While dining at a well-known Miami hotel, Royal Caribbean International’s Director of Culinary Operations Josef Jungwirth made a disappointed observation about the food: “If we provided the same level of quality, we wouldn’t have any repeat guests,” he says. “Our customers eat in some of the nicest restaurants and hotels, and their expectations are high. So we try to be equal to or even ahead of those shoreside operations.”

Jungwirth and the rest of Royal Caribbean’s F&B team know what it takes to bring guests back. From Q1 to Q3 of 2009, the company enjoyed a 43 percent repeat passenger rate for U.S. customers—among the highest in the industry— and F&B plays a major role in that figure.

“On cruise ships, dining is critically important, because this is it. Guests can’t walk off the ship and go somewhere else,” says Frank Weber, VP of F&B operations, Royal Caribbean. “We may have rock climbing walls, ice skating rinks, and all kinds of activities on our ships, but if we don’t get the dining experience right, the guest is not coming back.”

Adding to that challenge is the wide age range of Royal Caribbean’s guests, who Weber says are “anywhere from one to 100.” Families, teens, couples, and seniors are all seeking their own version of a resort vacation on the same vessel.

In order to appeal to the entire spectrum, Royal Caribbean divides its restaurant and menu concepts into three categories— traditional, evolutionary, and revolutionary—with a singular focus of satisfying everyone onboard. Weber calls this his “one-third principle,” and it’s the key to maintaining balance between familiar F&B for longtime cruisers and cutting-edge, contemporary F&B for younger and first-time passengers throughout Royal Caribbean’s fleet of 21 ships.

The one-third concept works a bit like a ladder. At the top is traditional F&B, comprising the company’s staple concepts. Next is evolutionary F&B, which are outlets that are regularly streamlined through customer feedback. Finally, there’s revolutionary F&B, Royal Caribbean’s new and untried ideas that are tested on a single ship.

TRADITIONAL F&B
“Cruising has become much more affordable in recent years,” Weber says. “It’s a family vacation now, unlike it used to be, when the joke was that cruising was for ‘newlyweds and nearly deads.’”

That’s not to say elements of what cruising “used to be” have disappeared. This is the area Weber addresses in the “traditional” category, and at its core is the main dining room.

For decades, onboard F&B centered around an enormous main dining room that served every passenger on the ship and had two scheduled seatings per evening. If a guest wanted dinner outside of those times, they were often out of luck. They also didn’t have a choice as to who sat with them at their assigned table for the duration of the cruise.

It’s this rigidity that turns off many younger passengers, but Royal Caribbean keeps it intact for guests seeking formal cruise ship dining because, “There are traditionalists who love it,” Weber says.

In response to current casual trends, Royal Caribbean sets aside a portion of the main dining room each night for My Time Dining, a program that reserves tables for guests who want to eat in private and outside of the scheduled seatings. It’s been a huge hit since it launched fleet-wide in 2008.

“It’s important that we don’t turn our back on traditional dining,” says Ken Taylor, director, restaurant operations, Royal Caribbean. “But a majority of new cruisers are interested in something different, so we really do want to continue with this flexible approach.”

Other concepts in the traditional category are Royal Caribbean-branded outlets that appear on multiple vessels across the fleet. These include the Schooner Bar, Chops Grille steakhouse, and Windjammer Marketplace, which is a three-meal buffet that was recently updated to a “food island” concept, offering items in smaller batches at multiple stations, helping to reduce bottlenecks.

EVOLUTIONARY F&B
The Windjammer buffet is an example of a traditional outlet that straddles the “evolutionary” category, and nearly every successful F&B concept at Royal Caribbean follows a similar path. They start as a single idea, and, if successful, graduate to a place on every ship. Over time, they evolve based on customer feedback and changing dining habits.

“A few years ago, I sailed on a ship and asked guests, ‘Where do you go out for dinner at home?’ All these restaurant chains were mentioned, like Outback Steakhouse, T.G.I. Friday’s, and Applebee’s. Meanwhile, we were still trying to entice our guests with traditional French dishes such as duck a l’orange. The reality is, they’re looking for something more casual,” says Weber.

In response, Royal Caribbean focused more attention on evolving casual concepts. For example, they launched the Royal Caribbean-branded Sorrento’s Pizza on Majesty of the Seas in 2004, and since then, it has been added to five ships in the fleet.

Other outlets in the evolutionary category include the Champagne Bar, which received a stylish upgrade on the new Oasis of the Seas, and Vintages wine bar, which started as a wine-only concept aboard Navigator of the Seas in 2003 and has grown into a wine and tapas menu on Oasis of the Seas and is currently on six Royal Caribbean ships.

“We’re not making tremendous profit in our specialty restaurants, but we’re covering our costs,” says Taylor. “From a business standpoint, it makes perfect sense to have guests dining in other areas, because then we don’t have to produce as much in the main dining room.”

REVOLUTIONARY F&B
The final category in Weber’s one-third paradigm is “revolutionary,” covering concepts that are new to Royal Caribbean and aimed primarily at younger and first-time cruisers looking for a Las Vegas-style experience.

“We need options for those guests, whether it’s a steakhouse, a pizzeria, or maybe just a place for great snacks. They want what they’re used to seeing at an upscale resort or hotel,” Taylor says.

Royal Caribbean’s newest ideas are well timed with the launch of Oasis of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, holding about 6,000 passengers. Taylor says the math is simple: Several thousand people spanning a broad range of ages and interests means even the most niche-driven concepts will still appeal to a few hundred guests at any given time. One example is Club 20 on Oasis of the Seas.

“It has a Miami Beach focus, and it’s extremely cool. But, let’s face it,” Taylor says, “probably only 10 percent of our guests are interested in it. However, that’s still about 500 people.”

Other revolutionary concepts being launched for the first time on Oasis of the Seas include:

• 150 Central Park, a contemporary fine dining restaurant
  
• The Cupcake Cupboard, featuring cupcakes baked in-house and frosted by hand
  
• The Seafood Shack, a casual family-friendly venue in the ship’s Boardwalk neighborhood
  

If these outlets are successful, they could move up Weber’s ladder to potentially become part of the traditional category and be installed on several ships. “We try a new concept for a few weeks on one of the ships so we can get direct customer feedback. Based on that feedback, we say, ‘It’s great; we did it,’ ‘It’s nice, but we need to make some adjustments,’ or, ‘This was the craziest idea ever; forget about it,’” Weber says.

FLOATING HOTELS Royal Caribbean may be a cruise company, but its F&B ideas often come from shoreside hotels. “We develop a product without any of the cruise barriers around us,” says Taylor. “That’s been a main ingredient in our success over the past five years. We’re bringing together our experience from shoreside hotel operations and transferring it to the ships.”

Weber and Jungwirth note that another main ingredient in Royal Caribbean’s success is the quality of the food. They know even the most dynamic F&B concept won’t bring customers back if the caliber of what they’re consuming isn’t high. Both men insist on from-scratch cooking for all menus—including soups, stocks, breads, pastries, and desserts.

“I’ve been in the cruise industry for almost 15 years, and our product is much closer to what’s served in some of the really trendy restaurants now,” says Jungwirth. “We’ve definitely narrowed that gap and tried to fulfill the expectations of our guests.”

Michael Costa is industry relations editor for HOTEL F&B. He worked for several years in the kitchen and in F&B purchasing at a large convention hotel in Chicago, as well as having attended culinary school.