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This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.
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Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast.
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Thank you everyone out there for joining us.
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As I say, each and every time we know that you guys got lots of choices.
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So thank you guys for spending time with us today.
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We are joined by a very special guest.
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He's coming to us from overseas.
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And, scott and I have known each other for quite some time on the internet and have, have bantered some conversations back and forth.
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But scott, for those that aren't familiar with who you are, why don't you introduce yourself and then we can talk about what you get to do for a living.
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Yeah, thanks, Jeremy.
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And it's really good to be here.
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I've listened to the show for a while now, as we've said, and it's really great to finally be on here chatting with you face to face as well.
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So thanks for having me.
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Yeah.
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Hi, everyone.
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My name's Scott.
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I am the founder of Auden Hospitality.
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We are an advisory business based out of the UK, but very much global in the projects that we undertake.
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And we work with hoteliers To go in and look at where the opportunities are for their F and B, proposition.
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So whether that's a new builds and we look at how we define the F and B strategy or whether that's going into existing operations and looking at where maybe the performance isn't quite hitting the mark that they expect.
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And we bring our experience of working across various different countries and continents to help bring those opportunities, to grow their performance as well.
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also got an F and B inside a newsletter, which sits on sub stack.
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And every week I give, Tips and tricks to F& B directors, F& B leaders on how they can think differently about some of those little bits that we bring to, we bring to our projects every single day to just try and help add value as much as possible.
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I love it.
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And, and as we talked about, I appreciate the, the accolades about being a listener.
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I'm a fan of yours and I'm connected and I get to see and watch all of what you get to do as well as your many travels.
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And it's always fun to, to watch when you post, when you're on the road.
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Scott, talk to me a little bit about, where really F and B within hotels has been, if we think back 30 years or 40 years ago, it was not an add on.
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It truly was part of the experience from a hotel perspective.
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And then it feels like we went through a period where it was a necessity, not necessarily a differentiator.
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And now they're struggling to figure out their way.
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But if you could take us back just a little bit, you've been in the space for quite some time.
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Talk to me about how hotel.
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hotel owners, hotel operators thought about F and B and how it was truly part of the experience that you were there, especially the higher you get into, four and five star type properties.
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Yeah.
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I was very lucky.
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I worked in hotels for 15 years and I always worked in luxury environments.
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So country house hotels, city center hotels, and worked for some amazing groups, the Dorchester collection, intercontinental to name a few.
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And I think you're absolutely right.
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when you say that.
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A few years ago, not even maybe 20, 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, hotels were the place where the restaurants and the bars were the ones who set trends.
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and it was really the place that people aspired to, to be, that could attract the best chefs that could attract the best bar people that could attract the best talent on the market.
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And, it was, they were the ones who used to bring innovation.
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to the F and B space.
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I think over time what's happened, I think, we've become an entrepreneurial society.
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So I think when you're looking at chefs and you're looking at some of these bar guys, the can't get the step into the right Location or the right place with hotels.
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Maybe the system doesn't work quite right in terms of giving them opportunities.
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funding cash property has become a lot more available and therefore they have that entrepreneurial spirit to go out and do their own thing.
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And that's why I think we've seen a surge of really.
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Good independent restaurants.
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I'm based in London.
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We have some of the best restaurants in the world, New York, LA, some of these places, Miami has got some amazing restaurants now as well.
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So I think.
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What happens then is over time, hotels have become a little stale.
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They've stuck in the ways they haven't evolved with time.
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And because of that, now they're not seen as being cool.
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So unless you're going into one of the top five star luxury hotels, you're in a B location.
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and you've got the stigma around the hotel side of things and walking through lobbies and things like that.
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So actually it's much more cooler to have a, a restaurant sitting on a street.
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Or a sidewalk that's in the middle of, say, Soho in London or, Hell's Kitchen in New York or, Brickle in Miami, those type of places.
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because that's where people love to go and eat now and go in bars and visit, 30, 40 seat outlets that sit there.
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And, when people ask me to describe what I mean by that, I always use one example of, of the all day dining lounge.
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And I did a post on this recently, the all day dining lounge hasn't changed in the 25 years.
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I've been in the business now, and I first started out in hotels in, I think it was 1998 as a silver service waiter, the all day dining lounge, I think it was called the Palm Court lounge, was still there serving teas.
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It was in an environment that might have a grand piano in there.
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playing classical music and it was all very well to do.
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and that hasn't evolved.
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You can still go into hotels now and it's still very much the same.
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If you're on the high street.
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And you want to go get a coffee, you want to work remote, you want to go and meet people and what have you.
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People now would rather go to speciality coffee shops or brunch places than they would to go to hotels.
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Why?
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Because they're going to these places, there's a great vibe, they get served quickly, there's no pomp and circumstance, there's plugs in every socket, on every table, so if you're going in there to work, you know that you can get a seat.
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And you'll go into a hotel and you won't be able to get a plug in a socket because it's always those ramping house plugs for the lights, which drive people crazy.
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the service is all a bit too slow because it's all a bit kind of hotel y and a bit fine.
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And, generally the product isn't up to the standard of what you would have in a specialty coffee shop.
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I think that's a classic example of where hospitality and hotels just hasn't particularly evolved with the times, and therefore now I think they're left behind trying to play catch up and it's a lot more difficult for them to do that because they can't attract the best talent because they're not the cool kids on the block anymore.
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Maybe they don't have the right innovation.
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Maybe it's too much of a risk to start changing and renovation projects and things.
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yeah, lots of factors that go into it, but I just think over time.
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They stood still and maybe rested on the laurels a little bit too much and haven't evolved.
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And I think if you go to some of the best hotels now, they have done that and they have evolved and they have started to look at things very differently to, to do that.
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and I think Scott going back, 10 or 15 years ago, it was a destination and it was a destination to go to, and again, I'm a fan of chefs and, I was just listening to an interview with Gordon Ramsey and when he was coming up, it was like, I need to get into some of the best hotels.
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And ultimately it turned the opposite of, you know what?
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I can't get my way to where I want to get to in these hotels because they're not willing to push the envelope.
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The other thing I would ask that, that we talk a little bit about is the foodie culture, the Instagram culture, the idea that you've got to have something with an experience.
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You and I were having a chat via LinkedIn the other day about, some of the conversations you've been having, there's this idea that the guests want to share their experience, but it's got to be something special.
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And if it's the standard, scrambled eggs and two pieces of bacon for breakfast that does nothing for the instagram culture that does nothing for creating anything that's a wow for those guests.
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Talk to me a little bit about how hotels had thought about it in the past.
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It was a necessity versus where the world has gotten and why we think that, why we think they're so far behind and I think they, they need to spend some time and energy and, look to brands like yours to help them out with that.
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Yeah, for sure.
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I remember my, my, first full time role, it was at the Marriott Grosvenor square, which was a Marriott.
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In 2001, I think it was, and, the restaurant was all built around tableside service.
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So it was Gary Don's service.
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It was your crepe Suzette's.
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It was your fillet of fish at the table.
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It was Caesar salads made at the table.
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Baked Alaska's torched at the table.
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That was the theater.
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that was the user moments.
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We just couldn't record it back then because we didn't have.
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Technology to be able to do it.
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But why did you go to those restaurants?
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Because it was special occasion.
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You're left with amazing memories.
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if you went there, you knew you could show off to a business partner or a partner or some, or something like that.
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So it was always there.
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It was just never, we were just never able to record it like we can today.
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I think when we go into any project and it's a timely conversation, this because I had this conversation with a director of sales and marketing yesterday in a five star hotel that we're working with, and we were talking about how we can diversify the content and make it more authentic, because right now it's all a bit Paused it's very much forced.
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There's always an empty restaurant because, GDPR here in the UK, they're scared to take pictures of people and things like that.
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And I was talking about, I listened to a podcast with Gary V the other day and he was like, 2024 is the year of the lives.
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what can you do in your business to go live?
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And I was having the conversation with them to say, why don't we just set up a tripod with a phone?
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And we just go live on TikTok or Instagram, wherever the customer is.
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And we just let it run for an hour and they just see busy restaurant, people going past, it doesn't have to focus on anyone.
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Their immediate response back to that.
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And I'm coming at this from a hotel point of view is they start thinking about the bigger brand.
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They start thinking about the hotel brand and Stop thinking about the restaurant and how restaurant and people who go to restaurants think very differently.
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And that's why I always advocate that your restaurants and bars should be run separately to the hotel.
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They should have their own identity.
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They should have their own story.
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They should have their own tone of voice, their own market and their own marketing team.
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Because you can't treat the two the same.
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So to go live in a restaurant, people love to see it.
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People love to see restaurants working.
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it's what you do.
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And it's, if that's going to get people clicking on and getting into their memories, then it's something you should definitely look at strategically.
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And I think, from that, then we always go into menu development and concept development, and we always talk about user generated content.
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And back to that foodie thing, we always look at menus and go, okay, what are the items on this menu that customers are going to take pictures off because it's so important.
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I think we're in a stage now where people want all this authenticity.
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People want to see what's genuine.
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People want to see real life.
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So if you have a timeline full of pictures that you've done with your photographer, that's very official looking, it's not going to turn a customer on anymore.
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They're more likely to go to the tag section and look at what customers are, or guests are tagging in your restaurant and make decisions based on that.
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So I think you have to really look at that user generated content, what dishes are going to stand out.
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And when they do, we always, make a dish.
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and we did this in a tasting the other day, we had a tiramisu, and we made the dish and we put it at the table.
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And we asked 10 different people to come and take a picture of it.
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And we made sure that every single one of them could take a picture that we would be happy to put on social media.
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And if it, if they can, we go back and redevelop it so that we can get the shot because that is now your image that's going out.
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So you have to play the plating to the worst photographer that can come into the restaurant so that your food is always looking good.
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So it's not about Being gimmicky or anything like that.
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It's just about creating those moments.
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we opened a bakery in 2021.
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we got to 25, 000 followers from zero on Instagram, baked on, based on a lemon meringue croissant.
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And it was a croissant with lemon curd in the middle.
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It had torch meringue on top and we just made sure it went everywhere.
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We made sure it just got reposted.
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We were making sure it was going viral and it just snowballed and the brand literally took off based on this one product.
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It's really important that user generated content.
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And I think we always did it.
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We just couldn't record it like we can today.
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and I'll bring you back to a story.
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Last summer I went to the Ritz Carlton business dinner and in Orlando or just outside of Orlando.
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And I still am talking about the old fashioned that got delivered in an old lantern, with the smoke coming out of the lantern when they served at table side, somebody got a Tomahawk ribeye and they brought the cart out and and to me at the Ritz Carlton and yes, the meal was expensive.
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the rooms were, We actually weren't even staying at the rooms.
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We were at a different event across town, but we drove 30 minutes and torrential downpour to go have this experience based on what you're talking about.
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And to me that the experience exceeded my expectations.
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And it was, I looked at the partner that was actually buying my meal that had invited me to dinner and he goes, yeah, that was a very expensive meal, but it was well worth it because we've continued to talk about it where again, Scott, I know that this is part of your business, but I want our restaurants.
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And our hotels to think about this, because this is part of what makes up your brand.
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And when it is just an afterthought, it's no different than making sure that the rooms are cleaned, that the front desk is available when you need them.
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All of these are part of the experience.
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And any one of those things can ultimately.
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hinder the guest experience.
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If I've just got crappy food or I've got crappy service inside of the restaurant, it ultimately brings that brand image down.
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And so how should restaurants and hotels be thinking about that experience?
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in that regard, I know you've talked about it quite a bit, creating that instagrammable moment.
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But what is the downside of not even not only not creating an instagrammable moment, but having poor service, having poor experience and not delivering what the guests might want.
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it's everything, isn't it?
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I always go back to saying, I think what's happened in, in, in recent times is that we've taken people away from the floor and we started putting them into offices and we've bogged them down with admin and things like that.
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And.
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We've got to take ourselves back to going, why is a hotel?
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Why is a restaurant?
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It's to create memorable experiences for people, and that could be a holiday in that has a businessman going there, and it just makes their business trip away from home as easy as possible, or it could be the Beverly Hills Hotel or the, the Ritz Carlton where someone's going for a special occasion and they want to remember it forever and ever because it was their anniversary.
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So fundamentally you.
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you have to create memorable experiences and you have to create long lasting memories for people.
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And I think that's sometimes where we get too bogged down in everything else going on that, that we forget about that.
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So when we've already talked about at the start of the show, about how there's a stigma around hotels because they've lost the way and in the main and they're not delivering.
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If you're operating a hotel restaurant, you're already behind the guy down the street in terms of attracting people.
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So you have to go out of your way to create great food items, great drinks that people will take pictures of, people will remember.
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But you've also got to deliver that personalized experience as well.
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And that's becoming much more prominent in projects that we're working on is going, okay, how do we acquire the guest once, but retain them long term because of what we do while they're in the restaurant, but also while they're out of the restaurant.
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So what do we do before they come?
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That makes them really excited to visit.
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And then when they leave, what can we do to make sure that they come back again and again, and they don't forget about us?
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And that's where we've started really automating the process of pre and post arrival, for the guest to really start talking to them and building up that relationship and focusing on retention, because it's become a big part.
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So we've played a big part of that in all of our outlets.
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And then my other advice to people is never create a hotel restaurant for hotel guests.
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Ever
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yes.
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Unless you're at Fairfield Inn and you just want to put, pancake batter or, something really poor, but not as a restaurant hotel, restaurant inside of the hotel.
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I would 100 percent agree with you.
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Sorry, I'll let you
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Yeah.
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unless you're one of those roadside places where you're just getting free breakfast for people and that's the only meal you serve, you absolutely need to operate it like a restaurant, not like a hotel that just happens to have food.
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Yeah.
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100%.
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if you're sat in the Maldives, you're not going to leave your hotel.
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I get that.
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But in most places in the world, there is a local community outside.
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So create the restaurant for the local community.
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What is going to be the Their new habit, their new hub, the place that they want to go.
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And how do you talk to those people and treat it as a standalone restaurant, because I'll a hundred percent guarantee when you do that, your hotel guests will want to stay there.
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You won't be asking them to stay in your restaurant.
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It's a very different mindset.
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And I always say to people, if you start focusing on the hotel guests too much, you start looking at the amenity side of things and, the one, everything on the menu, because you have different cultures coming in.
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So how do we appease them?
00:16:41.572 --> 00:16:47.212
When you look at the local community, you go, this is the concept that the local community want, and we're very sure about it.
00:16:47.263 --> 00:16:51.293
And maybe a hotel guest might not like it, but that doesn't matter because the hotel.
00:16:51.307 --> 00:16:55.327
The restaurant's full, so we don't need every hotel guest to like it anymore.
00:16:55.427 --> 00:16:58.357
and it just honestly makes you think really differently about it.
00:16:58.368 --> 00:17:02.837
So my, my underlying thing on, on it would be focus on the local community.
00:17:03.158 --> 00:17:04.698
That will help you build value.
00:17:04.698 --> 00:17:08.958
It will help you continually innovate because you have to keep them coming back again and again.
00:17:09.448 --> 00:17:12.107
And then really look at how you can personalize experience.
00:17:12.107 --> 00:17:18.298
And we'll probably talk about tech and how we do that in a bit, but it really does make a big difference to people.
00:17:18.298 --> 00:17:19.157
Now, when you.
00:17:19.472 --> 00:17:24.903
When they feel like you're talking to them and them alone and not just a blanket email shot that's coming out.
00:17:26.272 --> 00:17:30.232
Yeah, it's got one last piece on kind of hotel restaurants.
00:17:30.532 --> 00:17:35.492
A lot of people have found success by bringing in a local brand to run their restaurant.
00:17:35.863 --> 00:17:37.633
Talk to me a little bit about your philosophy on that.
00:17:37.932 --> 00:17:42.363
And again, we've got a client, blue ribbon out of new york blue ribbon restaurants out of new york.
00:17:42.373 --> 00:17:45.863
They've got a brand that's inside of a hotel in Miami and they do really well.
00:17:45.863 --> 00:17:46.782
It's a sushi restaurant.
00:17:46.813 --> 00:17:50.242
It's one of the three restaurants that's inside of this, nice five star hotel in Miami.
00:17:50.587 --> 00:17:53.768
And they do a fantastic job because they do sushi really well.
00:17:54.048 --> 00:17:59.238
They're known for their sushi and they become the brand that becomes, the way that they go about it.
00:17:59.248 --> 00:18:08.117
What's your philosophy on, on building partnerships with a local brand that might be able to enhance that guest experience and you don't have to do all of the investment.
00:18:08.317 --> 00:18:14.508
You may lose a little bit of margin here and there, but you know that the guests are going to get something special when they're there eating at your establishment.
00:18:14.893 --> 00:18:18.133
Yeah, there's lots of ways to cut up this dice, to be honest.
00:18:18.133 --> 00:18:25.752
And I always sit with, our clients and our projects first and really start talking to them about what they would like from the space.
00:18:26.042 --> 00:18:32.623
And it's about being properly strategic about your hotel and what you want to deliver as a total experience.
00:18:32.883 --> 00:18:35.762
And then how you curate that properly within that.
00:18:36.778 --> 00:18:41.577
So we've just talked about the local community and what is the restaurant that they are missing?
00:18:41.577 --> 00:18:43.067
What's the restaurant they want to visit?
00:18:43.288 --> 00:18:43.837
It's the same.
00:18:43.837 --> 00:18:50.718
If you're looking at an outsourced partner or bringing in a license deal or something like that, and then once you do that.
00:18:51.057 --> 00:18:54.268
I think it's about understanding how many outlets you've got.
00:18:54.807 --> 00:18:57.468
Is it one partner that takes over the whole operation?
00:18:57.468 --> 00:18:59.657
Or is it just one outlet in silo?
00:18:59.708 --> 00:19:01.127
And then you'll look after the others.
00:19:01.428 --> 00:19:03.778
and that goes back to that curation piece.
00:19:04.008 --> 00:19:13.057
And then once you do that and you identify that you might want to bring a partner in, I would say that nine tenths of the success is about relationship.
00:19:13.472 --> 00:19:21.103
It's about finding partners that truly understand what your needs are as a hotel, because hotels do have needs.
00:19:21.103 --> 00:19:24.022
they have room service, they have banqueting, they have breakfast.
00:19:24.272 --> 00:19:31.413
And if you're taking on a hotel operation fully, you need to understand what that means, because it's not easy.
00:19:32.093 --> 00:19:33.573
But you also need to understand.
00:19:34.012 --> 00:19:46.262
how the hotels operate, how purchasing operates, how the little intricacies operate, how the marketing for the hotel operates, because they'll need you as the restaurant guy to help them with that, to entertain guests and things.
00:19:46.272 --> 00:19:52.252
So it's about as a restauranteur really understanding how a hotel operates and then.
00:19:52.492 --> 00:19:58.752
From a hotelier's perspective, it's about getting with that partner and making sure that you are completely on the same page.
00:19:59.073 --> 00:20:02.752
Don't look at a brand and go just because it's the best restaurant in town.
00:20:02.792 --> 00:20:09.083
I need that person in my hotel, because if the relationship doesn't work, it's not going to, it's not going to be successful.
00:20:09.083 --> 00:20:17.752
We, we opened an Alan DeCasse restaurant in Dubai, in a form of life and, the owner just didn't understand what it took to run an Alan DeCasse restaurant.
00:20:18.242 --> 00:20:27.232
From a cost perspective, and it was so challenging managing the brand and managing the owner and trying to find a happy place in the middle.
00:20:27.452 --> 00:20:37.002
So it's just a prime example of understand the cost, understand what it takes for the restaurant to operate, understand what their standards are as much as yours and find the partnership that works.
00:20:37.053 --> 00:20:39.153
If that takes a little bit longer, it's the right thing.
00:20:39.393 --> 00:20:41.962
It's the right thing to do for both sides of the fence.
00:20:42.202 --> 00:20:44.633
so I'm a big believer in.
00:20:44.857 --> 00:20:49.278
Outsourced chefs or brands coming in to help the hotel proposition.
00:20:49.617 --> 00:20:52.688
I think in the right environment, it's absolutely the right thing to do.
00:20:52.998 --> 00:21:05.008
I think if, a hotel group or the hotel in particular doesn't have a desire to operate F& B and they'd rather just lease the space and take the rent and offer the support to the hotel, to the restauranteur.
00:21:05.337 --> 00:21:08.768
I think that's the absolute right thing to do from a commercial perspective.
00:21:09.087 --> 00:21:17.998
But equally, if you don't want to give away the reins, It's not going to work if you start handing it over to it, to another brand who has their own brand values and things like that to operate.
00:21:17.998 --> 00:21:21.307
So it has to be done, properly, it has to be well considered.
00:21:21.607 --> 00:21:25.928
but the relationship is always the key thing for me to make sure that's a hundred percent nailed on.
00:21:25.928 --> 00:21:27.827
And there's some great examples around the world.
00:21:28.147 --> 00:21:30.097
Is it God and Ramsey is a great example of that.
00:21:30.147 --> 00:21:31.688
I worked for the Dorchester collection.
00:21:31.938 --> 00:21:33.708
Alan DeCasse has been there for years.
00:21:33.992 --> 00:21:37.742
Wolfgang Puck, in a couple of their restaurants has been there for years as well.
00:21:37.972 --> 00:21:43.923
when it goes right, it can be a real longstanding relationship that develops and grows together.
00:21:44.192 --> 00:21:48.923
but when it goes wrong, it can be equally as, as challenging as running your own operation.
00:21:50.008 --> 00:21:50.337
Yeah.
00:21:50.367 --> 00:21:59.877
and I think one of the other things that people, don't consider is the guest experience, back to if you're running it yourself and you've got all your tech stack and we said, this is the restaurant technology guys.
00:21:59.877 --> 00:22:05.988
So I do want to talk about what are consumers expecting from the experience within the restaurant inside of that hotel.
00:22:05.988 --> 00:22:12.847
But you've got to consider that if you're licensing this out, does their tech talk to your tech or how are you going to solve that?
00:22:12.857 --> 00:22:12.877
Yeah.
00:22:13.182 --> 00:22:14.313
room service problem.
00:22:14.313 --> 00:22:15.482
How are you going to solve that?
00:22:15.563 --> 00:22:20.913
Does your product even do well going to room service or does it only do well towards, serve table side?
00:22:21.893 --> 00:22:30.522
How are you going to deal with room charges and all of those kind of things from the, because some many, especially in the higher end places, they want to be able to just charge it to their room.
00:22:30.522 --> 00:22:34.883
They don't want to have to carry cash or carry a, carry a wallet to be able to charge these things.
00:22:34.883 --> 00:22:37.972
And so you've got to make sure that's part of the guest experience.
00:22:38.438 --> 00:22:42.018
Scott, I'm going to pivot here for a second because you were telling me a story before we hit the record button.
00:22:42.468 --> 00:22:47.857
Of a recent trip that you were on, and you've talked about the local community.
00:22:48.228 --> 00:22:50.607
People have no shortage of places to eat.
00:22:50.887 --> 00:22:57.307
Everybody needs to eat the shortages, unless you're in the Maldives or you're stuck somewhere and you don't have transportation.
00:22:57.307 --> 00:22:58.208
But even then.
00:22:58.603 --> 00:23:05.913
With the advent of DoorDash and Uber Eats and GrubHub and Caviar and all these different tools out there, there's so many different ways to get food.
00:23:06.853 --> 00:23:17.173
Years ago, I've traveled for 25 years, there was times when I didn't have a car, somebody dropped me off at the hotel, the only option I had was room service or going down to the lobby and going to whatever was open at the time.
00:23:17.442 --> 00:23:18.442
Whereas now.
00:23:18.752 --> 00:23:21.363
You can get food delivered to you anywhere in the world.
00:23:21.692 --> 00:23:22.323
Essentially.
00:23:22.542 --> 00:23:28.343
Talk to me a little bit about how that has changed what the value proposition needs to be from a guest experience within the hotel.
00:23:28.732 --> 00:23:29.103
Yeah.
00:23:29.222 --> 00:23:41.002
And I think I mentioned off air that this is the area now that we're spending a lot of time and have recently added to pretty much every proposition that we're doing when we're working with clients now, and we talk about how.
00:23:41.063 --> 00:23:48.573
You should put as much effort into your digital experience as you do into your physical experience, because let's face it, we're a digital world.
00:23:48.643 --> 00:23:50.553
Everything that we do is in our palms.
00:23:50.853 --> 00:23:58.942
And if you as a hotel cannot deliver that, then people will not enjoy the stay as much because it's not convenient.
00:23:59.242 --> 00:24:15.202
And we always go into projects and spaces and we walk around and we talk to the team and we talk to guests and look at the operation and we look at where it's difficult for guests to spend money and that's our benchmark.
00:24:15.262 --> 00:24:22.343
How easy is it in every single touch point for that guest to spend money and where is the opportunity to make it easier?
00:24:22.583 --> 00:24:26.863
So two examples, one room service, you go to room service.
00:24:26.863 --> 00:24:34.742
If you don't have QR codes or a way for digital ordering now in, in rooms, you are losing out on orders and you're losing out on.
00:24:34.823 --> 00:24:35.452
Average check.
00:24:35.452 --> 00:24:52.863
And, I work with, a company called Iris, that are global, based out of the UK, but the global that work with W hotels, Marriott hotels, Disney, world resorts, they have some amazing stats about uptaking orders when you implement digital ordering in bedrooms and increasing average check.
00:24:53.192 --> 00:24:54.583
So even if.
00:24:55.057 --> 00:24:56.837
You are against it.
00:24:57.087 --> 00:25:00.938
The commercial decision would say it's the right thing to do.
00:25:01.258 --> 00:25:06.597
But, if we go into detail on it, people don't necessarily want to pick up phones and order anymore because they don't have to.
00:25:06.607 --> 00:25:08.867
It's not like the old days when you used to ring, the pizzas.
00:25:09.137 --> 00:25:13.817
Place or, dominoes, Papa John's and you'd be like there and I'd go pick it up or the guy would deliver.
00:25:13.978 --> 00:25:16.397
You can just go on the app and order it and someone will bring it.
00:25:16.587 --> 00:25:26.077
So what you're asking to do in a hotel bedroom, if you don't have QR ordering, is you're asking people to now do something differently to what they're doing at home.
00:25:26.538 --> 00:25:28.228
And when I think about hotels, I think.
00:25:28.488 --> 00:25:29.157
aspirational.
00:25:29.278 --> 00:25:32.317
I never think you should get something worse in a hotel than you have at home.
00:25:32.377 --> 00:25:36.117
That's from the pillow all the way through to being able to order your room service.
00:25:36.337 --> 00:25:40.307
So if I can go on DoorDash, I can go on Uber and I can order my burger.
00:25:40.637 --> 00:25:42.847
I want to be able to do that in a hotel.
00:25:43.157 --> 00:25:50.278
and I think it's just, it's becoming so necessary now that those who don't have it, really losing out.
00:25:50.278 --> 00:25:52.377
And I think they'll lose future stays because of it.
00:25:52.817 --> 00:25:57.478
My second example on it is, and back to the example that you shared is I was recently in Sydney.
00:25:57.538 --> 00:25:59.067
I was in Australia for a few weeks.
00:25:59.278 --> 00:26:00.307
I was recently in Sydney.
00:26:00.307 --> 00:26:02.718
I stayed in a five star hotel, right in downtown Sydney.
00:26:03.008 --> 00:26:11.698
And, they had a roof, Pool on the 8th floor and we walked up to this pool and as I walked in, there was the trash bin and it was full of McDonald's, wrappers.
00:26:12.147 --> 00:26:16.478
I was thinking to myself, that's really strange to have a bin full of McDonald's wrappers in the hotel.
00:26:17.028 --> 00:26:21.488
So I was looking round and, It was just incredibly difficult for people to order.
00:26:21.488 --> 00:26:27.617
So the process or the sequence of service of ordering was to ring a phone that looked as though it was an emergency telephone.
00:26:27.617 --> 00:26:35.718
If someone was drowning phone down to the lobby has to be put through to room service, order your products, and then your products would come up later.
00:26:35.998 --> 00:26:39.077
It wasn't attended by a waiter or anything like that.
00:26:39.438 --> 00:26:40.688
And you looked at all these tables.
00:26:40.688 --> 00:26:42.008
There wasn't even a menu on the table.
00:26:42.077 --> 00:26:55.317
You looked at the tables and thought, a simple QR code now would eliminate all those McDonald's wrappers, which doesn't look good from a brand perspective, you would increase revenue in a space where you're making no revenue right now, and you're not adding any labor.
00:26:55.563 --> 00:27:08.603
Because you still need the same guy to bring it up anywhere, and you're increasing the average check of the total revenue per available room from your hotel guests, not to mention leaving memorable experiences.
00:27:08.863 --> 00:27:23.663
So it's just a couple of examples of where hoteliers, Do what they've always done, rest on the laurels, back to those things again, and they don't necessarily, look at where they can use tech to come in and make life easier.
00:27:23.722 --> 00:27:28.823
another example, we were in a hotel, we implemented a reservation system.
00:27:28.823 --> 00:27:30.423
So we use seven rooms in all of our.
00:27:30.603 --> 00:27:41.032
Projects and I can explain why in a bit if that makes sense, but, they have the stripe integration, which means you can take a credit card so that if there's cancellation, no shows, you can charge the guests.
00:27:41.032 --> 00:27:50.998
But more importantly, and what I like to use it for is days like Christmas Day, day like Valentines, where you want to make sure that your inventory is going to turn up, you can prepay.
00:27:51.157 --> 00:27:54.278
And it makes it really easy because you don't need people to do it.
00:27:54.278 --> 00:27:57.087
It's a seamless experience for the guest and you're capturing the revenue.
00:27:57.387 --> 00:28:00.637
and I had to do a five page deck.
00:28:01.303 --> 00:28:12.212
To say what benefit that stripe integration could have for the finance person to go in and set up that stripe integration, a hotel, a restaurant wouldn't even think about that.
00:28:12.212 --> 00:28:13.913
They would just go and sell the stripe.
00:28:13.992 --> 00:28:14.762
and I know I'm
00:28:14.948 --> 00:28:20.008
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00:28:20.867 --> 00:28:37.127
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00:28:37.587 --> 00:28:45.498
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00:28:59.503 --> 00:29:00.233
they wouldn't even ask the
00:29:00.318 --> 00:29:07.999
no, and I know I'm doing it in a real broad term here, but it's just another couple of examples of where we were, where we're working that shows that this.
00:29:08.203 --> 00:29:14.013
Tech side of things hasn't yet been totally embraced on the F and B side, by some of the brands.
00:29:14.013 --> 00:29:16.604
And, we can get keyless entry into bedrooms.
00:29:16.604 --> 00:29:24.173
Now we can pre checking online, and I always look at airlines and think why can't hotels be a seamless as airlines now?
00:29:24.453 --> 00:29:27.354
and it just shows the opportunity that's sitting there for restauranteurs.
00:29:28.354 --> 00:29:35.604
and hoteliers to really optimize tech in their business, and help deliver revenue and make life easier on the teams.
00:29:35.604 --> 00:29:43.453
and I think it's you know that line of thought Scott is really all of us the restaurants the hotels Everybody needs to make it Amazon easy.
00:29:43.804 --> 00:29:56.673
We I've said this on the show dozens of times my wife Primarily because she does a lot of the shopping in the house Orders from Amazon because it's so much easier than going to the store or going anywhere to go find these products.
00:29:56.673 --> 00:30:00.953
And so consumers now expect that and they expect these types of experiences.
00:30:01.044 --> 00:30:09.953
DoorDash Uber Eats have done a fantastic job of getting food to you and letting you know when it's coming and what the experience is going to look like.
00:30:10.294 --> 00:30:19.784
Uber and Lyft have done a great job From a transportation perspective of getting you that if hotels can't be on that same page, I'm going to go a different way.
00:30:19.784 --> 00:30:26.513
And so where are some of the areas where you see people also need to make, is it in the communication pieces on F and B?
00:30:26.513 --> 00:30:34.693
Because that's where I see, not only do I not know that I can't get it, but I also have this fear, quite frankly, when I order room service to what is it?
00:30:34.693 --> 00:30:35.743
Can I be here in 30 minutes?
00:30:35.743 --> 00:30:36.763
Is it gonna be here in an hour?
00:30:36.763 --> 00:30:38.084
Is it gonna be here in an hour and a half?
00:30:38.528 --> 00:30:46.519
And so for me, that's always my fear when I travel is I know, because I can expect door to hash when it's going to be there because I ordered it.
00:30:46.689 --> 00:30:47.509
I know what I'm paying.
00:30:47.709 --> 00:30:50.759
I know what the experience is going to be like, and I don't necessarily know that.
00:30:51.048 --> 00:30:57.949
Talk to me a little bit about the future and where you see people's investment, because again, I choose hotels based on some of those amenities.
00:30:58.148 --> 00:30:59.009
Do they have a gym?
00:30:59.209 --> 00:31:00.388
Do they have keyless entry?
00:31:00.548 --> 00:31:01.828
Do they have early check in?
00:31:01.949 --> 00:31:08.828
I'm loyal to one brand, but at the same time, I want to make sure that, and I look through those things before I go experiences.
00:31:09.148 --> 00:31:14.078
I look at what their food experience is going to look like, but talk to me a little bit about where you see the future investment.
00:31:14.348 --> 00:31:24.798
Not only are they so far behind, But for those that are already really winning in this space, Scott, where can you see the investment going and how do you see that, how do you see that manifesting in the guest experience?
00:31:25.193 --> 00:31:25.773
Yeah, for sure.
00:31:25.773 --> 00:31:34.903
And I think back to your point, I think, we live in a world that's convenience, like we've said, and, if you can offer that convenience to people will go and.
00:31:35.233 --> 00:31:36.433
Stay somewhere else.
00:31:36.433 --> 00:31:36.894
Exactly.
00:31:36.894 --> 00:31:39.023
Like your wife doesn't go to the store.
00:31:39.023 --> 00:31:40.574
Now she'll order through Amazon.
00:31:40.574 --> 00:31:41.844
My wife's exactly the same.
00:31:41.844 --> 00:31:46.703
And if she can't get the slot that she wants, she'll go to a different supermarket here as well.
00:31:46.743 --> 00:31:47.594
and, pick that.
00:31:47.604 --> 00:31:50.673
So I think people are becoming less brand loyal and more.
00:31:50.933 --> 00:31:53.203
amenity focused in what they can get.
00:31:53.233 --> 00:31:56.193
And then if you can capture them, you can make them brand loyal after.
00:31:56.193 --> 00:31:57.503
So I think it's flipped a little bit.
00:31:57.854 --> 00:32:05.644
I think, we spoke about it, but I think those people in rooms, and room service have got to be offering digital ordering now.
00:32:05.894 --> 00:32:14.453
And what I would say is when you're sitting there with your vendors, make sure that you're benchmarking it against who people would use at home.
00:32:14.733 --> 00:32:16.314
For example, the DoorJash, the group of.
00:32:16.769 --> 00:32:29.919
Look at the features that you do when you're going through an experience on the digital experience on one of those platforms and make sure it can be replicated on the vendor that you go with, because that's what your, that's the benchmark of your guest.
00:32:30.128 --> 00:32:40.269
So if it can't say I'm going to be there in 30 minutes, if it doesn't give updates when it's leaving the kitchen, because it's integrated with your e post properly, all those things make a big difference to the guest.
00:32:40.318 --> 00:32:45.378
Because like you say, instead of sitting there going, Oh, should I get in the shower, or is my food going to come?
00:32:45.763 --> 00:32:48.284
You can go, I can get in the shower cause I know when my food's coming.
00:32:48.364 --> 00:32:53.663
And if it comes any earlier, it's going to tell me, so I'm not ever going to get caught out at the door with the room service guy.
00:32:53.923 --> 00:33:01.463
So I think that's the thing is look at the benchmarks in the market and look at whether the vendors you're working with do it on there as well.
00:33:01.463 --> 00:33:03.713
And I'm sure, I've, I think I've heard it on your show before.
00:33:03.773 --> 00:33:09.699
I'm sure you're an advocate for it is if you look for a platform and some of those non negotiables aren't there.
00:33:09.919 --> 00:33:27.719
Keep looking, speak to colleagues, listen to shows like this, go to conferences and get the platform that works because it's really difficult to take out a platform that's not working and implement a new one because your team start losing confidence and faith and your guests start losing confidence and faith as well.
00:33:27.719 --> 00:33:31.999
for an extra couple of months, don't take a system that's got 90 percent of the features that you need.
00:33:31.999 --> 00:33:35.598
Wait for the one for 100 percent because it will be out there.
00:33:35.798 --> 00:33:37.118
It's just about finding it.
00:33:37.118 --> 00:33:38.019
So that's the other one.
00:33:38.489 --> 00:33:44.249
Then I think, for me, it's about that communication with the guest as you touched on and we touched on it with seven rooms.
00:33:44.409 --> 00:33:50.598
I think there's a lot more that can be done, especially from some of the big brands in terms of really messaging food and beverage in.
00:33:50.808 --> 00:33:54.179
Pre arrival emails, because I don't think it's done properly.
00:33:54.398 --> 00:34:00.608
And I get why they have a global standard of how the arrival email should look like and the website should look like.
00:34:00.638 --> 00:34:14.358
But how many times do you go on one of the big brands websites, go to the hotel and it tells you absolutely nothing about the restaurant or bar, or if it does, it's the elevator pitch with one image and you're left trying to work out what's going on.
00:34:14.599 --> 00:34:23.079
and I think that's where they can make some big, Differences from a guest perspective to help keep those, get those people excited about visiting the restaurant.
00:34:23.259 --> 00:34:35.949
And then obviously, the biggest turnoff for a local guest or a non hotel guest is to go on a, Marriott Hilton intercontinental, a car website that's got a really bland restaurant page on it.
00:34:35.949 --> 00:34:36.969
It just doesn't attract anyone.
00:34:37.608 --> 00:34:38.039
And then.
00:34:38.653 --> 00:34:47.844
sitting inside food and beverage and what can food and beverage do, I would automate as many tasks as you can back of house to get your team front of house.
00:34:48.074 --> 00:34:58.143
So if your chef is spending too much time counting stock, get him an inventory system that can scan barcodes or has QR codes on again that can automatically do it.
00:34:58.153 --> 00:35:05.793
So he can pass that off to a junior member of staff who might need development and get the chef on the floor in front of guests and talking to people.
00:35:06.184 --> 00:35:17.273
The same, for labor cost and timesheets and things like the purchase orders, automate it and get your people back on the floor because that's where they'll make the revenue and that's where they'll make guests happy.
00:35:17.273 --> 00:35:19.384
And it means they can spend more time with them.
00:35:19.434 --> 00:35:32.224
and then, we touched on it with seven rooms, but I'd really put a lot of effort into as part of that automation, how can you automate guest experience so that your team don't even have to understand.
00:35:32.483 --> 00:35:34.974
That stuff is happening in the background and it's working.
00:35:35.003 --> 00:35:36.614
I'll give you a classic example.
00:35:36.853 --> 00:35:40.123
I was showing the, the director of sales and marketing yesterday on seven rooms.
00:35:40.393 --> 00:35:48.974
So we have an automation set up on seven rooms in the restaurant that when someone cancels after one week, they get an email automatically from the system that's preset.
00:35:49.208 --> 00:35:50.998
That says, we're really sorry.
00:35:50.998 --> 00:35:52.248
You had to cancel last week.
00:35:52.259 --> 00:35:55.768
If you're making plans again this weekend, why don't you give us a try?
00:35:55.958 --> 00:35:59.579
Here's a private booking link and we'll make sure that you get special attention.
00:36:00.168 --> 00:36:06.668
We've made, per month in the last four months of it being implemented, we've made about 4, 000 pounds.
00:36:07.079 --> 00:36:07.668
So what's that about?
00:36:07.668 --> 00:36:10.159
5, 000 probably in revenue a month.
00:36:10.273 --> 00:36:16.114
Just from that one email from where people have canceled and obviously got the email and gone, actually, that's a really nice touch.
00:36:16.164 --> 00:36:17.614
Let's book to go there next week.
00:36:17.853 --> 00:36:19.264
And it just shows that attention.
00:36:19.364 --> 00:36:25.813
And again, seven rooms is linked to the EPOS so I can start seeing some of that data and I can start really tracking it.
00:36:25.813 --> 00:36:37.393
But how can you automate personalization to really get the guests to understand that you value their custom and you value their loyalty and you can turn them into fans for the.
00:36:37.673 --> 00:36:40.813
Business because once you do, they'll keep coming again and again.
00:36:40.943 --> 00:36:51.474
And then the challenge with that is how do you tell seven rooms that after every fifth visit, they get a special message from the restaurant manager that says, thank you for coming five times.
00:36:51.474 --> 00:36:58.893
Next time you come in, have a glass of champagne on me because we really value your custom and all those little things then start adding up and you start really.
00:36:59.909 --> 00:37:02.509
creating a real base of business on there.
00:37:02.559 --> 00:37:10.028
the other one on seven rooms that, and I don't want to plug them too much, but, it's just good examples and lots of other reservation systems do this as well.
00:37:10.028 --> 00:37:12.789
But, we send feedback forms to every single guest.
00:37:12.998 --> 00:37:16.188
if it's constructive, it comes straight back to the restaurant manager.
00:37:16.199 --> 00:37:17.849
We deal with it straight away.
00:37:17.909 --> 00:37:21.739
if it's positive, they get asked to put a review on Google and TripAdvisor.
00:37:21.789 --> 00:37:30.289
and the stats that we've got in some of our restaurants in terms of, Google reviews, frequency before to after is a significant increase.
00:37:30.298 --> 00:37:41.148
So again, from a social proof perspective, it helps convert some of those people who thinking about coming might've seen some of that user generated content and just need that little final tip over the edge.
00:37:41.708 --> 00:37:45.289
Getting lots of reviews every week definitely helps with that.
00:37:45.338 --> 00:37:51.148
use that automation, personalize experience, help with your social proof, help with your marketing.
00:37:51.429 --> 00:37:52.969
and it really does make a big difference.
00:37:52.969 --> 00:37:55.088
And, I always talk about how.
00:37:55.423 --> 00:38:05.134
I worked in hotels for 15 years and I moved into independent restaurants for nine years and learned how to run restaurants properly in the nine years more than the 15.
00:38:05.673 --> 00:38:11.304
That's one of the things that great restauranteurs do that hoteliers still don't do in every location.
00:38:11.304 --> 00:38:13.034
Effectively is that whole.
00:38:14.273 --> 00:38:30.324
Personalization and using the reservation systems, not as a booking engine, but as a revenue tool and a yielding tool and an inventory tool that can help them drive revenue, but at the same time, creating amazing, memorable experiences for the guest before they've even arrived or after they've gone.
00:38:31.724 --> 00:38:32.034
Yeah.
00:38:32.603 --> 00:38:34.304
One last thread, Scott.
00:38:34.643 --> 00:38:37.653
Talk about non traditional food service inside of the hotels.
00:38:37.914 --> 00:38:44.853
Whether that be poolside, whether that be the coffee shop, whether that be other ways to drive additional revenue that people need to think about.
00:38:44.853 --> 00:38:48.034
Because, again, as a frequent traveler, you are as well.
00:38:48.324 --> 00:38:53.664
You hate it when you show up to the Starbucks or whatever it is and there's a line of 40 people and you're gonna have to now wait.
00:38:54.233 --> 00:38:58.514
Talk about the other ways that you can engage F& B in venues.
00:38:58.809 --> 00:39:03.969
To go beyond room service and just making a reservation at the main dining room, type of deal.
00:39:03.978 --> 00:39:12.059
There's lots of different ways that you can engage with those guests, deliverable, memorable experiences, and ultimately drive, top line revenue.
00:39:12.474 --> 00:39:12.764
Yeah.
00:39:12.764 --> 00:39:21.753
again, and I always say in projects that we work with is we look at, we, even though our core market is hotels, we still work with restaurants.
00:39:22.023 --> 00:39:23.213
Why do we work with restaurants?
00:39:23.213 --> 00:39:24.333
Because we want to see what's.
00:39:24.898 --> 00:39:28.168
Coming up, what's in trend, what's innovating in the space.
00:39:28.438 --> 00:39:31.318
So we always look at that from a digital perspective as well.
00:39:31.748 --> 00:39:59.329
you've had Troy Hooper on here, Pepper Lunch restaurants, installation of kiosks, McDonald's installation of kiosks and click and collect and order on the app and things like that, I, what you've got to remember in hotels is I'm not saying it's right in every single hotel because absolutely in Ritz Carlton, if you walk in and there's a kiosk there, you're going to be like what's going on, but in the right type of hotels, things like that can make a massive difference to it.
00:39:59.418 --> 00:39:59.889
To stay.
00:39:59.889 --> 00:40:04.849
So we work with a hotel group called the social hub based out of Amsterdam.
00:40:04.849 --> 00:40:06.619
They've got 19 hotels in Europe.
00:40:06.838 --> 00:40:08.918
we just did a grab and go concept for them.
00:40:09.159 --> 00:40:13.179
Their target market is lifestyle hotel, and they've got student accommodation.
00:40:13.389 --> 00:40:17.878
We have a grab and go concept, which is very much kind of specialty coffee shop stroke Delhi.
00:40:18.148 --> 00:40:21.938
and within that we built, order ahead, click and collect into there.
00:40:22.119 --> 00:40:29.389
student app so people can order in the bedrooms, come down on the way to go and study and then just grab the coffee that's sitting there waiting.
00:40:29.748 --> 00:40:38.248
But equally we have, we have, the kiosk sitting in there as well so that people can just go up and use the kiosk and drop in their order.
00:40:38.768 --> 00:40:39.248
And then.
00:40:40.619 --> 00:40:45.759
Because it's a student hotel, they've got lots of people in there that's going through it 24 hours a day.
00:40:45.818 --> 00:40:51.369
And we looked at vending machines for some of the kind of 24 hour items that you would want.
00:40:51.378 --> 00:40:55.918
You come back from a night out, you want maybe one more beer or some munchies or something like that.
00:40:56.239 --> 00:40:59.818
and we looked at kind of high end vending machines, which.
00:41:00.074 --> 00:41:07.454
On the market now, that whole space has really developed and it isn't just the cheesy ones used to get in the swimming pools and things like that anymore.
00:41:07.653 --> 00:41:17.653
You can really give it a luxury feel with the right product placements inside with the right curation of the items to deliver a service 24 hours a day that is still on brand.
00:41:17.934 --> 00:41:19.393
That's some other examples.
00:41:19.443 --> 00:41:30.193
I saw a post the other week about, and I'm actually speaking to the company next week about how you can do a similar sort of thing to Amazon fresh, and Amazon go, but in a hotel in a smaller version.
00:41:30.253 --> 00:41:32.304
So there's that convenience piece there.
00:41:32.344 --> 00:41:44.503
So again, if you've got underutilized spaces that aren't being used, to put something like that in again, in the right location, Could be a great revenue earner, and it doesn't need manning because it's all looked after from a tech perspective.
00:41:44.873 --> 00:41:50.753
and then if we go out to, beach clubs and pool sides, we're working with a hotel right now.
00:41:50.753 --> 00:41:52.494
They've got 280 beds.
00:41:52.554 --> 00:42:04.873
Their format right now is, if you want to order you go up to the Counter and you order food and when we were going in, everyone, we spoke to whether it was the guests and they have 5, 000 leisure members there as well.
00:42:04.873 --> 00:42:09.853
So whether it was guests, whether it was team, whether it was management, everyone was frustrated by queues.
00:42:10.333 --> 00:42:18.563
So again, we looked at, we looked there at how we can install digital menu boards so that when people are queuing.
00:42:19.338 --> 00:42:27.438
They can see the menu quicker, we can start using it for day partying and we can start looking at how we utilize promotions to drive spend.
00:42:27.748 --> 00:42:33.938
We've looked at QR ordering on the beds so that we can, get orders out to people and they're not waiting to queue.
00:42:34.248 --> 00:42:37.278
And more importantly with that is we're starting to get second drinks.
00:42:37.668 --> 00:42:42.068
We split counters so that we've got drinks out of one and food out of the other.
00:42:42.068 --> 00:42:48.378
We've got the QR code so we can get the upsell revenue instead of someone having to go wait 20 minutes in a bathing suit.
00:42:48.918 --> 00:43:04.478
To order a coke, for example, so we're looking at all those touch points of what frustrates the guest, what slows them down back to where I said before, you know what, where is it difficult for people to buy and what would they like to see and look at how you can bring.
00:43:04.858 --> 00:43:09.278
Some of those elements and digitize them so that it doesn't take extra resource.
00:43:09.278 --> 00:43:12.548
It makes it more efficient, and this isn't about cutting staff.
00:43:12.548 --> 00:43:29.829
This is about putting the staff where they needed the most, which is talking to guests and interacting with guests and going back to that old fashioned hospitality, because that's the bit that people are going to remember, because right now, if you make it difficult for them, that's the bit to remember, not the other side of it.
00:43:29.898 --> 00:43:34.498
So you can put as many people on the floor as you want, but if you still make it difficult to buy.
00:43:35.003 --> 00:43:37.643
That is the bit that the guest will remember, not the other side.
00:43:37.693 --> 00:43:39.423
yeah, so we're doing quite a lot at the minute.
00:43:39.423 --> 00:43:51.054
We're quite tech focused, we like to digitize things where it makes sense, but still retain the old fashioned hospitality that everyone knows and loves from staying in hotels or being in restaurants and bars as well.
00:43:51.054 --> 00:44:03.353
I think that's a fantastic place to, to wrap up Scott, you've, you've offered so much, so many different ideas that restaurants, hotels, everybody across the board, can, can evaluate their own, experience and say, how do I implement what Scott shared?
00:44:03.353 --> 00:44:06.014
So if they want to engage with you, they want to get connected.
00:44:06.023 --> 00:44:06.853
How can they do that?
00:44:06.853 --> 00:44:16.373
How can they engage with your firm or yourself personally to learn more about how you might be able to help them, their hotel, their whole, their restaurant brand to implement some of the stuff that you're talking about.
00:44:16.728 --> 00:44:17.338
Yeah, for sure.
00:44:17.338 --> 00:44:19.489
There's the best place to find me is on LinkedIn.
00:44:19.498 --> 00:44:23.938
So Scott Turner, Scott with one T, so Troy calls me Scott with one T from across the pond.
00:44:24.168 --> 00:44:25.929
yeah, on LinkedIn, have a look.
00:44:26.333 --> 00:44:30.474
by the way, trying to type your name, autocorrect, corrects it to two T's every single time
00:44:30.483 --> 00:44:30.943
Always.
00:44:30.974 --> 00:44:33.344
I know I blame my mom and dad every day about that.
00:44:33.403 --> 00:44:35.733
who was to know that was going to be a problem then.
00:44:35.934 --> 00:44:37.003
So yeah, find me on linkedin.
00:44:37.393 --> 00:44:39.393
I post every single day on linkedin as well.
00:44:39.393 --> 00:44:41.914
Just trying to offer as much value for people as possible.
00:44:42.213 --> 00:44:44.103
the company page is on there as well.
00:44:44.103 --> 00:44:46.784
So Auden hospitality, A U D E N.
00:44:46.784 --> 00:44:48.311
and it's Auden hospitality.
00:44:48.501 --> 00:44:49.041
com as well.
00:44:49.081 --> 00:44:50.340
But, yeah, hit me up on linkedin.
00:44:50.670 --> 00:44:54.208
Let's, sing me a D DM and let's chat and just have a, conversation.
00:44:54.358 --> 00:44:59.277
A conversation about how we can improve F and B because it's something that I'm super passionate about.
00:44:59.277 --> 00:45:06.032
Scott, it's a, it's definitely been a pleasure getting connected after so many years on, on LinkedIn being connected, but not being able to see each other and, and do this.
00:45:06.038 --> 00:45:07.882
So thank you for, for joining me into our audience.
00:45:07.882 --> 00:45:08.092
Guys.
00:45:08.097 --> 00:45:10.253
We know that you guys got lots of choices, as I say at the onset.
00:45:10.253 --> 00:45:13.853
So thank you guys for spending 45 minutes with us and make it a great day.
00:45:16.463 --> 00:45:19.793
Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast.
00:45:20.402 --> 00:45:21.353
Visit www.
00:45:21.402 --> 00:45:22.503
RestaurantTechnologyGuys.
00:45:22.543 --> 00:45:27.432
com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.
00:00:02.399 --> 00:00:07.700
This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better.
00:00:12.958 --> 00:00:15.348
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast.
00:00:15.348 --> 00:00:17.038
Thank you everyone out there for joining us.
00:00:17.128 --> 00:00:20.187
As I say, each and every time we know that you guys got lots of choices.
00:00:20.187 --> 00:00:22.757
So thank you guys for spending time with us today.
00:00:22.788 --> 00:00:24.457
We are joined by a very special guest.
00:00:24.638 --> 00:00:26.568
He's coming to us from overseas.
00:00:26.568 --> 00:00:32.218
And, scott and I have known each other for quite some time on the internet and have, have bantered some conversations back and forth.
00:00:32.218 --> 00:00:38.148
But scott, for those that aren't familiar with who you are, why don't you introduce yourself and then we can talk about what you get to do for a living.
00:00:38.737 --> 00:00:40.048
Yeah, thanks, Jeremy.
00:00:40.048 --> 00:00:41.218
And it's really good to be here.
00:00:41.218 --> 00:00:48.807
I've listened to the show for a while now, as we've said, and it's really great to finally be on here chatting with you face to face as well.
00:00:48.807 --> 00:00:49.777
So thanks for having me.
00:00:50.408 --> 00:00:50.658
Yeah.
00:00:50.688 --> 00:00:51.338
Hi, everyone.
00:00:51.347 --> 00:00:52.177
My name's Scott.
00:00:52.237 --> 00:00:54.387
I am the founder of Auden Hospitality.
00:00:54.658 --> 00:01:01.078
We are an advisory business based out of the UK, but very much global in the projects that we undertake.
00:01:01.298 --> 00:01:07.537
And we work with hoteliers To go in and look at where the opportunities are for their F and B, proposition.
00:01:07.737 --> 00:01:17.957
So whether that's a new builds and we look at how we define the F and B strategy or whether that's going into existing operations and looking at where maybe the performance isn't quite hitting the mark that they expect.
00:01:18.028 --> 00:01:26.418
And we bring our experience of working across various different countries and continents to help bring those opportunities, to grow their performance as well.
00:01:26.597 --> 00:01:30.067
also got an F and B inside a newsletter, which sits on sub stack.
00:01:30.087 --> 00:01:42.468
And every week I give, Tips and tricks to F& B directors, F& B leaders on how they can think differently about some of those little bits that we bring to, we bring to our projects every single day to just try and help add value as much as possible.
00:01:43.468 --> 00:01:43.837
I love it.
00:01:43.927 --> 00:01:47.518
And, and as we talked about, I appreciate the, the accolades about being a listener.
00:01:47.518 --> 00:01:52.727
I'm a fan of yours and I'm connected and I get to see and watch all of what you get to do as well as your many travels.
00:01:52.727 --> 00:01:55.468
And it's always fun to, to watch when you post, when you're on the road.
00:01:55.518 --> 00:02:03.617
Scott, talk to me a little bit about, where really F and B within hotels has been, if we think back 30 years or 40 years ago, it was not an add on.
00:02:03.727 --> 00:02:06.908
It truly was part of the experience from a hotel perspective.
00:02:06.908 --> 00:02:12.627
And then it feels like we went through a period where it was a necessity, not necessarily a differentiator.
00:02:12.987 --> 00:02:14.707
And now they're struggling to figure out their way.
00:02:14.707 --> 00:02:18.557
But if you could take us back just a little bit, you've been in the space for quite some time.
00:02:18.557 --> 00:02:19.758
Talk to me about how hotel.
00:02:20.157 --> 00:02:30.598
hotel owners, hotel operators thought about F and B and how it was truly part of the experience that you were there, especially the higher you get into, four and five star type properties.
00:02:31.393 --> 00:02:31.652
Yeah.
00:02:31.652 --> 00:02:32.592
I was very lucky.
00:02:32.592 --> 00:02:36.652
I worked in hotels for 15 years and I always worked in luxury environments.
00:02:36.663 --> 00:02:44.323
So country house hotels, city center hotels, and worked for some amazing groups, the Dorchester collection, intercontinental to name a few.
00:02:44.612 --> 00:02:46.293
And I think you're absolutely right.
00:02:46.342 --> 00:02:47.173
when you say that.
00:02:47.902 --> 00:02:58.032
A few years ago, not even maybe 20, 30 years ago, even 10 years ago, hotels were the place where the restaurants and the bars were the ones who set trends.
00:02:58.043 --> 00:03:06.763
and it was really the place that people aspired to, to be, that could attract the best chefs that could attract the best bar people that could attract the best talent on the market.
00:03:07.193 --> 00:03:10.393
And, it was, they were the ones who used to bring innovation.
00:03:10.733 --> 00:03:12.163
to the F and B space.
00:03:12.432 --> 00:03:17.883
I think over time what's happened, I think, we've become an entrepreneurial society.
00:03:18.193 --> 00:03:26.973
So I think when you're looking at chefs and you're looking at some of these bar guys, the can't get the step into the right Location or the right place with hotels.
00:03:26.973 --> 00:03:31.193
Maybe the system doesn't work quite right in terms of giving them opportunities.
00:03:31.423 --> 00:03:39.112
funding cash property has become a lot more available and therefore they have that entrepreneurial spirit to go out and do their own thing.
00:03:39.112 --> 00:03:41.973
And that's why I think we've seen a surge of really.
00:03:42.002 --> 00:03:43.643
Good independent restaurants.
00:03:43.823 --> 00:03:45.223
I'm based in London.
00:03:45.252 --> 00:03:52.302
We have some of the best restaurants in the world, New York, LA, some of these places, Miami has got some amazing restaurants now as well.
00:03:52.733 --> 00:03:53.212
So I think.
00:03:54.157 --> 00:03:58.448
What happens then is over time, hotels have become a little stale.
00:03:58.538 --> 00:04:01.888
They've stuck in the ways they haven't evolved with time.
00:04:02.147 --> 00:04:05.348
And because of that, now they're not seen as being cool.
00:04:05.818 --> 00:04:12.818
So unless you're going into one of the top five star luxury hotels, you're in a B location.
00:04:13.108 --> 00:04:17.557
and you've got the stigma around the hotel side of things and walking through lobbies and things like that.
00:04:17.788 --> 00:04:21.307
So actually it's much more cooler to have a, a restaurant sitting on a street.
00:04:21.632 --> 00:04:29.923
Or a sidewalk that's in the middle of, say, Soho in London or, Hell's Kitchen in New York or, Brickle in Miami, those type of places.
00:04:30.122 --> 00:04:36.932
because that's where people love to go and eat now and go in bars and visit, 30, 40 seat outlets that sit there.
00:04:36.932 --> 00:04:43.403
And, when people ask me to describe what I mean by that, I always use one example of, of the all day dining lounge.
00:04:43.697 --> 00:04:49.838
And I did a post on this recently, the all day dining lounge hasn't changed in the 25 years.
00:04:49.838 --> 00:05:01.408
I've been in the business now, and I first started out in hotels in, I think it was 1998 as a silver service waiter, the all day dining lounge, I think it was called the Palm Court lounge, was still there serving teas.
00:05:01.468 --> 00:05:04.127
It was in an environment that might have a grand piano in there.
00:05:04.387 --> 00:05:07.298
playing classical music and it was all very well to do.
00:05:07.557 --> 00:05:08.598
and that hasn't evolved.
00:05:08.598 --> 00:05:11.468
You can still go into hotels now and it's still very much the same.
00:05:11.978 --> 00:05:13.197
If you're on the high street.
00:05:13.517 --> 00:05:18.658
And you want to go get a coffee, you want to work remote, you want to go and meet people and what have you.
00:05:19.348 --> 00:05:26.507
People now would rather go to speciality coffee shops or brunch places than they would to go to hotels.
00:05:26.747 --> 00:05:27.257
Why?
00:05:27.307 --> 00:05:38.668
Because they're going to these places, there's a great vibe, they get served quickly, there's no pomp and circumstance, there's plugs in every socket, on every table, so if you're going in there to work, you know that you can get a seat.
00:05:39.512 --> 00:05:48.343
And you'll go into a hotel and you won't be able to get a plug in a socket because it's always those ramping house plugs for the lights, which drive people crazy.
00:05:48.523 --> 00:05:53.223
the service is all a bit too slow because it's all a bit kind of hotel y and a bit fine.
00:05:53.603 --> 00:05:59.033
And, generally the product isn't up to the standard of what you would have in a specialty coffee shop.
00:05:59.273 --> 00:06:16.502
I think that's a classic example of where hospitality and hotels just hasn't particularly evolved with the times, and therefore now I think they're left behind trying to play catch up and it's a lot more difficult for them to do that because they can't attract the best talent because they're not the cool kids on the block anymore.
00:06:16.752 --> 00:06:19.302
Maybe they don't have the right innovation.
00:06:19.312 --> 00:06:23.252
Maybe it's too much of a risk to start changing and renovation projects and things.
00:06:23.252 --> 00:06:26.132
yeah, lots of factors that go into it, but I just think over time.
00:06:26.682 --> 00:06:31.353
They stood still and maybe rested on the laurels a little bit too much and haven't evolved.
00:06:31.392 --> 00:06:40.663
And I think if you go to some of the best hotels now, they have done that and they have evolved and they have started to look at things very differently to, to do that.
00:06:40.663 --> 00:06:55.302
and I think Scott going back, 10 or 15 years ago, it was a destination and it was a destination to go to, and again, I'm a fan of chefs and, I was just listening to an interview with Gordon Ramsey and when he was coming up, it was like, I need to get into some of the best hotels.
00:06:55.557 --> 00:06:58.127
And ultimately it turned the opposite of, you know what?
00:06:58.127 --> 00:07:04.517
I can't get my way to where I want to get to in these hotels because they're not willing to push the envelope.
00:07:05.007 --> 00:07:12.697
The other thing I would ask that, that we talk a little bit about is the foodie culture, the Instagram culture, the idea that you've got to have something with an experience.
00:07:12.697 --> 00:07:22.307
You and I were having a chat via LinkedIn the other day about, some of the conversations you've been having, there's this idea that the guests want to share their experience, but it's got to be something special.
00:07:22.608 --> 00:07:32.718
And if it's the standard, scrambled eggs and two pieces of bacon for breakfast that does nothing for the instagram culture that does nothing for creating anything that's a wow for those guests.
00:07:33.213 --> 00:07:37.132
Talk to me a little bit about how hotels had thought about it in the past.
00:07:37.132 --> 00:07:47.473
It was a necessity versus where the world has gotten and why we think that, why we think they're so far behind and I think they, they need to spend some time and energy and, look to brands like yours to help them out with that.
00:07:47.653 --> 00:07:48.302
Yeah, for sure.
00:07:48.302 --> 00:07:53.512
I remember my, my, first full time role, it was at the Marriott Grosvenor square, which was a Marriott.
00:07:53.872 --> 00:07:59.142
In 2001, I think it was, and, the restaurant was all built around tableside service.
00:07:59.353 --> 00:08:00.523
So it was Gary Don's service.
00:08:00.523 --> 00:08:01.903
It was your crepe Suzette's.
00:08:01.923 --> 00:08:04.702
It was your fillet of fish at the table.
00:08:04.702 --> 00:08:06.463
It was Caesar salads made at the table.
00:08:06.483 --> 00:08:08.502
Baked Alaska's torched at the table.
00:08:08.923 --> 00:08:10.043
That was the theater.
00:08:10.093 --> 00:08:11.353
that was the user moments.
00:08:11.353 --> 00:08:13.762
We just couldn't record it back then because we didn't have.
00:08:13.932 --> 00:08:15.483
Technology to be able to do it.
00:08:15.793 --> 00:08:17.382
But why did you go to those restaurants?
00:08:17.382 --> 00:08:18.903
Because it was special occasion.
00:08:18.903 --> 00:08:20.583
You're left with amazing memories.
00:08:20.762 --> 00:08:26.213
if you went there, you knew you could show off to a business partner or a partner or some, or something like that.
00:08:27.062 --> 00:08:28.932
So it was always there.
00:08:29.062 --> 00:08:32.942
It was just never, we were just never able to record it like we can today.
00:08:33.307 --> 00:08:53.918
I think when we go into any project and it's a timely conversation, this because I had this conversation with a director of sales and marketing yesterday in a five star hotel that we're working with, and we were talking about how we can diversify the content and make it more authentic, because right now it's all a bit Paused it's very much forced.
00:08:54.227 --> 00:09:00.298
There's always an empty restaurant because, GDPR here in the UK, they're scared to take pictures of people and things like that.
00:09:00.587 --> 00:09:06.138
And I was talking about, I listened to a podcast with Gary V the other day and he was like, 2024 is the year of the lives.
00:09:06.138 --> 00:09:08.528
what can you do in your business to go live?
00:09:08.847 --> 00:09:12.908
And I was having the conversation with them to say, why don't we just set up a tripod with a phone?
00:09:13.302 --> 00:09:17.033
And we just go live on TikTok or Instagram, wherever the customer is.
00:09:17.062 --> 00:09:22.893
And we just let it run for an hour and they just see busy restaurant, people going past, it doesn't have to focus on anyone.
00:09:23.753 --> 00:09:25.263
Their immediate response back to that.
00:09:25.293 --> 00:09:28.913
And I'm coming at this from a hotel point of view is they start thinking about the bigger brand.
00:09:29.013 --> 00:09:37.557
They start thinking about the hotel brand and Stop thinking about the restaurant and how restaurant and people who go to restaurants think very differently.
00:09:37.557 --> 00:09:43.888
And that's why I always advocate that your restaurants and bars should be run separately to the hotel.
00:09:44.118 --> 00:09:45.447
They should have their own identity.
00:09:45.447 --> 00:09:46.837
They should have their own story.
00:09:46.837 --> 00:09:50.967
They should have their own tone of voice, their own market and their own marketing team.
00:09:51.393 --> 00:09:53.432
Because you can't treat the two the same.
00:09:53.493 --> 00:09:56.003
So to go live in a restaurant, people love to see it.
00:09:56.342 --> 00:09:58.393
People love to see restaurants working.
00:09:58.442 --> 00:09:59.143
it's what you do.
00:09:59.143 --> 00:10:07.173
And it's, if that's going to get people clicking on and getting into their memories, then it's something you should definitely look at strategically.
00:10:07.173 --> 00:10:15.503
And I think, from that, then we always go into menu development and concept development, and we always talk about user generated content.
00:10:16.043 --> 00:10:24.942
And back to that foodie thing, we always look at menus and go, okay, what are the items on this menu that customers are going to take pictures off because it's so important.
00:10:24.982 --> 00:10:29.363
I think we're in a stage now where people want all this authenticity.
00:10:29.523 --> 00:10:31.562
People want to see what's genuine.
00:10:31.873 --> 00:10:33.212
People want to see real life.
00:10:33.357 --> 00:10:40.618
So if you have a timeline full of pictures that you've done with your photographer, that's very official looking, it's not going to turn a customer on anymore.
00:10:40.898 --> 00:10:48.457
They're more likely to go to the tag section and look at what customers are, or guests are tagging in your restaurant and make decisions based on that.
00:10:48.817 --> 00:10:54.087
So I think you have to really look at that user generated content, what dishes are going to stand out.
00:10:54.398 --> 00:10:57.118
And when they do, we always, make a dish.
00:10:57.168 --> 00:11:01.748
and we did this in a tasting the other day, we had a tiramisu, and we made the dish and we put it at the table.
00:11:01.952 --> 00:11:04.482
And we asked 10 different people to come and take a picture of it.
00:11:04.732 --> 00:11:10.163
And we made sure that every single one of them could take a picture that we would be happy to put on social media.
00:11:10.503 --> 00:11:17.673
And if it, if they can, we go back and redevelop it so that we can get the shot because that is now your image that's going out.
00:11:17.673 --> 00:11:25.052
So you have to play the plating to the worst photographer that can come into the restaurant so that your food is always looking good.
00:11:25.322 --> 00:11:28.263
So it's not about Being gimmicky or anything like that.
00:11:28.263 --> 00:11:29.903
It's just about creating those moments.
00:11:29.952 --> 00:11:31.302
we opened a bakery in 2021.
00:11:31.302 --> 00:11:37.173
we got to 25, 000 followers from zero on Instagram, baked on, based on a lemon meringue croissant.
00:11:37.373 --> 00:11:39.932
And it was a croissant with lemon curd in the middle.
00:11:40.202 --> 00:11:43.493
It had torch meringue on top and we just made sure it went everywhere.
00:11:43.562 --> 00:11:45.403
We made sure it just got reposted.
00:11:45.763 --> 00:11:52.163
We were making sure it was going viral and it just snowballed and the brand literally took off based on this one product.
00:11:52.493 --> 00:11:54.743
It's really important that user generated content.
00:11:54.993 --> 00:11:56.163
And I think we always did it.
00:11:56.163 --> 00:11:57.962
We just couldn't record it like we can today.
00:11:57.962 --> 00:11:59.503
and I'll bring you back to a story.
00:11:59.503 --> 00:12:04.962
Last summer I went to the Ritz Carlton business dinner and in Orlando or just outside of Orlando.
00:12:05.312 --> 00:12:20.763
And I still am talking about the old fashioned that got delivered in an old lantern, with the smoke coming out of the lantern when they served at table side, somebody got a Tomahawk ribeye and they brought the cart out and and to me at the Ritz Carlton and yes, the meal was expensive.
00:12:20.773 --> 00:12:23.298
the rooms were, We actually weren't even staying at the rooms.
00:12:23.298 --> 00:12:30.988
We were at a different event across town, but we drove 30 minutes and torrential downpour to go have this experience based on what you're talking about.
00:12:30.988 --> 00:12:34.977
And to me that the experience exceeded my expectations.
00:12:34.977 --> 00:12:48.388
And it was, I looked at the partner that was actually buying my meal that had invited me to dinner and he goes, yeah, that was a very expensive meal, but it was well worth it because we've continued to talk about it where again, Scott, I know that this is part of your business, but I want our restaurants.
00:12:48.607 --> 00:12:53.268
And our hotels to think about this, because this is part of what makes up your brand.
00:12:53.538 --> 00:13:01.168
And when it is just an afterthought, it's no different than making sure that the rooms are cleaned, that the front desk is available when you need them.
00:13:01.557 --> 00:13:03.288
All of these are part of the experience.
00:13:03.288 --> 00:13:05.947
And any one of those things can ultimately.
00:13:06.222 --> 00:13:08.043
hinder the guest experience.
00:13:08.052 --> 00:13:13.352
If I've just got crappy food or I've got crappy service inside of the restaurant, it ultimately brings that brand image down.
00:13:13.352 --> 00:13:17.472
And so how should restaurants and hotels be thinking about that experience?
00:13:17.702 --> 00:13:21.352
in that regard, I know you've talked about it quite a bit, creating that instagrammable moment.
00:13:21.552 --> 00:13:30.482
But what is the downside of not even not only not creating an instagrammable moment, but having poor service, having poor experience and not delivering what the guests might want.
00:13:30.482 --> 00:13:31.273
it's everything, isn't it?
00:13:31.383 --> 00:13:43.893
I always go back to saying, I think what's happened in, in, in recent times is that we've taken people away from the floor and we started putting them into offices and we've bogged them down with admin and things like that.
00:13:44.232 --> 00:13:44.623
And.
00:13:44.847 --> 00:13:47.908
We've got to take ourselves back to going, why is a hotel?
00:13:47.937 --> 00:13:48.817
Why is a restaurant?
00:13:48.908 --> 00:14:08.758
It's to create memorable experiences for people, and that could be a holiday in that has a businessman going there, and it just makes their business trip away from home as easy as possible, or it could be the Beverly Hills Hotel or the, the Ritz Carlton where someone's going for a special occasion and they want to remember it forever and ever because it was their anniversary.
00:14:08.758 --> 00:14:10.648
So fundamentally you.
00:14:10.822 --> 00:14:17.013
you have to create memorable experiences and you have to create long lasting memories for people.
00:14:17.352 --> 00:14:23.033
And I think that's sometimes where we get too bogged down in everything else going on that, that we forget about that.
00:14:23.363 --> 00:14:32.452
So when we've already talked about at the start of the show, about how there's a stigma around hotels because they've lost the way and in the main and they're not delivering.
00:14:32.812 --> 00:14:39.293
If you're operating a hotel restaurant, you're already behind the guy down the street in terms of attracting people.
00:14:39.552 --> 00:14:47.562
So you have to go out of your way to create great food items, great drinks that people will take pictures of, people will remember.
00:14:47.952 --> 00:14:51.337
But you've also got to deliver that personalized experience as well.
00:14:51.477 --> 00:15:06.067
And that's becoming much more prominent in projects that we're working on is going, okay, how do we acquire the guest once, but retain them long term because of what we do while they're in the restaurant, but also while they're out of the restaurant.
00:15:06.107 --> 00:15:07.788
So what do we do before they come?
00:15:08.138 --> 00:15:10.008
That makes them really excited to visit.
00:15:10.302 --> 00:15:15.322
And then when they leave, what can we do to make sure that they come back again and again, and they don't forget about us?
00:15:15.613 --> 00:15:27.793
And that's where we've started really automating the process of pre and post arrival, for the guest to really start talking to them and building up that relationship and focusing on retention, because it's become a big part.
00:15:27.793 --> 00:15:31.253
So we've played a big part of that in all of our outlets.
00:15:31.442 --> 00:15:37.283
And then my other advice to people is never create a hotel restaurant for hotel guests.
00:15:38.118 --> 00:15:38.477
Ever
00:15:38.837 --> 00:15:39.278
yes.
00:15:39.418 --> 00:15:47.278
Unless you're at Fairfield Inn and you just want to put, pancake batter or, something really poor, but not as a restaurant hotel, restaurant inside of the hotel.
00:15:47.278 --> 00:15:48.567
I would 100 percent agree with you.
00:15:48.567 --> 00:15:49.087
Sorry, I'll let you
00:15:49.227 --> 00:15:49.488
Yeah.
00:15:49.488 --> 00:15:59.798
unless you're one of those roadside places where you're just getting free breakfast for people and that's the only meal you serve, you absolutely need to operate it like a restaurant, not like a hotel that just happens to have food.
00:15:59.857 --> 00:16:00.177
Yeah.
00:16:00.177 --> 00:16:00.677
100%.
00:16:00.758 --> 00:16:02.918
if you're sat in the Maldives, you're not going to leave your hotel.
00:16:02.918 --> 00:16:03.437
I get that.
00:16:03.648 --> 00:16:07.918
But in most places in the world, there is a local community outside.
00:16:08.008 --> 00:16:10.717
So create the restaurant for the local community.
00:16:10.717 --> 00:16:15.557
What is going to be the Their new habit, their new hub, the place that they want to go.
00:16:15.748 --> 00:16:24.788
And how do you talk to those people and treat it as a standalone restaurant, because I'll a hundred percent guarantee when you do that, your hotel guests will want to stay there.
00:16:25.057 --> 00:16:27.327
You won't be asking them to stay in your restaurant.
00:16:27.673 --> 00:16:29.182
It's a very different mindset.
00:16:29.462 --> 00:16:39.653
And I always say to people, if you start focusing on the hotel guests too much, you start looking at the amenity side of things and, the one, everything on the menu, because you have different cultures coming in.
00:16:39.653 --> 00:16:40.942
So how do we appease them?
00:16:41.572 --> 00:16:47.212
When you look at the local community, you go, this is the concept that the local community want, and we're very sure about it.
00:16:47.263 --> 00:16:51.293
And maybe a hotel guest might not like it, but that doesn't matter because the hotel.
00:16:51.307 --> 00:16:55.327
The restaurant's full, so we don't need every hotel guest to like it anymore.
00:16:55.427 --> 00:16:58.357
and it just honestly makes you think really differently about it.
00:16:58.368 --> 00:17:02.837
So my, my underlying thing on, on it would be focus on the local community.
00:17:03.158 --> 00:17:04.698
That will help you build value.
00:17:04.698 --> 00:17:08.958
It will help you continually innovate because you have to keep them coming back again and again.
00:17:09.448 --> 00:17:12.107
And then really look at how you can personalize experience.
00:17:12.107 --> 00:17:18.298
And we'll probably talk about tech and how we do that in a bit, but it really does make a big difference to people.
00:17:18.298 --> 00:17:19.157
Now, when you.
00:17:19.472 --> 00:17:24.903
When they feel like you're talking to them and them alone and not just a blanket email shot that's coming out.
00:17:26.272 --> 00:17:30.232
Yeah, it's got one last piece on kind of hotel restaurants.
00:17:30.532 --> 00:17:35.492
A lot of people have found success by bringing in a local brand to run their restaurant.
00:17:35.863 --> 00:17:37.633
Talk to me a little bit about your philosophy on that.
00:17:37.932 --> 00:17:42.363
And again, we've got a client, blue ribbon out of new york blue ribbon restaurants out of new york.
00:17:42.373 --> 00:17:45.863
They've got a brand that's inside of a hotel in Miami and they do really well.
00:17:45.863 --> 00:17:46.782
It's a sushi restaurant.
00:17:46.813 --> 00:17:50.242
It's one of the three restaurants that's inside of this, nice five star hotel in Miami.
00:17:50.587 --> 00:17:53.768
And they do a fantastic job because they do sushi really well.
00:17:54.048 --> 00:17:59.238
They're known for their sushi and they become the brand that becomes, the way that they go about it.
00:17:59.248 --> 00:18:08.117
What's your philosophy on, on building partnerships with a local brand that might be able to enhance that guest experience and you don't have to do all of the investment.
00:18:08.317 --> 00:18:14.508
You may lose a little bit of margin here and there, but you know that the guests are going to get something special when they're there eating at your establishment.
00:18:14.893 --> 00:18:18.133
Yeah, there's lots of ways to cut up this dice, to be honest.
00:18:18.133 --> 00:18:25.752
And I always sit with, our clients and our projects first and really start talking to them about what they would like from the space.
00:18:26.042 --> 00:18:32.623
And it's about being properly strategic about your hotel and what you want to deliver as a total experience.
00:18:32.883 --> 00:18:35.762
And then how you curate that properly within that.
00:18:36.778 --> 00:18:41.577
So we've just talked about the local community and what is the restaurant that they are missing?
00:18:41.577 --> 00:18:43.067
What's the restaurant they want to visit?
00:18:43.288 --> 00:18:43.837
It's the same.
00:18:43.837 --> 00:18:50.718
If you're looking at an outsourced partner or bringing in a license deal or something like that, and then once you do that.
00:18:51.057 --> 00:18:54.268
I think it's about understanding how many outlets you've got.
00:18:54.807 --> 00:18:57.468
Is it one partner that takes over the whole operation?
00:18:57.468 --> 00:18:59.657
Or is it just one outlet in silo?
00:18:59.708 --> 00:19:01.127
And then you'll look after the others.
00:19:01.428 --> 00:19:03.778
and that goes back to that curation piece.
00:19:04.008 --> 00:19:13.057
And then once you do that and you identify that you might want to bring a partner in, I would say that nine tenths of the success is about relationship.
00:19:13.472 --> 00:19:21.103
It's about finding partners that truly understand what your needs are as a hotel, because hotels do have needs.
00:19:21.103 --> 00:19:24.022
they have room service, they have banqueting, they have breakfast.
00:19:24.272 --> 00:19:31.413
And if you're taking on a hotel operation fully, you need to understand what that means, because it's not easy.
00:19:32.093 --> 00:19:33.573
But you also need to understand.
00:19:34.012 --> 00:19:46.262
how the hotels operate, how purchasing operates, how the little intricacies operate, how the marketing for the hotel operates, because they'll need you as the restaurant guy to help them with that, to entertain guests and things.
00:19:46.272 --> 00:19:52.252
So it's about as a restauranteur really understanding how a hotel operates and then.
00:19:52.492 --> 00:19:58.752
From a hotelier's perspective, it's about getting with that partner and making sure that you are completely on the same page.
00:19:59.073 --> 00:20:02.752
Don't look at a brand and go just because it's the best restaurant in town.
00:20:02.792 --> 00:20:09.083
I need that person in my hotel, because if the relationship doesn't work, it's not going to, it's not going to be successful.
00:20:09.083 --> 00:20:17.752
We, we opened an Alan DeCasse restaurant in Dubai, in a form of life and, the owner just didn't understand what it took to run an Alan DeCasse restaurant.
00:20:18.242 --> 00:20:27.232
From a cost perspective, and it was so challenging managing the brand and managing the owner and trying to find a happy place in the middle.
00:20:27.452 --> 00:20:37.002
So it's just a prime example of understand the cost, understand what it takes for the restaurant to operate, understand what their standards are as much as yours and find the partnership that works.
00:20:37.053 --> 00:20:39.153
If that takes a little bit longer, it's the right thing.
00:20:39.393 --> 00:20:41.962
It's the right thing to do for both sides of the fence.
00:20:42.202 --> 00:20:44.633
so I'm a big believer in.
00:20:44.857 --> 00:20:49.278
Outsourced chefs or brands coming in to help the hotel proposition.
00:20:49.617 --> 00:20:52.688
I think in the right environment, it's absolutely the right thing to do.
00:20:52.998 --> 00:21:05.008
I think if, a hotel group or the hotel in particular doesn't have a desire to operate F& B and they'd rather just lease the space and take the rent and offer the support to the hotel, to the restauranteur.
00:21:05.337 --> 00:21:08.768
I think that's the absolute right thing to do from a commercial perspective.
00:21:09.087 --> 00:21:17.998
But equally, if you don't want to give away the reins, It's not going to work if you start handing it over to it, to another brand who has their own brand values and things like that to operate.
00:21:17.998 --> 00:21:21.307
So it has to be done, properly, it has to be well considered.
00:21:21.607 --> 00:21:25.928
but the relationship is always the key thing for me to make sure that's a hundred percent nailed on.
00:21:25.928 --> 00:21:27.827
And there's some great examples around the world.
00:21:28.147 --> 00:21:30.097
Is it God and Ramsey is a great example of that.
00:21:30.147 --> 00:21:31.688
I worked for the Dorchester collection.
00:21:31.938 --> 00:21:33.708
Alan DeCasse has been there for years.
00:21:33.992 --> 00:21:37.742
Wolfgang Puck, in a couple of their restaurants has been there for years as well.
00:21:37.972 --> 00:21:43.923
when it goes right, it can be a real longstanding relationship that develops and grows together.
00:21:44.192 --> 00:21:48.923
but when it goes wrong, it can be equally as, as challenging as running your own operation.
00:21:50.008 --> 00:21:50.337
Yeah.
00:21:50.367 --> 00:21:59.877
and I think one of the other things that people, don't consider is the guest experience, back to if you're running it yourself and you've got all your tech stack and we said, this is the restaurant technology guys.
00:21:59.877 --> 00:22:05.988
So I do want to talk about what are consumers expecting from the experience within the restaurant inside of that hotel.
00:22:05.988 --> 00:22:12.847
But you've got to consider that if you're licensing this out, does their tech talk to your tech or how are you going to solve that?
00:22:12.857 --> 00:22:12.877
Yeah.
00:22:13.182 --> 00:22:14.313
room service problem.
00:22:14.313 --> 00:22:15.482
How are you going to solve that?
00:22:15.563 --> 00:22:20.913
Does your product even do well going to room service or does it only do well towards, serve table side?
00:22:21.893 --> 00:22:30.522
How are you going to deal with room charges and all of those kind of things from the, because some many, especially in the higher end places, they want to be able to just charge it to their room.
00:22:30.522 --> 00:22:34.883
They don't want to have to carry cash or carry a, carry a wallet to be able to charge these things.
00:22:34.883 --> 00:22:37.972
And so you've got to make sure that's part of the guest experience.
00:22:38.438 --> 00:22:42.018
Scott, I'm going to pivot here for a second because you were telling me a story before we hit the record button.
00:22:42.468 --> 00:22:47.857
Of a recent trip that you were on, and you've talked about the local community.
00:22:48.228 --> 00:22:50.607
People have no shortage of places to eat.
00:22:50.887 --> 00:22:57.307
Everybody needs to eat the shortages, unless you're in the Maldives or you're stuck somewhere and you don't have transportation.
00:22:57.307 --> 00:22:58.208
But even then.
00:22:58.603 --> 00:23:05.913
With the advent of DoorDash and Uber Eats and GrubHub and Caviar and all these different tools out there, there's so many different ways to get food.
00:23:06.853 --> 00:23:17.173
Years ago, I've traveled for 25 years, there was times when I didn't have a car, somebody dropped me off at the hotel, the only option I had was room service or going down to the lobby and going to whatever was open at the time.
00:23:17.442 --> 00:23:18.442
Whereas now.
00:23:18.752 --> 00:23:21.363
You can get food delivered to you anywhere in the world.
00:23:21.692 --> 00:23:22.323
Essentially.
00:23:22.542 --> 00:23:28.343
Talk to me a little bit about how that has changed what the value proposition needs to be from a guest experience within the hotel.
00:23:28.732 --> 00:23:29.103
Yeah.
00:23:29.222 --> 00:23:41.002
And I think I mentioned off air that this is the area now that we're spending a lot of time and have recently added to pretty much every proposition that we're doing when we're working with clients now, and we talk about how.
00:23:41.063 --> 00:23:48.573
You should put as much effort into your digital experience as you do into your physical experience, because let's face it, we're a digital world.
00:23:48.643 --> 00:23:50.553
Everything that we do is in our palms.
00:23:50.853 --> 00:23:58.942
And if you as a hotel cannot deliver that, then people will not enjoy the stay as much because it's not convenient.
00:23:59.242 --> 00:24:15.202
And we always go into projects and spaces and we walk around and we talk to the team and we talk to guests and look at the operation and we look at where it's difficult for guests to spend money and that's our benchmark.
00:24:15.262 --> 00:24:22.343
How easy is it in every single touch point for that guest to spend money and where is the opportunity to make it easier?
00:24:22.583 --> 00:24:26.863
So two examples, one room service, you go to room service.
00:24:26.863 --> 00:24:34.742
If you don't have QR codes or a way for digital ordering now in, in rooms, you are losing out on orders and you're losing out on.
00:24:34.823 --> 00:24:35.452
Average check.
00:24:35.452 --> 00:24:52.863
And, I work with, a company called Iris, that are global, based out of the UK, but the global that work with W hotels, Marriott hotels, Disney, world resorts, they have some amazing stats about uptaking orders when you implement digital ordering in bedrooms and increasing average check.
00:24:53.192 --> 00:24:54.583
So even if.
00:24:55.057 --> 00:24:56.837
You are against it.
00:24:57.087 --> 00:25:00.938
The commercial decision would say it's the right thing to do.
00:25:01.258 --> 00:25:06.597
But, if we go into detail on it, people don't necessarily want to pick up phones and order anymore because they don't have to.
00:25:06.607 --> 00:25:08.867
It's not like the old days when you used to ring, the pizzas.
00:25:09.137 --> 00:25:13.817
Place or, dominoes, Papa John's and you'd be like there and I'd go pick it up or the guy would deliver.
00:25:13.978 --> 00:25:16.397
You can just go on the app and order it and someone will bring it.
00:25:16.587 --> 00:25:26.077
So what you're asking to do in a hotel bedroom, if you don't have QR ordering, is you're asking people to now do something differently to what they're doing at home.
00:25:26.538 --> 00:25:28.228
And when I think about hotels, I think.
00:25:28.488 --> 00:25:29.157
aspirational.
00:25:29.278 --> 00:25:32.317
I never think you should get something worse in a hotel than you have at home.
00:25:32.377 --> 00:25:36.117
That's from the pillow all the way through to being able to order your room service.
00:25:36.337 --> 00:25:40.307
So if I can go on DoorDash, I can go on Uber and I can order my burger.
00:25:40.637 --> 00:25:42.847
I want to be able to do that in a hotel.
00:25:43.157 --> 00:25:50.278
and I think it's just, it's becoming so necessary now that those who don't have it, really losing out.
00:25:50.278 --> 00:25:52.377
And I think they'll lose future stays because of it.
00:25:52.817 --> 00:25:57.478
My second example on it is, and back to the example that you shared is I was recently in Sydney.
00:25:57.538 --> 00:25:59.067
I was in Australia for a few weeks.
00:25:59.278 --> 00:26:00.307
I was recently in Sydney.
00:26:00.307 --> 00:26:02.718
I stayed in a five star hotel, right in downtown Sydney.
00:26:03.008 --> 00:26:11.698
And, they had a roof, Pool on the 8th floor and we walked up to this pool and as I walked in, there was the trash bin and it was full of McDonald's, wrappers.
00:26:12.147 --> 00:26:16.478
I was thinking to myself, that's really strange to have a bin full of McDonald's wrappers in the hotel.
00:26:17.028 --> 00:26:21.488
So I was looking round and, It was just incredibly difficult for people to order.
00:26:21.488 --> 00:26:27.617
So the process or the sequence of service of ordering was to ring a phone that looked as though it was an emergency telephone.
00:26:27.617 --> 00:26:35.718
If someone was drowning phone down to the lobby has to be put through to room service, order your products, and then your products would come up later.
00:26:35.998 --> 00:26:39.077
It wasn't attended by a waiter or anything like that.
00:26:39.438 --> 00:26:40.688
And you looked at all these tables.
00:26:40.688 --> 00:26:42.008
There wasn't even a menu on the table.
00:26:42.077 --> 00:26:55.317
You looked at the tables and thought, a simple QR code now would eliminate all those McDonald's wrappers, which doesn't look good from a brand perspective, you would increase revenue in a space where you're making no revenue right now, and you're not adding any labor.
00:26:55.563 --> 00:27:08.603
Because you still need the same guy to bring it up anywhere, and you're increasing the average check of the total revenue per available room from your hotel guests, not to mention leaving memorable experiences.
00:27:08.863 --> 00:27:23.663
So it's just a couple of examples of where hoteliers, Do what they've always done, rest on the laurels, back to those things again, and they don't necessarily, look at where they can use tech to come in and make life easier.
00:27:23.722 --> 00:27:28.823
another example, we were in a hotel, we implemented a reservation system.
00:27:28.823 --> 00:27:30.423
So we use seven rooms in all of our.
00:27:30.603 --> 00:27:41.032
Projects and I can explain why in a bit if that makes sense, but, they have the stripe integration, which means you can take a credit card so that if there's cancellation, no shows, you can charge the guests.
00:27:41.032 --> 00:27:50.998
But more importantly, and what I like to use it for is days like Christmas Day, day like Valentines, where you want to make sure that your inventory is going to turn up, you can prepay.
00:27:51.157 --> 00:27:54.278
And it makes it really easy because you don't need people to do it.
00:27:54.278 --> 00:27:57.087
It's a seamless experience for the guest and you're capturing the revenue.
00:27:57.387 --> 00:28:00.637
and I had to do a five page deck.
00:28:01.303 --> 00:28:12.212
To say what benefit that stripe integration could have for the finance person to go in and set up that stripe integration, a hotel, a restaurant wouldn't even think about that.
00:28:12.212 --> 00:28:13.913
They would just go and sell the stripe.
00:28:13.992 --> 00:28:14.762
and I know I'm
00:28:14.948 --> 00:28:20.008
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00:28:20.867 --> 00:28:37.127
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00:28:59.503 --> 00:29:00.233
they wouldn't even ask the
00:29:00.318 --> 00:29:07.999
no, and I know I'm doing it in a real broad term here, but it's just another couple of examples of where we were, where we're working that shows that this.
00:29:08.203 --> 00:29:14.013
Tech side of things hasn't yet been totally embraced on the F and B side, by some of the brands.
00:29:14.013 --> 00:29:16.604
And, we can get keyless entry into bedrooms.
00:29:16.604 --> 00:29:24.173
Now we can pre checking online, and I always look at airlines and think why can't hotels be a seamless as airlines now?
00:29:24.453 --> 00:29:27.354
and it just shows the opportunity that's sitting there for restauranteurs.
00:29:28.354 --> 00:29:35.604
and hoteliers to really optimize tech in their business, and help deliver revenue and make life easier on the teams.
00:29:35.604 --> 00:29:43.453
and I think it's you know that line of thought Scott is really all of us the restaurants the hotels Everybody needs to make it Amazon easy.
00:29:43.804 --> 00:29:56.673
We I've said this on the show dozens of times my wife Primarily because she does a lot of the shopping in the house Orders from Amazon because it's so much easier than going to the store or going anywhere to go find these products.
00:29:56.673 --> 00:30:00.953
And so consumers now expect that and they expect these types of experiences.
00:30:01.044 --> 00:30:09.953
DoorDash Uber Eats have done a fantastic job of getting food to you and letting you know when it's coming and what the experience is going to look like.
00:30:10.294 --> 00:30:19.784
Uber and Lyft have done a great job From a transportation perspective of getting you that if hotels can't be on that same page, I'm going to go a different way.
00:30:19.784 --> 00:30:26.513
And so where are some of the areas where you see people also need to make, is it in the communication pieces on F and B?
00:30:26.513 --> 00:30:34.693
Because that's where I see, not only do I not know that I can't get it, but I also have this fear, quite frankly, when I order room service to what is it?
00:30:34.693 --> 00:30:35.743
Can I be here in 30 minutes?
00:30:35.743 --> 00:30:36.763
Is it gonna be here in an hour?
00:30:36.763 --> 00:30:38.084
Is it gonna be here in an hour and a half?
00:30:38.528 --> 00:30:46.519
And so for me, that's always my fear when I travel is I know, because I can expect door to hash when it's going to be there because I ordered it.
00:30:46.689 --> 00:30:47.509
I know what I'm paying.
00:30:47.709 --> 00:30:50.759
I know what the experience is going to be like, and I don't necessarily know that.
00:30:51.048 --> 00:30:57.949
Talk to me a little bit about the future and where you see people's investment, because again, I choose hotels based on some of those amenities.
00:30:58.148 --> 00:30:59.009
Do they have a gym?
00:30:59.209 --> 00:31:00.388
Do they have keyless entry?
00:31:00.548 --> 00:31:01.828
Do they have early check in?
00:31:01.949 --> 00:31:08.828
I'm loyal to one brand, but at the same time, I want to make sure that, and I look through those things before I go experiences.
00:31:09.148 --> 00:31:14.078
I look at what their food experience is going to look like, but talk to me a little bit about where you see the future investment.
00:31:14.348 --> 00:31:24.798
Not only are they so far behind, But for those that are already really winning in this space, Scott, where can you see the investment going and how do you see that, how do you see that manifesting in the guest experience?
00:31:25.193 --> 00:31:25.773
Yeah, for sure.
00:31:25.773 --> 00:31:34.903
And I think back to your point, I think, we live in a world that's convenience, like we've said, and, if you can offer that convenience to people will go and.
00:31:35.233 --> 00:31:36.433
Stay somewhere else.
00:31:36.433 --> 00:31:36.894
Exactly.
00:31:36.894 --> 00:31:39.023
Like your wife doesn't go to the store.
00:31:39.023 --> 00:31:40.574
Now she'll order through Amazon.
00:31:40.574 --> 00:31:41.844
My wife's exactly the same.
00:31:41.844 --> 00:31:46.703
And if she can't get the slot that she wants, she'll go to a different supermarket here as well.
00:31:46.743 --> 00:31:47.594
and, pick that.
00:31:47.604 --> 00:31:50.673
So I think people are becoming less brand loyal and more.
00:31:50.933 --> 00:31:53.203
amenity focused in what they can get.
00:31:53.233 --> 00:31:56.193
And then if you can capture them, you can make them brand loyal after.
00:31:56.193 --> 00:31:57.503
So I think it's flipped a little bit.
00:31:57.854 --> 00:32:05.644
I think, we spoke about it, but I think those people in rooms, and room service have got to be offering digital ordering now.
00:32:05.894 --> 00:32:14.453
And what I would say is when you're sitting there with your vendors, make sure that you're benchmarking it against who people would use at home.
00:32:14.733 --> 00:32:16.314
For example, the DoorJash, the group of.
00:32:16.769 --> 00:32:29.919
Look at the features that you do when you're going through an experience on the digital experience on one of those platforms and make sure it can be replicated on the vendor that you go with, because that's what your, that's the benchmark of your guest.
00:32:30.128 --> 00:32:40.269
So if it can't say I'm going to be there in 30 minutes, if it doesn't give updates when it's leaving the kitchen, because it's integrated with your e post properly, all those things make a big difference to the guest.
00:32:40.318 --> 00:32:45.378
Because like you say, instead of sitting there going, Oh, should I get in the shower, or is my food going to come?
00:32:45.763 --> 00:32:48.284
You can go, I can get in the shower cause I know when my food's coming.
00:32:48.364 --> 00:32:53.663
And if it comes any earlier, it's going to tell me, so I'm not ever going to get caught out at the door with the room service guy.
00:32:53.923 --> 00:33:01.463
So I think that's the thing is look at the benchmarks in the market and look at whether the vendors you're working with do it on there as well.
00:33:01.463 --> 00:33:03.713
And I'm sure, I've, I think I've heard it on your show before.
00:33:03.773 --> 00:33:09.699
I'm sure you're an advocate for it is if you look for a platform and some of those non negotiables aren't there.
00:33:09.919 --> 00:33:27.719
Keep looking, speak to colleagues, listen to shows like this, go to conferences and get the platform that works because it's really difficult to take out a platform that's not working and implement a new one because your team start losing confidence and faith and your guests start losing confidence and faith as well.
00:33:27.719 --> 00:33:31.999
for an extra couple of months, don't take a system that's got 90 percent of the features that you need.
00:33:31.999 --> 00:33:35.598
Wait for the one for 100 percent because it will be out there.
00:33:35.798 --> 00:33:37.118
It's just about finding it.
00:33:37.118 --> 00:33:38.019
So that's the other one.
00:33:38.489 --> 00:33:44.249
Then I think, for me, it's about that communication with the guest as you touched on and we touched on it with seven rooms.
00:33:44.409 --> 00:33:50.598
I think there's a lot more that can be done, especially from some of the big brands in terms of really messaging food and beverage in.
00:33:50.808 --> 00:33:54.179
Pre arrival emails, because I don't think it's done properly.
00:33:54.398 --> 00:34:00.608
And I get why they have a global standard of how the arrival email should look like and the website should look like.
00:34:00.638 --> 00:34:14.358
But how many times do you go on one of the big brands websites, go to the hotel and it tells you absolutely nothing about the restaurant or bar, or if it does, it's the elevator pitch with one image and you're left trying to work out what's going on.
00:34:14.599 --> 00:34:23.079
and I think that's where they can make some big, Differences from a guest perspective to help keep those, get those people excited about visiting the restaurant.
00:34:23.259 --> 00:34:35.949
And then obviously, the biggest turnoff for a local guest or a non hotel guest is to go on a, Marriott Hilton intercontinental, a car website that's got a really bland restaurant page on it.
00:34:35.949 --> 00:34:36.969
It just doesn't attract anyone.
00:34:37.608 --> 00:34:38.039
And then.
00:34:38.653 --> 00:34:47.844
sitting inside food and beverage and what can food and beverage do, I would automate as many tasks as you can back of house to get your team front of house.
00:34:48.074 --> 00:34:58.143
So if your chef is spending too much time counting stock, get him an inventory system that can scan barcodes or has QR codes on again that can automatically do it.
00:34:58.153 --> 00:35:05.793
So he can pass that off to a junior member of staff who might need development and get the chef on the floor in front of guests and talking to people.
00:35:06.184 --> 00:35:17.273
The same, for labor cost and timesheets and things like the purchase orders, automate it and get your people back on the floor because that's where they'll make the revenue and that's where they'll make guests happy.
00:35:17.273 --> 00:35:19.384
And it means they can spend more time with them.
00:35:19.434 --> 00:35:32.224
and then, we touched on it with seven rooms, but I'd really put a lot of effort into as part of that automation, how can you automate guest experience so that your team don't even have to understand.
00:35:32.483 --> 00:35:34.974
That stuff is happening in the background and it's working.
00:35:35.003 --> 00:35:36.614
I'll give you a classic example.
00:35:36.853 --> 00:35:40.123
I was showing the, the director of sales and marketing yesterday on seven rooms.
00:35:40.393 --> 00:35:48.974
So we have an automation set up on seven rooms in the restaurant that when someone cancels after one week, they get an email automatically from the system that's preset.
00:35:49.208 --> 00:35:50.998
That says, we're really sorry.
00:35:50.998 --> 00:35:52.248
You had to cancel last week.
00:35:52.259 --> 00:35:55.768
If you're making plans again this weekend, why don't you give us a try?
00:35:55.958 --> 00:35:59.579
Here's a private booking link and we'll make sure that you get special attention.
00:36:00.168 --> 00:36:06.668
We've made, per month in the last four months of it being implemented, we've made about 4, 000 pounds.
00:36:07.079 --> 00:36:07.668
So what's that about?
00:36:07.668 --> 00:36:10.159
5, 000 probably in revenue a month.
00:36:10.273 --> 00:36:16.114
Just from that one email from where people have canceled and obviously got the email and gone, actually, that's a really nice touch.
00:36:16.164 --> 00:36:17.614
Let's book to go there next week.
00:36:17.853 --> 00:36:19.264
And it just shows that attention.
00:36:19.364 --> 00:36:25.813
And again, seven rooms is linked to the EPOS so I can start seeing some of that data and I can start really tracking it.
00:36:25.813 --> 00:36:37.393
But how can you automate personalization to really get the guests to understand that you value their custom and you value their loyalty and you can turn them into fans for the.
00:36:37.673 --> 00:36:40.813
Business because once you do, they'll keep coming again and again.
00:36:40.943 --> 00:36:51.474
And then the challenge with that is how do you tell seven rooms that after every fifth visit, they get a special message from the restaurant manager that says, thank you for coming five times.
00:36:51.474 --> 00:36:58.893
Next time you come in, have a glass of champagne on me because we really value your custom and all those little things then start adding up and you start really.
00:36:59.909 --> 00:37:02.509
creating a real base of business on there.
00:37:02.559 --> 00:37:10.028
the other one on seven rooms that, and I don't want to plug them too much, but, it's just good examples and lots of other reservation systems do this as well.
00:37:10.028 --> 00:37:12.789
But, we send feedback forms to every single guest.
00:37:12.998 --> 00:37:16.188
if it's constructive, it comes straight back to the restaurant manager.
00:37:16.199 --> 00:37:17.849
We deal with it straight away.
00:37:17.909 --> 00:37:21.739
if it's positive, they get asked to put a review on Google and TripAdvisor.
00:37:21.789 --> 00:37:30.289
and the stats that we've got in some of our restaurants in terms of, Google reviews, frequency before to after is a significant increase.
00:37:30.298 --> 00:37:41.148
So again, from a social proof perspective, it helps convert some of those people who thinking about coming might've seen some of that user generated content and just need that little final tip over the edge.
00:37:41.708 --> 00:37:45.289
Getting lots of reviews every week definitely helps with that.
00:37:45.338 --> 00:37:51.148
use that automation, personalize experience, help with your social proof, help with your marketing.
00:37:51.429 --> 00:37:52.969
and it really does make a big difference.
00:37:52.969 --> 00:37:55.088
And, I always talk about how.
00:37:55.423 --> 00:38:05.134
I worked in hotels for 15 years and I moved into independent restaurants for nine years and learned how to run restaurants properly in the nine years more than the 15.
00:38:05.673 --> 00:38:11.304
That's one of the things that great restauranteurs do that hoteliers still don't do in every location.
00:38:11.304 --> 00:38:13.034
Effectively is that whole.
00:38:14.273 --> 00:38:30.324
Personalization and using the reservation systems, not as a booking engine, but as a revenue tool and a yielding tool and an inventory tool that can help them drive revenue, but at the same time, creating amazing, memorable experiences for the guest before they've even arrived or after they've gone.
00:38:31.724 --> 00:38:32.034
Yeah.
00:38:32.603 --> 00:38:34.304
One last thread, Scott.
00:38:34.643 --> 00:38:37.653
Talk about non traditional food service inside of the hotels.
00:38:37.914 --> 00:38:44.853
Whether that be poolside, whether that be the coffee shop, whether that be other ways to drive additional revenue that people need to think about.
00:38:44.853 --> 00:38:48.034
Because, again, as a frequent traveler, you are as well.
00:38:48.324 --> 00:38:53.664
You hate it when you show up to the Starbucks or whatever it is and there's a line of 40 people and you're gonna have to now wait.
00:38:54.233 --> 00:38:58.514
Talk about the other ways that you can engage F& B in venues.
00:38:58.809 --> 00:39:03.969
To go beyond room service and just making a reservation at the main dining room, type of deal.
00:39:03.978 --> 00:39:12.059
There's lots of different ways that you can engage with those guests, deliverable, memorable experiences, and ultimately drive, top line revenue.
00:39:12.474 --> 00:39:12.764
Yeah.
00:39:12.764 --> 00:39:21.753
again, and I always say in projects that we work with is we look at, we, even though our core market is hotels, we still work with restaurants.
00:39:22.023 --> 00:39:23.213
Why do we work with restaurants?
00:39:23.213 --> 00:39:24.333
Because we want to see what's.
00:39:24.898 --> 00:39:28.168
Coming up, what's in trend, what's innovating in the space.
00:39:28.438 --> 00:39:31.318
So we always look at that from a digital perspective as well.
00:39:31.748 --> 00:39:59.329
you've had Troy Hooper on here, Pepper Lunch restaurants, installation of kiosks, McDonald's installation of kiosks and click and collect and order on the app and things like that, I, what you've got to remember in hotels is I'm not saying it's right in every single hotel because absolutely in Ritz Carlton, if you walk in and there's a kiosk there, you're going to be like what's going on, but in the right type of hotels, things like that can make a massive difference to it.
00:39:59.418 --> 00:39:59.889
To stay.
00:39:59.889 --> 00:40:04.849
So we work with a hotel group called the social hub based out of Amsterdam.
00:40:04.849 --> 00:40:06.619
They've got 19 hotels in Europe.
00:40:06.838 --> 00:40:08.918
we just did a grab and go concept for them.
00:40:09.159 --> 00:40:13.179
Their target market is lifestyle hotel, and they've got student accommodation.
00:40:13.389 --> 00:40:17.878
We have a grab and go concept, which is very much kind of specialty coffee shop stroke Delhi.
00:40:18.148 --> 00:40:21.938
and within that we built, order ahead, click and collect into there.
00:40:22.119 --> 00:40:29.389
student app so people can order in the bedrooms, come down on the way to go and study and then just grab the coffee that's sitting there waiting.
00:40:29.748 --> 00:40:38.248
But equally we have, we have, the kiosk sitting in there as well so that people can just go up and use the kiosk and drop in their order.
00:40:38.768 --> 00:40:39.248
And then.
00:40:40.619 --> 00:40:45.759
Because it's a student hotel, they've got lots of people in there that's going through it 24 hours a day.
00:40:45.818 --> 00:40:51.369
And we looked at vending machines for some of the kind of 24 hour items that you would want.
00:40:51.378 --> 00:40:55.918
You come back from a night out, you want maybe one more beer or some munchies or something like that.
00:40:56.239 --> 00:40:59.818
and we looked at kind of high end vending machines, which.
00:41:00.074 --> 00:41:07.454
On the market now, that whole space has really developed and it isn't just the cheesy ones used to get in the swimming pools and things like that anymore.
00:41:07.653 --> 00:41:17.653
You can really give it a luxury feel with the right product placements inside with the right curation of the items to deliver a service 24 hours a day that is still on brand.
00:41:17.934 --> 00:41:19.393
That's some other examples.
00:41:19.443 --> 00:41:30.193
I saw a post the other week about, and I'm actually speaking to the company next week about how you can do a similar sort of thing to Amazon fresh, and Amazon go, but in a hotel in a smaller version.
00:41:30.253 --> 00:41:32.304
So there's that convenience piece there.
00:41:32.344 --> 00:41:44.503
So again, if you've got underutilized spaces that aren't being used, to put something like that in again, in the right location, Could be a great revenue earner, and it doesn't need manning because it's all looked after from a tech perspective.
00:41:44.873 --> 00:41:50.753
and then if we go out to, beach clubs and pool sides, we're working with a hotel right now.
00:41:50.753 --> 00:41:52.494
They've got 280 beds.
00:41:52.554 --> 00:42:04.873
Their format right now is, if you want to order you go up to the Counter and you order food and when we were going in, everyone, we spoke to whether it was the guests and they have 5, 000 leisure members there as well.
00:42:04.873 --> 00:42:09.853
So whether it was guests, whether it was team, whether it was management, everyone was frustrated by queues.
00:42:10.333 --> 00:42:18.563
So again, we looked at, we looked there at how we can install digital menu boards so that when people are queuing.
00:42:19.338 --> 00:42:27.438
They can see the menu quicker, we can start using it for day partying and we can start looking at how we utilize promotions to drive spend.
00:42:27.748 --> 00:42:33.938
We've looked at QR ordering on the beds so that we can, get orders out to people and they're not waiting to queue.
00:42:34.248 --> 00:42:37.278
And more importantly with that is we're starting to get second drinks.
00:42:37.668 --> 00:42:42.068
We split counters so that we've got drinks out of one and food out of the other.
00:42:42.068 --> 00:42:48.378
We've got the QR code so we can get the upsell revenue instead of someone having to go wait 20 minutes in a bathing suit.
00:42:48.918 --> 00:43:04.478
To order a coke, for example, so we're looking at all those touch points of what frustrates the guest, what slows them down back to where I said before, you know what, where is it difficult for people to buy and what would they like to see and look at how you can bring.
00:43:04.858 --> 00:43:09.278
Some of those elements and digitize them so that it doesn't take extra resource.
00:43:09.278 --> 00:43:12.548
It makes it more efficient, and this isn't about cutting staff.
00:43:12.548 --> 00:43:29.829
This is about putting the staff where they needed the most, which is talking to guests and interacting with guests and going back to that old fashioned hospitality, because that's the bit that people are going to remember, because right now, if you make it difficult for them, that's the bit to remember, not the other side of it.
00:43:29.898 --> 00:43:34.498
So you can put as many people on the floor as you want, but if you still make it difficult to buy.
00:43:35.003 --> 00:43:37.643
That is the bit that the guest will remember, not the other side.
00:43:37.693 --> 00:43:39.423
yeah, so we're doing quite a lot at the minute.
00:43:39.423 --> 00:43:51.054
We're quite tech focused, we like to digitize things where it makes sense, but still retain the old fashioned hospitality that everyone knows and loves from staying in hotels or being in restaurants and bars as well.
00:43:51.054 --> 00:44:03.353
I think that's a fantastic place to, to wrap up Scott, you've, you've offered so much, so many different ideas that restaurants, hotels, everybody across the board, can, can evaluate their own, experience and say, how do I implement what Scott shared?
00:44:03.353 --> 00:44:06.014
So if they want to engage with you, they want to get connected.
00:44:06.023 --> 00:44:06.853
How can they do that?
00:44:06.853 --> 00:44:16.373
How can they engage with your firm or yourself personally to learn more about how you might be able to help them, their hotel, their whole, their restaurant brand to implement some of the stuff that you're talking about.
00:44:16.728 --> 00:44:17.338
Yeah, for sure.
00:44:17.338 --> 00:44:19.489
There's the best place to find me is on LinkedIn.
00:44:19.498 --> 00:44:23.938
So Scott Turner, Scott with one T, so Troy calls me Scott with one T from across the pond.
00:44:24.168 --> 00:44:25.929
yeah, on LinkedIn, have a look.
00:44:26.333 --> 00:44:30.474
by the way, trying to type your name, autocorrect, corrects it to two T's every single time
00:44:30.483 --> 00:44:30.943
Always.
00:44:30.974 --> 00:44:33.344
I know I blame my mom and dad every day about that.
00:44:33.403 --> 00:44:35.733
who was to know that was going to be a problem then.
00:44:35.934 --> 00:44:37.003
So yeah, find me on linkedin.
00:44:37.393 --> 00:44:39.393
I post every single day on linkedin as well.
00:44:39.393 --> 00:44:41.914
Just trying to offer as much value for people as possible.
00:44:42.213 --> 00:44:44.103
the company page is on there as well.
00:44:44.103 --> 00:44:46.784
So Auden hospitality, A U D E N.
00:44:46.784 --> 00:44:48.311
and it's Auden hospitality.
00:44:48.501 --> 00:44:49.041
com as well.
00:44:49.081 --> 00:44:50.340
But, yeah, hit me up on linkedin.
00:44:50.670 --> 00:44:54.208
Let's, sing me a D DM and let's chat and just have a, conversation.
00:44:54.358 --> 00:44:59.277
A conversation about how we can improve F and B because it's something that I'm super passionate about.
00:44:59.277 --> 00:45:06.032
Scott, it's a, it's definitely been a pleasure getting connected after so many years on, on LinkedIn being connected, but not being able to see each other and, and do this.
00:45:06.038 --> 00:45:07.882
So thank you for, for joining me into our audience.
00:45:07.882 --> 00:45:08.092
Guys.
00:45:08.097 --> 00:45:10.253
We know that you guys got lots of choices, as I say at the onset.
00:45:10.253 --> 00:45:13.853
So thank you guys for spending 45 minutes with us and make it a great day.
00:45:16.463 --> 00:45:19.793
Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast.
00:45:20.402 --> 00:45:21.353
Visit www.
00:45:21.402 --> 00:45:22.503
RestaurantTechnologyGuys.
00:45:22.543 --> 00:45:27.432
com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.
