PHOENIX — As hotel operations shift to accommodate smaller labor pools and guests at varying comfort levels, hotel restaurants, bars and other food-and-beverage outlets have followed suit.

The overarching theme of hotel food and beverage as the world emerges from COVID-19 seems to be “less is more done better,” according to Adam Crocini, senior vice president and global head of food and beverage brands for Hilton.

In a panel titled “Hotel Food and Beverage in a Post-COVID World” at the 2021 Lodging Conference, Crocini and other hotel company food and beverage executives agreed that the pivot to streamlining options, while focusing on quality, is both a necessity and garnering positive reception from guests and hotel owners.

“In May 2020, we started hearing back from ownership and we pivoted to create a new breakfast experience for Hampton and Homewood that focused on finding out what the consumer really wanted,” Crocini said. “It didn’t have to be 70 items. We focus now on a classic American breakfast. We tested it for seven months, and in May we launched the new programs.”

He said that return to the basics has driven high guest satisfaction scores and will continue post-pandemic.

“We don’t see developing more items; we think that if anything, we’ll refine them further,” he said.

Supply-chain slowdowns and staff shortages create headaches in hotel food and beverage in particular, but Meaghan Goedde, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Sage Restaurant Concepts at hotel development and management company Sage Hospitality Group, said by streamlining offerings, chefs and hotels can have flexibility to use what’s available.

Sage recently opened Catbird, an extended-stay hotel in Denver, that offers free breakfast. But instead of a full menu, Goedde described the concept as a “chef’s counter.”

“Our chef offers one item a day, which lets us have some control,” she said. “It’s one really great breakfast sandwich, with a veggie option and a meat option. It’s chef-driven, so it’s based on what he has and what’s available and it’s served us really well.”

Brian Contreras, director of corporate operations and global franchise for Hyatt Hotels Corp., said that scaling back the number of items offered and focusing on “favorites we knew our guests wanted” helped both operations and supply-chain logistics.

Buffets are still part of hotel service, but speakers said they and others continually experiment with the best and safest ways to use them since in most cases, tearing out the hardware really isn’t an option.

Crocini cited an experiment Hilton did at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, a Honolulu resort that typically receives huge breakfast buffet volume. The property tested technology that allowed guests to apply a plastic glove before serving themselves on the buffet. That only got about 50% satisfaction, he said.

Other ways in which hotels are adapting buffets include “placing individually portioned food on the buffet, so guests grab one plate or serving, or having someone serve the guest from the buffet,” he said.

Formal room service has likely changed for good, speakers said, though the shift away from formal table service to casual delivery was already in adaptation; the pandemic just accelerated it.

Crocini said traditional room service is a heavy cost for owners with no discernible financial upside, so Hilton is looking into a “knock-and-drop model” brand standard at some hotels, in which staff deliver room service in to-go containers, or guests pick it up.

Cocktails, particularly batched and to-go cocktails, have been another pandemic-era win for hotel bars that operators say aren’t going anywhere.

Goedde called to-go cocktails “a real silver lining” to the lean months. Her team did brisk business in to-go alcohol, often in large formats, and even did pop-up concepts around their cities.

Contreras and Crocini said these types of cocktails are definitely still on the menu at Hyatt and Hilton hotels moving forward.

“Pre-COVID, we saw some of these trends, like pouched cocktails and prebatched cocktails in jars, at high-end hotels, but now that’s how people want them because of safety reasons,” Crocini said.

Many hotels with significant kitchen space looked to ghost kitchen options — or variations of leasing out the space to other restaurants or operators — during the pandemic.

The idea was good, but Crocini and Contreras said there were some concerns that made execution tricky, such as dealing with heavy union-labor markets, and other elements that pop up when you start working with third-party operators.

At the same time, hoteliers noticed an uptick in guests using third-party delivery services during the pandemic, when many restaurants were closed and people who were traveling generally stuck to themselves.

That spurred some business ideas as well as operating regulations.

In August, Hyatt rolled out a pilot program with third-party delivery platform Gopuff to offer free deliveries of snacks, drinks and necessities at some Hyatt Place locations.

“The transaction has to occur in public spaces; we’re not allowing deliveries to the guestroom,” he said. “Everything is directed to the front desk or lobby area.”

Crocini said it’s important to create structure around how outside deliveries come into the building, but management has to acknowledge “that puts more stress on your front-desk staff.”

Goedde said Sage, which operates typically higher-end restaurant concepts, had luck riffing off some of its well-known concepts and creating secondary concepts.

“In Denver, everyone knows our restaurant Urban Farmer,” she said. “We created a secondary concept called Little Farmer to take advantage of that to-go model.”

People order online, choosing from food items specifically designed to work well in a carryout format, Goedde said. “We created this all ourselves, in our kitchens with our experiences, not using third parties. It’s an interesting market, and we’ll keep our eyes on it.”

As with all hospitality scenarios, labor continues to be the toughest part of food and beverage operations.

Goedde called the labor situation “a mess” and said in many cases, profitability means outlets are restricted in hours.

“We had to evaluate our meal periods, see what was profitable and get really lean and mean,” she said. “We decide when to open based on staffing. Since a lot of people are suffering burnout, we’ve had to make decisions in some cases to open outlets only for dinner, not breakfast or lunch.”

Contreras said that since business has come back faster than staffing, Hyatt has had to “be really strategic and creative with what we can offer based on the staffing we have,” which extends to banquet and catering service in particular.

“It’s all about how clever can you be, formulating a banquet and catering menu that’s sustainable, executable and can be done with the staff you have.”

Goedde said at this point, culture is more important than ever, and restaurant culture tends to attract people who need to feel fulfilled.

“Among F&B people, the people who are left are the pirates and the crazy people who love it,” she said. “The people who left are not coming back. So you absolutely have to create an environment where your chefs are happy to be there.”

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