Park Hotel introduces the Park Picnic, Right in Your Own Room

THE PARK Hotel chain has introduced a variant of in-room dining which bring a picnic into the guest room. This extension of the room service menu, which is served in stylish powder-coated stainless steel dubbas, presents a mix of dishes for a meal for one, which definitely has elements of nostalgia worked into the theme.

The concept called ‘The Park Picnic’ was introduced to on August 1 and is available across seven Park properties, in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Navi Mumbai, Visakhapatnam and Bangalore.

The menus are broadly divided into Indian, Asian, Italian themes, with a tea time dubba with what you would expect for an Indian version of chai ka nashta.

Abhishek Basu, the Executive Chef at The Park, New Delhi, who we met while tasting the new menus began by saying that the new concept was addressing a need which the hotel had seen. “There are a lot of guests who stay with family and while one member may be at a meeting, there are those in the room who need some excitement,” he began by telling us. The whole concept, took around four months to put together, but since then, it’s been great.

“The reception we have got from guests is phenomenal. Everyday, we get orders from the Park Picnic menu and people are excited about the concept as well,” he said. The Park Picnic menu is presented to the rooms in addition to the existing room menu. The hotel in Delhi gave us the feedback that they were receiving at least 3 to 4 orders for the new experience.

The food is very home-style and really banks on the comfort factor, something which a lot of long stay guests crave for. We are guessing that would be a large part of the target audience.

“We just ask guests to give us 45 minutes to an hour to get the picnic experience together for them,” Basu added. The whole experience includes a trolly, where the dubba arrives along with powder coated stainless steel thalis as well as a picnic cloth like spread. All of this is laid out for you in your room, wherever you want it.

Basu told us that each hotel has its own variants of the Park Picnic menu. Costs start at Rs 775 (for kids vegetarian dubba) to Rs 1695 (for the non vegetarian variant of Asian or Indian). It’s a meal with a soup or beverage, two courses and dessert, so quite filling actually.