In early 2009, Vincent Brunetti and Jeff Wind—F&B director and executive chef, respectively, of the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa—ate lunch together at a casual Honolulu restaurant.

“The place was packed the entire time we were there, and we thought, ‘How can we transpose a success story like this into our hotel?’” Brunetti says. The two men were intrigued by the menu, a build-your-own-burger and sandwich concept offering more than 70 ingredients. Brunetti and Wind thought a similar idea might help revive their underperforming room service program.

“According to our Maritz guest satisfaction surveys at the time, customers were seeing no value in our in-room dining menu,” says Brunetti. “It wasn’t living up to the numbers we wanted to see, and we needed to put a spark into it.”

TAKING OFF
That spark came in September, when the hotel rolled out its “Create Your Own” burger, sandwich, and salad in-room dining menu inspired by the casual restaurant Brunetti and Wind visited. Since then, room service covers have increased by approximately 18 percent. And from September through December of 2009, the create-your-own sandwich offering was the most popular item for lunch and dinner in the entire hotel, with nearly 900 orders. “That’s amazing. I actually had to ask my assistant to clarify that those numbers were correct,” Brunetti says.

At its core, the menu allows customers to choose from more than 30 ingredients to build their ideal burgers, sandwiches, and salads. The create-your-own items cost between $12 and $14, which is about 20 percent less than what guests were previously paying for room service meals. Brunetti says the hotel makes up for the lower pricing with increased volume of orders.

The attention to variety and price also has resulted in substantially higher Maritz scores, with an average increase of more than 25 percent in food and beverage quality, value, and overall in-room dining experience. “We’ve really jumped the needle in those categories,” Brunetti adds.

BACK-OF-THE-HOUSE INTENSITY
While customers have responded enthusiastically to the lower prices and control over their orders, Chef Wind says it takes “a lot more intensity” in the back of the house to consistently execute an “unpredictable” menu.

“We cannot create recipe cards for something that isn’t defined until it’s ordered,” Wind says. “It’s a lot of training, and we have to teach our staff each component in the dish, what the portion size should be, and what it should typically look like.”

Chef Wind says despite the extra training, no additional cooks are needed to execute the menu, and no extra storage space is required for the approximately 20 new items added to the hotel’s inventory.

“It’s just more variety, and we’re allocating existing space correctly,” says Wind, adding that the food cost is kept low because the choices on the menu are fast-moving favorites that are easy to source. “We’re not going to offer Jarlsberg instead of American cheese, for example. We want to use American cheese first and gauge the response from there.”

But that doesn’t mean the guests are staying traditional when they mix and match those ingredients. “Some of the combinations that people order are rarely seen on a menu,” says Brunetti. “One of the strangest sandwiches I’ve seen was a hamburger patty on wheat bread with just lettuce and a slice of pineapple.”

Brunetti and Wind say they’ll roll out a second version of the menu this summer, perhaps adding a few more toppings, but still maintaining the lower prices.

“There are many hotels where room service prices are exorbitant, and guests just open and then shut the menu,” Brunetti says. “But when they open our menu now, there’s a lot of value there.”

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, as well as having attended culinary school.

Share: