Hotel F&B Thoughts & Solutions

F&B Directors: if you’re promoting the same specials and menus to all of your Happy Hour guests, you’re missing revenue opportunities.  “One size doesn’t fit all” in 2011.

Most hotel bars, the ones I know, are indeed Happy, having offerings at a specified period described by them as “happy hour”.  What is “happy hour” anyway? Well, the phrase is a marketing term that refers to a high value offering at a drinking establishment during the late afternoon to early evening hours. There are several stories about its origin. The one that resonates best with me is centered around Prohibition.

Restaurants could no longer serve beverage alcohol, as you know. So, customers would visit their favorite speakeasy first, then go off to their spirits/beer/wine-free restaurant, sufficiently lubricated. But a euphemism was needed to describe a newly-illegal activity. Apparently it wasn’t cool to announce that you were “going to an illegal bar”.  “Happy hour”, possibly borrowed from the Navy, became that euphemism.

Whether true or not, the term as we use it today gained widespread popularity in the early sixties.

Why does the term remain popular, even in the face of legal obstacles in several states? Because the occasions that drive it are as commonplace today as ever. In other words, customer demand is strong.

Those occasions are:

• Before dinner
• After work
• After a day of meetings in a hotel

These occasions may seem like different ways to say the same thing, but in fact they are not. Recognizing the difference can help a bar, especially hotel bar, develop strategy and promote more effectively.

• The pre-dinner customer is likely to be a hotel guest, and pre-dinner usually means dinner outside the hotel.
• The after-meetings guest may be a hotel guest as well, or may be a local who attended a meeting.
• And the after-work customer will be a local.

How else are the occasions different? For one thing, pre-dinner is a seven-nights-a-week occasion, the others are four to five nights. Pre-dinner potential at a hotel bar is driven by occupancy and mitigated by the number of in-house receptions.

After-work potential is driven by the day of the week – Friday is the highest traffic Happy Hour, and Tuesday is the second-highest traffic Happy Hour. This potential will be moderated by numerous hard-to-predict local variables such as weather and traffic conditions.

After-meetings should be easy to project if a hotel has good communications with its meeting planners. Planned functions, or their absence, will be primary indicators here, as will the nature of booking: local group or in-house group.

Next week’s blog will illustrate a very specific strategic approach, based on the Happy Occasion, and it’s easy to implement.

Those are my thoughts, let me know yours.

The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming is a great, hilarious movie from 1966. That’s the same year Woody Allen urged us to try the Moscow Mule cocktail.

Russia’s most famous cocktail. Well, not exactly their cocktail, actually it’s American.

Regardless, the Moscow Mule is back. What is it back from, and why is this important? The answer to the first part of the question is the forties, fifties and sixties. The second part is a little more involved.

First, what is a Moscow Mule anyway? It’s a cocktail made with vodka, ginger beer and lime. Sometimes simple syrup is added, which seems like overkill as ginger beer has ample sugar. One of its unique features is that the Moscow Mule is traditionally and “properly” served in a copper mug.

Why it’s popular today is partly due to the rebirth of “cocktailism” and the newfound respect for the great classic cocktails: the Mule is at least a semi-classic. But there’s another reason: 45 years after Woody Allen mugged for Smirnoff, Oprah has let it be known that the Moscow Mule is now her favorite cocktail.

The Moscow Mule origin is a fun and interesting story. It involves both New York and Hollywood. Of course. There were these two guys in a bar. Really. In fact, they were in a hotel bar. One worked for a distillery that made a product no one in America wanted or even knew about. The other one owned a bar and an interest in a soft drink franchise that left him way overstocked in another unknown product, ginger beer. Legend has it that a third person, a woman, was present and had somehow acquired an inventory of copper mugs.

The little known distilled product mentioned in the previous paragraph was vodka and the distillery was Smirnoff, which had been purchased by G.F. Heublein Brothers, Inc. for $14,000.  In 1941 the most popular spirit in America was gin, but what happened at New York’s Chatham Hotel Bar on this day would ultimately bring about the “fall” of gin in favor of vodka.  The players were John G. Martin of Heublein and John “Jack” Morgan, President of Cock ‘n’ Bull Products (which produced ginger beer) and proprietor of the Cock ‘n’ Bull Tavern, a bar on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles popular with celebrities. While the inspiration occurred in New York’s Chatham Hotel Bar, the drink caught on fire, much like the Margarita, in Hollywood and its environs.

And there are many more Mule-related stories. There are stories behind copper drinking vessels which were used in ancient times, and more recently by American colonists. There are plenty of stories behind ginger beer. And vodka, of course.

OK. Interesting, but so what?

The answer is “stories are important”. We all love stories. They are the building blocks for developing a Mixology Culture or Cocktail Culture for your bar. There are similar stories for nearly every well-known, and certainly every “classic” cocktail.

What is your point of difference, what separates you from the competition? Your competitor can carry the same products, show the same TV shows and play the same music you do. But your bartenders are unique to your establishment. What if your cocktail list has a Moscow Mule and your bartenders, every bartender, could talk about the Oprah connection or the Smirnoff connection or the “hotel bar” connection? The message isn’t “you should have a Moscow Mule in your bar”, it’s “use the great cocktail stories to build a culture of high quality for your bar”.

Those are my thoughts, let me know yours.

Once last month I was thinking too hard and managed to work myself right into a contradiction. I was at a property roughly 75 miles from Wine Country.  I was congratulating management on their wine promotion, a simple but effective Best Practice, how I reported it. I was also congratulating myself on congratulating management as this would reinforce the Company’s excellent wine sales culture that I had supported in previous reports and meetings.

Regrettably, while compiling the report I encountered a sinister force trying to destroy the superb writing and brilliant conclusions of my masterful report: data. Oops. 

Turns out, the customer didn’t follow the well-merchandised direction: “drink more wine…drink more wine…” This is the thing about customers, that just when you expect them to do just one simple thing…well, you know.

Previously I had looked at sales, or the beverage mix. So, the spirits-beer-wine mix might be 30% – 32% – 38%. Great, we’re selling more wine. Keep it up. Promote wine. Good job. Report emailed.

Then I stumbled across some additional information. By “stumbled across” I mean I decided to look at the other data contained in the sales mix report. The other data was “number of items sold” though it wasn’t labeled clearly and this will continue to be my excuse for missing it first time around.

So, it turns out, incidents of beer sales surpass, significantly, incidents of spirits or wine sales in the lounge. Of course spirits and wine sales are critical and must be promoted, but promoted strategically. In fact wine sales and incidents of wine sales dominate room service beverage, for example.

But back to beer. Digging some more. Beer at this location wasn’t discounted significantly. Craft and imports were popular. The beer selection paled (pun?) next to the wine selection. There is a wine list but no beer list. There was excess capacity in the beer cooler. Management is smart and open minded. In other words, all of the usual obstacles were gone, and opportunities abound.

The hotel is adjusting inventories, re-writing beverage menus and developing new promotions. Adding some taps in the Lounge. Ratcheting up room service wine promos. All because of some data.

Six months from now I’ll request an updated mix and overall sales analysis,  and we’ll see happened. We’ll see together – I’ll share it here.

Those are my thoughts, let me know yours.