Food and beverage is at an interesting inflection point in hospitality, according to Patrick Berwald of Pyramid Global Hospitality.
The revenge traveler who visited hotels after the pandemic wanted to spend more money and at a higher clip in terms of luxury experiences and products, said Berwald, senior vice president of food and beverage at Pyramid, in a podcast interview with HNN.
It was challenging as a hotel operator to meet that demand for exceptional service, great experiences and fully activated food-and-beverage outlets.
Supply-chain and manufacturer issues were challenging, and still can be challenging now in some cases, he said.
“I think the opportunity is to really recognize the only true differentiator now is experience,” he said. “It's experience through storytelling. It's experience through learning and education. It's experience of guests trying new global cuisines or products or preparations.”
When looking at the spectrum of what all hotels offer, everyone can have a burger or a great egg dish, he said. It matters how hoteliers deliver that experience every single time with education and storytelling at the highest quality possible.
“I think that is going to be what comes down to the differentiating factor of why our guests stay loyal to us, or they go to one of the competitors,” he said.
Amid high demand for food and beverage, hoteliers must be sensitive to people's time now more than ever, Berwald said.
That means if guests are sitting down for an hour-long meal, how can the hotel make things easier for them? It’s about striking the balance in a value proposition of getting a meal kit from the hotel instead of going to the store.
It’s challenging when the necessary fees, labor costs or higher-priced products get pushed down to the customer, he said. Unless the menu item has some added value, the hotel team must find other ways to keep guests engaged.
Years ago, Pyramid recognized that hotel owners needed help in developing their food-and-beverage offerings, Berwald said. The company launched Purple Mynt as a concept development arm that operates as a stand-alone business.
“What we do, essentially, is we build food-and-beverage concepts from the ground up — everything from starting with market analysis feasibility all the way through bringing it to life and all the points in between,” he said. “It's a long journey in some cases, but it's incredibly rewarding.”
Purple Mynt has worked on 60-plus concepts and 12 different concept verticals, he said. The process starts with understanding what is important to the owner and their vision for the hotel or outlet. Food and beverage can be a subjective piece when looking at how it's activated in a hotel, so the process starts with learning the owner's goals.
Among the Purple Mynt projects is the upcoming Okana Resort & Indoor Waterpark that is scheduled to open in February 2025 in Oklahoma City.
For this project, Purple Mynt’s team had to come up with 12 different food-and-beverage concepts that didn’t conflict with each other. It’s competitive, so the goal is to keep people in-house without cannibalizing from one another. There’s a gastropub, a chicken shack in a man-made lagoon as well as a micro food hall.
“We're going for a higher-tier, higher-echelon type of food-and-beverage experience even though it's a water park,” he said.
Another project was 1882 at the Pine Lounge in the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center in Virginia. It’s a historic hotel and foundation of the city's history. The team wanted to tell a story about its history while refreshing the space.
“It got a little bit of a makeover, and that team did a great job of still keeping the essence of that bar and giving a refreshed, modern take on it,” he said. “How do we look back at the history of cocktails, and how do we leverage the history of the locale? So we ultimately came up with a pre-Prohibition experience where we would artfully craft cocktails as they were in the day, presentation and everything.”
To hear more from Pyramid's Patrick Berwald, listen to the podcast embedded above.