The death of the buffet….

In these days of mounting food prices, mounting fuel prices and mounting poverty; is it still right to offer full buffets three times a day in your coffee shop? In Asia and the Middle East this is very much still the case, however is it not time to reconsider what we offer?

Breakfast buffets are seen as very much of a necessity both to satisfy the demands of volume and the demands of the guests. The only radical change we can look at for breakfast is ‘going local’ as much as possible and ‘going seasonal’ (as Gordon Ramsey mentioned earlier in May). Going local would mean the removal of products such as smoked salmon from Asian breakfast buffets (unless they were smoking their own and if it were locally caught – unlikely!); using local dairy produce, local fruit and vegetables – no more juicy red Californian strawberries on the breakfast buffets in Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok.

Lunch buffets seem to be driven by in house meeting packages, but how many times have you opened the BEO for a meeting group, only to see that their lunch buffet is to be served in a private function room. This gives you the situation of a coffee shop seating 200 pax with a full buffet set up only serving 30 covers for lunch, whilst in one private function room a lunch buffet for 60 people is offered and in other private function room another lunch buffet for 70 people is offered; food wastage and a high food cost are just two of the end results from such a scenario.

Dinner Buffets are a whole different ball game….these are to attract people to your hotel for a feeding frenzy of sorts…so here, all sorts of delicacies are required. Depending on which country you are in there are certain items that are ‘required’ for your dinner buffet to be classed as one of the best – vast quantities with a wide variety of seafood, sushi, sashimi, foie gras, roast beef carving, roast suckling pig, ice cream and chocolate fountains to name but a few.

Unfortunately, very few hotels are known as having great buffets because they offer a wide variety of local produce or local dishes. The latter being mainly because who wants to pay US$40 for a dinner buffet with local fare when you get a bowl of noodles down the road for about US$1.50. The exception to this rule would possibly be the Straits Kitchen at the Grand Hyatt in Singapore.

Some companies have taken their all day dining restaurants to amazing decor and design levels…The Line at Singapore Shangri-La and Spiral at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza in Manila; are two that spring to mind; both with vast buffets that impress the mind and the stomach; but even these culinary playgrounds are not full each and every night.

Dinner Buffets are normally busiest at the weekend…Thursday, Friday or Saturday nights – depending on where you are. So from Monday to Wednesday the buffet is there, completely set up and unless you are very lucky doing a fraction of the covers that you pull through at the weekend. You keep the buffet there for continuity, for awareness, for the walk-ins that we always anticipate.

So, what can we do with buffets? There are quite a few options; some fairly easy, some a little more complicated, and a few that would require other hotels in your area to agree to follow as well, because if you are out on a limb on some of these options…the guests; they will not understand!

A few random thoughts/options:

1. as mentioned earlier – going local; going seasonal
2. hotels to revert back to a few years ago when meeting package lunches were only in the coffee shop; this change came in a few years ago when hotels were trying to be ‘creative’ and offer more choice…I know we are hoteliers, I realise hospitality is our middle name – but unfortunately the accountants are taking over the asylum!
3. dinner buffets only at the weekend (!)
4. change your dinner buffet concept – offer a salad and soup buffet to start at a nice low price…and then ‘additional items’ can be added seafood, meat dishes etc…similar to the ‘marche’ concept. This would take a little planning and organisation…but would help keep costs down, and would also ensure that the guests dining experience includes freshly cooked food and exactly what they wanted with very limited wastage.
5. Portion awareness; I know of hotels in Singapore that will charge extra if guests leave buffet food on their plates; I have also heard of guests elsewhere in Asia that have eaten to extreme from the buffet…and then a quick visit to the bathroom, to, how can I say this politely, – eject, remove, throw up, the excess and then return to continue eating with more ‘room’.

Buffets are tough; everyone offers buffets because everyone else does, all buffets need the standard ‘high ticket’ items, all buffets are available 7 days a week…we all follow the trend and in the end it is often not a viable trend.

I seriously think that the hotel industry needs to rethink the buffet concept…and that goes for all of us.

It’s not all about sitting around and eating….

Working in a hotel it is often hard to experience what the guest experiences and this often means that we miss things that are vital to a guest’s overall experience with us.

Yes, if we are working very late and need to be in early in the morning, we can grab a hotel room for a few hours kip. Often this will be an ‘out of order’ room; and even if we are lucky enough to be given a regular ‘vacant, inspected’ room, staggering in to a room, dumping your clothes on the chair and falling into bed immediately is not really checking the guest’s overall stay experience.

In senior management one of the ways to check the F&B offer is to ensure that you eat in your restaurants on a regular rotating basis and to try a variety of menu and beverage items. This gives you the chance to check standards, service, food/beverage quality, lighting, music etc etc…all part of the guest experience. Believe me, as hoteliers, wandering around and ‘checking’ your restaurant is a whole different ball game to actually sitting there and suffering the music, peering in the darkness to read your menu and having a club sandwich prepared 3 different ways in one week!

Now, to an outsider (like my mother!) this seems like a real ‘perk’ or ‘benefit’. Which I guess to a certain extent it is. But, bear in mind that hoteliers work incredibly long hours… a short day for your average F&B manager is about 10 hours; I am sure many would agree with me when I say that if you leave the hotel after 10 hours there can be a certain feeling of guilt at only doing ‘a half day’. So a nice meal in a nice environment during which you are still working your 15 hour day is a nice ‘perk’. I would also like to state for the record, that these ‘duty meals’ are not a relaxed meal lasting an hour or so with general chit chat, they are normally fairly rushed…20-30 minutes, talk being of the hotel, and more often than not being called away to deal with some issue mid meal!

Which is why it was with a certain amount of amazement that I heard that a market leader in the hotel world has decided to remove the ‘duty meal’ benefit from all of the management in each hotel…including the General Manager level.

I understand that in these times of high fuel prices, high food prices and the resulting cost cutting that this could be seen as a big chunk of savings to a company. However, complete cancellation of this benefit will result in a huge chunk of the hotel not being seen from the guest’s perspective…which cannot be good for the guests.

Everything in moderation……

All Change

Here at Hotel A some changes are happening, personnel changes, fairly dramatic personnel changes actually.

A change of GM can always be a disrupting event, questions run through everyone’s minds; the basic questions of “will they like me?”; “will we get on?”; “will we be able to communicate?”…these are standard and are probably the same in any company when the boss moves on.

For us mortals at Hotel A this change over is a little more challenging.

Our Fearless Leader has heard rumblings from the Mother Ship over the last few months. These rumblings have been telling him that it’s about time to start looking for a new job. Eventually he confronted the Mother Ship, only to be told that yes, the search was on for his replacement (he knew that already given that one of his friends had been summonsed to the Mother Ship for an interview for the Fearless Leader’s position).

The ensuing confusion has not been pretty, events have unfolded a little like this..

1. Fearless Leader announced to his Department Heads that the Mother Ship was going to replace him and he would be leaving at some stage…no dates, no times…no other information

2. Two days later the Fearless Leader goes on an unannounced vacation for a week or so

3. Fearless Leader returns…no further news

4. A week goes by…no further news

5. A brief mention in the morning briefing about booking a couple of rooms for Mother Ship visitors the next week.

6. A quick call from the Fearless Leader’s secretary to ask if we are available for the new GM’s orientation the following week – with a specified date and time.

So this is how we discover when we will have a new Fearless Leader.

Who they are, what their background is, what their Mother Ship instructions are – we shall have to wait and find out!