The Corporate Food and Beverage Committee,
through its executive director, has ordered
each hotel in the SunRise Hospitality
chain (11 medium-size, full-service hotels situated
in the Southeast, South, and Southwest)
to submit a plan to completely rethink one
restaurant in each hotel. SunRise Hospitality
specializes in catering to the upscale business
traveler and, increasingly, the high-tech companies
that are now moving to the South from
California, the Seattle region, and the Northeast.
Their average room rates are consistently
in the top 15 percent of all hotels in
their market areas. Historically, though, this
has been a fairly conservative and risk-averse
hotel company.
The corporate office wants to change this
and, in the process, to involve each hotel in
decision making. The executive director of
F&B wants to evaluate plans from each hotel’s
food and beverage director that “think
outside the box.” Among the ideas floating
around the company on the F&B directors’
grapevine are the following:
• Feature menus that emphasize local or regional
cuisine. The idea here is to utilize
fresh ingredients and local meat, produce,
1327.ch06 12/19/05 9:32 AM Page 299
and seafood, and to feature the ethnic and
cultural diversity of each hotel’s local
market area. One goal of this plan is to
make the hotel restaurant appeal to local
clientele in addition to its guests.
• Outsource one restaurant to a wellestablished
regional independent operator.
• Outsource one restaurant to a national
chain.
• Hire a celebrity chef to bring prestige and
favorable publicity to the hotel.
These are only a few of the possibilities.
As food and beverage director, you have
brought this plan to a meeting of your staff
for purposes of general background discussion
and ideas about how to proceed. Included
in this meeting are the executive chef
and chief steward, the manager and assistant
manager of your formal French-service dining
room, the wine steward, and the director of
purchasing.
After presenting the corporate plan, you
ask for ideas and comments. The chef, who is
French, is absolutely devastated and seems to
be treating the corporate directive as a per-
300 Chapter 6 Food and Beverage Division
sonal insult. He walks out in a huff, threatening
to pack up his knives and recipes and go
back to France. The restaurant manager is interested
in the corporate idea but says she has
just spent the last five months hiring and
training about half of her restaurant staff in
tableside preparation and service of the
French menu. She is worried that switching
menus this fast may cause her operation to
suffer, at least in the short term.
The wine steward considers the challenge
somewhat ambiguous because, depending on
what eventually is decided, he will have to
choose a complementary wine list to enhance
the new concept or lose his job to an outsider.
The director of purchasing is intrigued by
the idea of exploring new local markets. However,
he too worries that some of the options
may diminish his responsibilities.
Your job as director of food and beverage
is to help each department head to develop a
plan that will satisfy his or her concerns while
following the dictates of corporate policy.