How to Make an F&B Heaven

Bikramjit Ray May 03, 2016

AN ARMY marches on its stomach. Famous words attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who I think would have made a pretty good hotel general manager.

Leela Ambience Hotel Gurgaon’s F&B story has to begin at the top, with General Manager Michel Koopman (photo left), who joined the hotel a little more than three years ago with a brief to change it around.

“I love change management. There is only one constant in life and that is change,” he tells me, while we sit inside the jam packed Spectra restaurant in the hotel’s lobby level on a Friday afternoon.

The change was brought in by Koopman and his core team, without forgetting the core value of the hotel, Atithi Devo Bhava.

With a host of restaurants operating on various levels and a usually full banquets space, this is one hotel which is totally confident of its F&B product. Even with competition growing constantly.

“When I joined the hotel, we were number one size wise, now we are number four,” he tells me, but things are looking better all the time, with the hotel making Rs 48 crores from F&B more than they have ever made, though they are no longer the largest hotel. So how did they do it?

“We change the direction of our F&B, we push the effort spent, we go after a different market segments. We think of the social segment as more and more important. We do things which other people don’t. Not many hotels do nice sit down dinner for 500 or more people. I couldn’t do it when I came. So we trained and trained and trained. We changed and we changed and we changed,” he added.

The hotel has 6 F&B outlets: Spectra their all day dining restaurant; Diya their Indian speciality restaurant; Zanotta their Italian restaurant; the Rubicon bar; the Patisserie shop and their al fresco Sky Deck. They also have extensive banqueting facilities.

When Koopman first arrived at his new position he realised there had to be a complete overhaul of the F&B operations of the hotel, from making sure that banqueting staff were well trained to changing the quality of food.

“When I came into the hotel, our food was good, but it didn’t have the wow factor. We had to change that. We decided to get a new executive chef and pastry chef. The interaction between guests and kitchen is most important. Chefs are the rock stars of this generation,” he said.

Speaking of chefs, I got to speak with Ramon Salto, the Executive Chef of the hotel, who was on his way to greener pastures after his three year stint and asked what he did to make his F&B really stand out so consistently over the years.

“When I first arrived at this hotel in 2013, I was given the brief of changing the direction of the F&B. The bosses were not happy with the standards of F&B, they were not happy with the way the restaurants were functioning. They wanted to have a little more modern fresh approach. More guest interaction between the kitchen and guests,” he began by telling me. The problem lay in the old-fashioned mentality of keeping the chefs at the back of the house, he added.

Initially Salto and his team concentrated on Zanotta, changing the menu completely and seeing immediate impact, eventually becoming one of the top five Italian restaurants in the NCR.

The month after, the team did a re-look at Diya, the Indian restaurant, initially going the Indian Accent way and doing modern Indian cuisine, which didn’t click, so they changed it to something the market was ready for. The result? One of the most popular Indian restaurants in town.

“Once Diya was done, we focussed completely on Spectra. Spectra was tough because we didn’t have a chef for six or seven months, so I had to drive the change myself. Basically we had to change everything from A to Z. From suppliers and produce to the team. It’s become very successful. This year, for the first time ever, we crossed our target,” he tells me.

Obviously, the restaurant has two years of solid work behind it, he adds. “It took me a lot of time to change the staff, it was a big outlet--43 chefs, more than five sous chefs. To inspire that many people and to change the menu at the same time, was a tough job, but you see the results before you”, Salto said.

Now we turned to the subject of banqueting, which the hotel really excels in.

Salto began by telling me that he had spent four years of his career just in banquets, doing set menus for six to eight thousand people, buffets for eighteen thousand and more. The first thing that needed to change was the presentation, out went the old row of rice, dal and the works, slowly the team began to work its magic, introducing theme coffee breaks and theme buffets, which took the game to a whole new level.

“We began to get involved in signature corporate events, and weddings which would really showcase our work to everyone,” he says.

Now, one of the differentiators of the banqueting facilities at the hotel, according to Koopman is the restaurant quality experience you get at an event of function.

Here, I got to know a little more about how this was so from Dinesh Verma, EAM (F&B) of the hotel.

One of the core focusses for the company is banqueting and there is always a push to bring in the big events and giving them outstanding service, Verma told me. “How can we bring in more personalised services in banquets? We actually work with hotel schools to bring in quality manpower, concentrating on a few colleges,” he said.

The hotel does not need to get in faces they do not know when it comes to extra staffing required for their larger events. They already have a pool of around 100 people who are given regular training, sometimes four times a month, irrespective of whether there are events for them to participate in.

Other than being taught the finer points of restaurant service, these candidates also get tailored uniforms which really makes a difference and gives them a well-groomed appearance when they do work the floor of the banquet hall, he added.

So how does the future look for F&B in the hotel? The next few years are going to be better than ever, Koopman tells me, starting from right now.

“All of my restaurants have had a record year. Where do I see it going? A further push in quality of food and beverage on the banquet floor. I also see a huge opportunity in the pastry side of the business as well, after all, Indians have an enormous sweet tooth,” he told me.

Ultimately, it was about bringing in the new customer. Even if it is for a cup of coffee, to lower the threshold and convert the coffee into a meal. It’s all about, in Koopman’s own words, “more bums on seats, more footfalls in the restaurants”. I couldn’t agree more.