Don't Let Hotels Miss Out on Casual Cuisine

How many times have you walked into a hotel restaurant only to find over priced, less than satisfying food? Generally, hotel restaurants exist to a) provide food to captive hotel guests or b)add to a hotel's luxury offerings to make guests more likely to come (back) and stay. Their presence has never been to contribute significantly to the bottom line, and most struggle to break even at all. So, if hotel restaurants aren't making money, are there other ways that hotels could leverage food services to make their guests happier, support and add to their own food offerings, and reinforce unique aspects of their individual brands? Casual Cuisine offers the Hotel industry a unique opportunity to achieve a variety of these goals with little to no cost or risk.

What follows are the three categories where Casual Cuisine can add to Hotel offerings (and support their bottom line):

1. The Pop-up:
The most tempting place for a hotel to dip its toe into the Casual Cuisine waters would probably be the pop-up restaurant movement best demonstrated by Ludo Bites down in LA. Chefs taking over restaurants for short stints is not an unusual thing. But the combination of the economic downturn (read: good chefs without gigs), the rise of the celebrity chef, and perpetual foodie search for the next "undiscovered treasure" should be manna from the gods to hotels with dark rooms and banquet facilities looking to generate some buzz, or provide a unique offering to guests. It should also not go unnoticed that professionally trained chefs are comfortable in formal kitchens and with (typically more formal) hotel service styles. Why not open a second restaurant once a month in dark banquet space featuring a guest chef serving some highly imaginative cuisine? Whats there to lose? You have to keep the kitchen open anyhow...

2. The Added Attraction:
All Hotels should take note of of a very successful movie night that the Good Hotel (a JDV property in San Francisco) did in conjunction with the bicycle coalition. Set aside the Green and Local appeal of this event for a moment, and focus mainly on the totally unique experience that Good Hotel was able to offer its guests:

Imagine seeing that on your first trip to San Francisco! Even better, imagine the battle hardened road warrior seeing that on his or her 50th time to San Francisco. These vendors prepared the food themselves, arrived on their own dime, and were happy for an opportunity to showcase their food. There's no reason why a hotel couldn't capitalize on this low cost event idea again with something focused on local food and local community for their guests. (Hint: It wouldn't even have to be in the hotel, how about near the hotel or in a parking lot...)

3. The "Oh My! What's is this?"
Everyone loves dim sum. The carts come around and you take something that looks good.

If something comes around that you don't like, you leave it. No problem. Something else will come along.

Tapas is the same way; small plates that keep you around to purchase the (high margin) drinks. Why couldn't a hotel allow certain mobile food vendors to come in and sell things once a week? To be sure, this isn't workable for all Hotels. But what about the ones with limited food offerings (especially late at night)? This is a home run for happy hours or theme nights. Keep the variety. Keep the soul of the food. Make it easy to manage and maintain quality. You'd have foodies searching for you from far and wide. And, if things don't work out? No problem. Easy to end.

There's something special happening with Street Food at the moment. Hotels would do well to take note and run with it. It'd serve the properties just as well as it would serve food vendors.

Street Food: Building a Brand Using Twitter Direct Messaging

Much has been said about the way that mobile street food vendors are using Twitter to publicize their locations, build community and encourage word of mouth buzz for their products. To be true, the food cart craze is one part foodie expression on the cheap and one part grown-up scavenger hunt that is benefiting from a broad realization that the same tools and techniques that keep your food safe, clean and delicious in a restaurant can allow you to have a fantastic food experience on the outside. But here's something really unique about what street food vendors are doing with social media: They're growing their customer bases by purposely limiting their audience -- not necessarily a marketing plan most industries rely on.

For the uninitiated, tracking down your favorite vendor is more than simply driving to the same scheduled spot every day. Because many of these fine products are not actually sold legally, many Street Food vendors have been reluctant to provide hard addresses to their followers (who might be police). The result is that simply following a vendor isn't always enough. Next you have to (actually) pay attention to their tweets so you a) know when they are going to be serving and, b)can direct message them to find out their location. Third, finally, you are "in the know" and can commence the physical part of actually tracking down (and eating) some food. In case you missed it, that's lots of opportunities for customers to get frustrated and give up; but its also an excellent filter for ensuring that, if you go out (as a vendor), you are going to actually see a large enough number of those people (who've jumped those hoops) to make the outing worthwhile.

On top of that, every time that a vendor forces someone to DM them, they also potentially pick up a new follower (you can't DM if you're not a follower), initiate direct customer contact (because the vendor has to start following you back) and communicate with you in order to tell you their location.

There's few better ways to truly make your customer feel like an insider who is "in the know" about something special. As an added virtuous circle bonus: The next time that the vendor tweets about a location they'll have an established customer getting a direct line about their plans, which makes it easier for the vendor to know their customer, which allows for easier planning for their customers, which makes it more likely the vendor will have another positive transaction as a result. By priming their audience through making them feel special and part of an exclusive group, as well as establishing an effective form of continued communication (converting them to an interactive follower) these vendors have demonstrated a counter intuitive dance that, by limiting your audience, you can simultaneously reinforce brand recognition, loyalty, and trust. Which, as it turns out, isn't counter intuitive at all; its just good business.