"I was in the field for 17 years as a food and beverage director, and when I came to the corporate office, I thought, ‘If I was an F&B director at a hotel now, what would I expect corporate to offer that works for me?’”

That’s a question Barry Prescott continously answers in his role as corporate director of beverage at Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. His Diamond Cocktails program was the first of its kind for Hyatt when it rolled out in 2007, and it is still going strong, fueled by positive customer feedback and increased sales each year.

There are 12 total Diamond Cocktails. Larger Hyatts showcase all 12 on lounge menus, while smaller properties feature about half that number. A total of 115 Hyatts in North America participate in the program (excluding the Park Hyatt and Andaz brands), and each hotel is allowed to add its own property-specific drinks to the menu beyond the Diamond Cocktails core.

“It was needed because we really had no structure in beverage,” says Prescott. “Most of our F&B directors wished we had a bank of cocktails with recipes so they wouldn’t have to reinvent their cocktail programs. That’s why we came up with these drinks.”

Customers are responding to the branded choices since the rollout, resulting in:

• 30 percent of all cocktails sold at Hyatt in 2007 were from the Diamond menu
  
• 45 percent of cocktails sold were from the Diamond menu in 2008
  
• 50 percent of cocktails sold were from the Diamond menu in 2009
  
• Nearly 60 percent of cocktails sold were from the Diamond menu through Q1 of 2010
  

“We’re seeing sales increase due to our guests becoming familiar with the same drinks from hotel to hotel,” says Paul Daly, VP of F&B, North America Operations, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. “The goal of any signature program is to have consistency across the brand while allowing individual hotels to retain creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit.”

PLAYING FAVORITES
To develop the original 12 Diamond Cocktails in 2007, Daly and Prescott cross-referenced sales abstracts from each property and compiled the top-selling drinks across the brand. From there, they polished and tweaked those best-sellers with the help of consulting mixologist Nicholas Arenas.

“They wanted to take a classic cocktail and add some phenomenal twist to it to take the drink to the next level,” Arenas says. “For example, the Gin and Tonic seems pretty simple, but we decided to incorporate lime as more than a garnish. We muddle it to bring out the essential oils, and that truly heightens the drink.”

This approach struck a chord with guests who were just becoming familiar with handcrafted cocktails in 2007. Prescott says another advantage Arenas brought to the development stage was his background as an independent consultant, not being affiliated with any liquor company or distributor. “We had true carte blanche to come up with the best possible cocktails, and that was the only goal,” says Arenas.

PROPERTY-LEVEL EVOLUTION
Once the recipes were developed, Prescott initially used training videos to educate Hyatt’s bartenders about Diamond Cocktails, but, he says, “the problem with videos is they don’t really work, and they’ve become overused. People in this business are very visual, and they need interaction, so we took the time to get in front of them and show them how to make the drinks. Our compliance went from about 20 percent to 90 percent.”

Hyatt adjusts the core 12 drinks each year, adding and subtracting cocktails based on trends and, most recently, suggestions from individual properties. “We went from what was originally a very corporate-facing program to more of a field-based program. Many of the ideas now are coming from our F&B directors or bartenders and not so much from statistical data anymore,” says Daly.

“It’s more inclusionary now,” Prescott says. “It grew from having a few core cocktails to everyone—staff and customers— buying into it, and now we have the program in every hotel. I think it’s turned out well.”

Michael Costa’s culinary school training and work as a journalist—in addition to several years of hotel F&B experience—enhance his position as Industry Relations Editor for HOTEL F&B.