Let me paint you a picture of a typical modern restaurant experience. You and your family sidle up to the hostess stand. Instead of greeting you warmly, the greeter holds up an index finger, telling you to wait. They are busy on the phone, coordinating a DoorDash delivery.
If you came to CES 2024 hungry, there was no shortage of robots whipping up tasty eats and drinks live on the showroom floor. Brands were touting automated food and drink robots with a little something for everyone.
The United States has Cape Canaveral, Canada has Montreal, and France has the Occitanie region. It’s in this French region that one finds Aerospace Valley, a business cluster of hundreds of aviation research and engineering companies and the center of Europe’s aerospace industry. So it makes sense that it’s here that Vincent Farret d’Astiès would choose to found Zephalto, a luxury space travel company. “My initial dream was to offer serenity and a very personal relationship between space and the passengers on board,” Farret d’Astiès tells AD. He hoped to bring space travel to the public—infused with a flare of French art de vivre—in a way that worked in harmony with nature, not against it. Less than a decade later, that fantasy will soon be a reality: Zephalto plans to embark on its first passengered, low-carbon voyage by the end of 2024.
Uber Eats is delisting some of the delivery-only restaurants on its app to help weed out low-quality listings, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company has confirmed to The Verge that it’s introducing a new set of standards for virtual restaurants that should help cut down on listings that sometimes contain the same menu.
The Copenhagen chef René Redzepi says fine dining at the highest level, with its grueling hours and intense workplace culture, has hit a breaking point: “It’s unsustainable.”
Grab-and-go food kept hotel food-and-beverage operations running through the worst of the pandemic, but as guests desire more traditional hotel dining options, the industry is working on finding the right space for this quick and easy offering.
Hilton’s Emma Banks has issued a rallying cry to hoteliers, saying they need to rethink their approach to F&B, which she says is currently a ‘big white space’ to work in. It came as she delivered a keynote speech at GulfHost’s Foodservice Excellence Summit. Day 2 of the Summit was curated by Hotelier Middle East and Caterer Middle East.
For U.S. consumers, hotels are no longer just somewhere to sleep at night. They are increasingly finding hotels a place to relax and unwind. Hotel developers have been including amenities that will boost room rates and occupancy (pools, fitness) but have put limited money into the food and beverage amenities to meet brand standards. Most brands in the U.S. market don’t require upscale hotels to have substantial F&B offerings, so some developers have not included this in their projects.
Even as they struggle to get by day to day, hotels are looking to recruiting efforts to stabilize their operations.
Some hotels are looking to combine the job of executive chef and food and beverage director as staffing issues, inflation and changing consumer behavior have taken on a whole new flavor.
Remember the days when you used to check in at your hotel at midnight after a delayed flight dreaming of having a pampering shower and calling room service to order a juicy hamburger to relax? Well, as sung by UK pop group Bucks Fizz back in the 1980s, “Now Those Days Are Gone.” This experience is getting harder and harder to find. Hotels report that providing room service is almost always a loss for them.
In a new scam targeting restaurants, criminals are leaving negative ratings on restaurants’ Google pages as a bargaining chip to extort digital gift cards. Restaurateurs from San Francisco to New York, many from establishments with Michelin stars, said in recent days that they’ve received a blitz of one-star ratings on Google, with no description or photos, from people they said have never eaten at their restaurants. Soon after the reviews, many owners said, they received emails from a person claiming responsibility and requesting a $75 Google Play gift card to remove the ratings. If payment is not received, the message says, more bad ratings will follow.
Hotel breakfasts aren’t what they used to be. The pandemic has changed them, sometimes making them better, sometimes making them more expensive and sometimes making them vanish. And as many travelers are about to discover this summer, the changes may be permanent.
Just weeks before Christmas, with the restaurant industry reeling again from the omicron variant, chef Tom Colicchio was tweeting about penetrating the metaverse. In a series of tweets, he announced CHFTY Pizzas, a new NFT (non-fungible token) venture with Top Chef alum Spike Mendelsohn. The company’s website promises that owners of the NFTs — a “minting,” or release, of 8,888 unique pizza designs onto secure digital tokens — will enjoy “one-of-a-kind physical and virtual experiences” and “future integration into the expanding metaverse.” Colicchio’s pies are still in the virtual oven, but according to CHFTY’s Discord channel, a pre-sale will be offered to its “Slicelist” members on March 23 and to the public shortly thereafter with an initial supply of 2,777 NFTs priced at .07 ethereum each (at publication time, the equivalent of around $200). On paper, the total proceeds from these sales would surpass a half million dollars, which, any way you slice it, is a lot of extra cheese.
Lilly Jan is a lecturer of food and beverage at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. She brings nearly 15 years of experience across the hospitality and foodservice sectors, including catering and events, retail, and television production. Prior to joining Cornell, she was the Director of Culinary Operations for Newbury College in Brookline, Massachusetts. Lilly also served as a faculty member and academic advisor at Newbury College, creating and teaching a range of classes across culinary and hospitality management. She has also taught for Le Cordon Bleu and Boston University.
As part of the recent Global Hospitality Summit organized by the International Hospitality Insititute Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration Professor Lilly Jan spoke about upcoming food and beverage trends, which given the ups and downs with COVID, there were a few surprises!
I’m eavesdropping on the pre-service line-up at Davies and Brook in Claridge’s, a huddle of 20 or so staff led by general manager Anneka Brooks. Usually, line-ups are a chance to catch up on new dishes or prep for VIP guests. This one is a little different. Alongside menu updates and points of service, the team is sharing thoughts and fears and making affirmations in ways you’d expect at group therapy.
The Aman aesthetic of serene and gracious hospitality in beautiful, natural surroundings has been firmly planted in our consciousness since the first Aman retreat opened its doors in Thailand in 1988. Since then, the brand’s vision has expanded globally, with the Aman Tokyo taking its place as the first urban hotel in the collection. Now, in October 2021, Tokyo’s Aman is launching its first standalone patisserie at the Ootemori Centre in the Otemachi Tower.
For some travelers, app-based food delivery companies like Grubhub and UberEats have already rendered hotel room service nearly obsolete.
The Irish government is expected to sign off on plans to reopen indoor hospitality later.