny Lewis

Cuisine &Menus

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When Director of F&B for Choice Hotels Tom Prykanowski was tasked with creating an F&B identity for the Clarion Hotels brand, not only did he face the challenge of starting a culinary program from scratch, but he also had to find a suitable solution to the mid-scale hotel F&B dilemma.

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Historically, mid-scale F&B had mostly meant only partially succeed-ing in meeting guests’ expectations while constantly losing money by stocking, staffing, and stretching beyond a property’s revenue resources.

In creating Clarion’s Bistro C concept, Pry-kanowski discovered a balanced and streamlined answer to satisfy customers’ needs and to produce good food efficiently, economically, and with mini-mal labor, initiating a program that is scalable and flexible enough to become a banquet and catering profit center for any franchise.

“It is a struggle to make money on mid-scale F&B,” says Prykanowski. “When it comes down to it, most people just want to punt.” In fact, that had been the game plan until Prykanowski began redefin-ing Clarion’s F&B status. The typical Clarion might have had a few snack items in a sundry shop and would outsource catering for meetings and groups. At best, franchises would ask caterers for 10% price shar-ing, and often they would forego charges altogether. To make matters worse, costs for Clarion’s complimentary breakfast could mean that F&B for any property would be perpetually in the red.

GaTHer ‘rounDDan Sweiger, head of domestic brand management for Clarion and Quality Inn, who had been managing the overall brand repositioning for Clarion, knew F&B would be the critical element to reframe Clarion’s identity. Along with Prykanowski, Sweiger set his sights on the “gatherings market,” where he thought Clarion could optimize its market share.

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38 Hotel f&B | January february 2013

“Whenever the reason for the trip is to ‘gather’—meetings, family get-to-gethers, parties—that accounts for 70 to 90 million mid-scale rooms a year,” says Sweiger. “The rest of the hospital-ity world is running away from mid-scale F&B, but we see an opportunity and a sweet spot emerging.”

That sweet spot is the bullseye around which the Bistro C concept is constructed: focused service. Feed-back from guests and research data had shown that while the limited-service offerings they had previously provided were less than satisfying to guests’ expectations of a mid-scale brand, full-service was more than what potential guests actually desired in most cases.

In addition, guests would rather come out of their rooms to get their meals and perhaps enjoy them in a more public setting than have them delivered by room service. So, instead of an onsite restaurant that tries to produce something for everyone, guests would prefer a well-thought-out, less-expansive menu of good-quality, fresh, well-prepared foods and a comfortable place to

gather, relax, and eat.That realization of true guest

expectations opened the door to great possibilities for Clarion’s transfor-mation. The idea was to create an integrated lobby outlet that added energy, conveyed a sense of place, and could supply food and drink that landed somewhere in the fast-casual target area between Starbucks and Panera. Prykanowski worked with designers to carve out usable space

in Clarion lobbies—thriftily retain-ing as much as possible of what was already there—and to assemble versatile small-footprint kitchens. F&B managers and chef/consultants engineered recipes for a flexible menu that would cross-utilize ingredients, minimize waste and preparation time, and appeal to a wide range of tastes. Commercial kitchen design consul-tants customized cooking equipment to ensure foolproof, quality results

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To optimize the ability to sell B&C to corporate meeting planners, Clarion has cre-ated a customizable online ordering tool. Dan Sweiger, head of domestic brand management for Clarion and Quality Inn, calls it a “behind the scenes” marketing resource, an online portal template to which franchises can input f&B offerings and prices to generate an online menu with high quality graphics and reliable usability that can be presented to potential guests to drive sales.

The interactive menu planner allows coordinators to choose f&B (and even audio-visual) options and see what prices will be. Clarion has invisibly consolidated options within the tool to simplify the task for meeting planners. That is, each Clarion has licensed caterers to whom they can outsource items or meals that are beyond the property’s f&B capabilities. Many of those items that are commonly requested are listed on the property’s catering menu and can seamlessly be ordered from Clarion without need for the planner to make separate arrangements. —DL

continued from page 37

InteractIng WIth Planners



for non-culinary operators and to cut cooking times down to astoundingly low minimums.

C’ing the LightAfter six months of planning, the prototype Bistro C was rolled out in April 2012 at the Clarion Inn Water-ford Convention Center in Elmhurst, Illinois, near Chicago’s O’Hare Air-port. With over 20,000 square feet of meeting space and 104 rooms at his property, franchise owner Pritesh Gandhi was hungry for a way to claim F&B revenues.

“We saw revenue walking out the door every day,” says Gandhi, “plus, we were losing as much as $6,500 per month by giving away breakfast.” Like many other Clarion locations, the Elmhurst property was outsourc-ing all catering for meetings or func-tions. Gandhi was happy to make his property the beta-testing site.

What Gandhi found was that his new F&B outlet can capably operate with one FOH employee at a service counter and one BOH employee cooking in the 15- by 25-foot kitchen, with a weekly schedule of seven F&B employees. Breakfast sandwiches and burritos can easily be cooked to meet morning demand. The grab ‘n’ go box is filled with snacks, drinks, and baked goods from local vendors—muffins, chips, cut fruit, water, sodas—all popular items recom-mended by local convenience store retailers from their knowledge and sales experience. Service is continued into mid-morning hours but usually halted for lunch; midday hours are easily arranged when necessary. For the evening daypart, service features a “greatest hits” menu of salads, burgers, quesadillas, and pizza, as

well as a fully stocked bar.Prykanowski, Sweiger, and Gandhi

all credit technological advances in cooking for a large part of the con-cept’s viability and versatility. While food costs often edge up to as much

as 35% because of some semi-prepped ingredients, limited labor costs help to right the equation. The use of in-duction ranges and other push-button appliances allow one staff member to

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pump out food easily and quickly. A two-minute cook time for flatbread pizza is standard. Combination cooking processes turn out perfectly cooked burgers in the time it used to take to microwave those same burgers to the familiar unsatisfac-tory results.

Sweiger says, “You can cook one chicken breast or a whole tray of them in nearly the same amount of time.” Those kinds of produc-tion possibilities are what has given

Clarion properties the ability to expand the Bistro C concept beyond its small footprint and create a whole new revenue flow through catering.

Catering to DemanDGandhi’s property jumped right into the catering business. He found that with additional preparation time and a few staff hours his employees could provide service to numbers well beyond the maximum that he had anticipated. “I expected to be


Choice Hotels maintains a full, tech-forward array of training resources that are available to owners, managers, and employees at all times. All Choice franchi-sees have around-the-clock access to online tools for costing ingredients, menu creation, and labor planning and to the internal online training platform, Choice University, which for F&B managers includes courses on financials, catering, or topics such as “Breakfast.” On the Choice University site, FOH staff members can find tips on selling, serving, and standard setup, while BOH employees can study recipes, presentation, and food safety.

The Bistro C program is so integral to the success of Clarion’s repositioning, says Director of F&B for Choice Hotels Tom Prykanowski, that all F&B employees were trained “face-to-face” in addition to the virtual training sessions. Pry-kanowski sends in a startup team for hands-on training that creates a manual of standard procedures and visual instructions to simplify operations, especially for non-culinary staffers who might be called upon to step in at any time. The start-up team returns soon after opening to audit operations and make sure the property has everything required and is functioning satisfactorily. —DL


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able to serve maybe 60 to 100 [people] at a time, but we’ve been pushing the pedal up to 300 for catered meetings,” he says, “and all it takes is a couple prep hours the night before and 1 ½ to

2 hours to cook immediately before-hand.” Gandhi allows only in-house catering now for groups up to about 250, depending on food choices. For the Elmhurst property, that has trans-lated to new revenue of $8,000 to

$10,000 per month from catering.Obviously, staffing for serving

large groups is very different than for daily operations of Bistro C alone. Prykanowski has countered staffing concerns by always scheduling a core of employees for lower, “everyday” volume, then adding in trained staff from other hotel departments when necessary.

“We trained all employees at Elmhurst—including maintenance and housekeeping—to be able to operate Bistro C,” says Prykanowski. “We want them to be able to wear many hats and jump behind the counter to help out if we need them during a 20- or 30-minute rush.” Those extra trained staff can become the auxiliary service and prep staff needed to “flex up” for banquets and catering.

The flex in the Bistro C lobby layout is critical, too, for the trans-formation of Clarion common areas into a functional gathering place around the bistro. The designers have planned a loose, multi-purpose configuration of lounge, dining, and work areas that welcome guests in and can flow together or feel sepa-rate as guests wish. When possible, the counter server is encouraged to come out and serve guests in the various settings. “I just saw a group who came down from their rooms to share appetizers and bottles of wine and stayed in the lounge area most of the night,” says Gandhi. With an appealing gathering setting, even wedding parties have begun to plan informal functions around Bistro C.

Hard Money and IntangIblesPrykanowski and Sweiger predict that most Bistro C conversions will

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43 January February 2013 | Hotel F&B

cost $100,000 or more, but they also expect franchisees to break even within two to three years. Gandhi invested about $250,000 on his ren-ovation, with $40,000 to $50,000 of that spent creating a kitchen. Despite that pricetag, he is confi-dent he will beat the prediction for ROI. Add in the rest of Bistro C’s revenues to the catering amounts cited earlier and the numbers become $20,000 to $30,000 of additional revenue each month. Also, take into consideration that the $6,500 in monthly complimen-tary breakfast expenses has been eliminated from the ledger.

Gandhi sees himself starting to turn a profit in around 18 months. “And that’s in hard money,” he says. “That doesn’t take into account the intangibles and the fact that my sales people now have a new profit center to sell to…Availability of F&B is an important consideration for meeting planners, and now we have something—something very good—to offer them.” In addition, Gandhi recently had his property appraised. “Just from the renovations we’ve done for Bistro C, I’ve seen my prop-erty’s value go up 35%.”

Prykanowski and Sweiger have one more Bistro C set to open this February in Del Mar, California, a few more in planning, and “a dozen or so” owners interested to be next in line. Prykanowski sees Bistro C as a solution that will work for any of the 192 Clarions and hopes to convert 15 to 20 in the next few years. He and Sweiger agree that they don’t want to make them cookie-cutter outlets, but they must “resist the urge to make it complicated.”

“We’re not going to beat outside restaurants; we know that. That’s not our goal,” says Prykanowski. “But we know who we want to be, we know our market, and we know our guests, and we’re just going to

concentrate on giving them what they want.”

Denny Lewis is a Hotel F&B veteran based in

Arlington, Massachusetts

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