What is the role of food and beverage in the hospitality industry?
The food and beverage (F&B) sector is a powerhouse within the hospitality industry, playing a critical role in employment and revenue generation.
Almost 7% of Australian workers are in Accommodation and Food Services. Meanwhile, in the United States, Accommodation and Food Services businesses have grown 2.3% year-on-year for the past five years.
The F&B experience can greatly influence a guest’s overall satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits, making it a key element in the hospitality industry’s success.
This blog will cover everything you need to know about food and beverage, and how to improve service at your hospitality business.
Table of contents
Why food and beverage is vital to the hospitality industry
The hospitality food and beverage sector holds immense importance, significantly contributing to a property’s financial success and to the guest’s overall experience. Your guests need to eat and drink, so F&B represents a significant revenue generation opportunity for your business – provided it’s done well.
For many hotels and resorts that manage their F&B operations in-house, a quarter of their total revenue is generated from these services. This substantial share highlights just how much value guests place on dining experiences during their stays.
Social media plays a pivotal role in amplifying this value. With 64% of leisure travellers actively sharing their dining experiences on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, F&B not only satisfies palates but also serves as a form of social currency. These shares and posts become personal endorsements, influencing the choices of potential guests and extending the reach of the hotel’s brand.
Furthermore, the F&B experience has a lasting impact on travel decisions, with 86% of travellers stating that positive dining experiences are a key factor in their intention to revisit a destination. This underlines the F&B sector’s role in driving repeat business and fostering guest loyalty, making it clear that exceptional food and drink offerings are both amenities as well as a crucial aspect of the hospitality experience.
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How food and beverage innovation boosts customer satisfaction
For most hotels the quality of food and beverage, and the service that comes with it, has a huge impact on the success of the business. One of the biggest aspects of a holiday is the wonderful food and drink guests hope to enjoy. Your hotel cannot afford to provide a subpar experience in this regard, given it’s often something customers are most passionate about.
Here are four tips for getting your food and beverage service right and enhancing guest experience:
1. Be aware of changing consumer trends
People are becoming increasingly curious and concerned about where their food comes from and how it arrives on their plate.
As travellers start to focus more on health, they’re turning towards local, homegrown food options. This is particularly prevalent in Asia where 48% of Chinese consumers say they prefer to cook at home for health reasons.
Farm-to-table and local sourcing are great examples of this type of cuisine. By using fresh, seasonal produce from local vendors, you can enhance the quality of your menus while reducing your environmental impact. It also gives you the opportunity to showcase regional specialties that your guests may never have encountered before.
Social media is another big influence. While it’s always important for food to look appetising, social media makes it even more important – 62% of Chinese consumers say they post about their food experiences on social media at least once a month; the same figure is 42% in Korea, 40% in Singapore, and 29% in Australia.
The takeaway here is that your hotel’s food should always be restaurant quality, with a focus on local produce and an aesthetic that will appeal to the masses on Facebook and Instagram.
Think of it as a bonus for you; the better your food looks the more free marketing you will get from consumers posting photos and tagging your business.
2. Don’t be afraid to be a little ‘different’ with your menu
Ultimately people travel to experience new things and create lasting memories. Food can be strongly linked to both. If travellers are in a destination they’ve never been to before, chances are they’ll be wanting to experience the tastes of local culture.
People are also more prone to being impulsive and experimental while on holiday, so the more opportunities your menu gives them, the better. Consider chef’s table and open kitchen set ups where your guests gain access to your chefs, or seasonal outdoor dining that makes the most of the beauty of your local area.
Two things you can do at your hotel restaurant is employ a chef who can experiment with flavours and textures, and maintain close ties with local farmers and producers to ensure the authenticity of your meals. But the best tip: don’t be boring!
3. Treat your guests like family coming over for dinner
Terrific customer service is half the battle at your hotel restaurant and/or bar. It’s essential that you be as warm and welcoming as possible to travellers who sit down for a meal or a drink. This is a simple measure to take, but not one that is always followed by hotel staff.
All guests should be treated equally. Don’t let appearances or attire lead you to prioritise certain customers over others. You never know who your biggest spender will be.
It’s also important to tune into the body language of diners. Just because they haven’t asked for anything yet doesn’t mean they don’t need something
The way they’re sitting, looking at their glass, or touching their cutlery could suggest you need to check on them and offer assistance.
Here are some things to remember:
Respect your customer
Make your guest feel important and do it sincerely. They deserve your full attention and for you to be polite and friendly
Be honest
No one likes their trust to be taken for granted so don’t overcommit or break promises. Customers usually prefer honesty.
Take responsibility
If something goes wrong, own it. Even if you don’t see an issue but a customer does, you need to take responsibility for the situation and do everything you can to resolve their issue, rather than taking the attitude of “it’s their problem”.
4. Treat your hotel restaurant as a unique business
Your hotel restaurant should be compatible and reflect the rest of your property but it should also be able to operate as a separate entity, to maximise business.
Obviously, it’s hard for a hotelier to possess the same nuance and attention to detail that dedicated restaurateurs have. But today’s consumer can find out a restaurant’s limitations online in a matter of seconds, and can easily avoid a mediocre dining experience.
A simple tactic you can use is to give every restaurant and bar in your hotel its own name and social media pages, where guests and locals alike can enjoy activities separate to what is happening in the rest of the hotel.
Think about the spaces in your hotel and see if you can repurpose any for the benefit of your food and beverage service.
You should also try to make your prices as reasonable as possible. Lower prices make the public and social areas of the hotel more of a versatile meeting space and destination for locals.
Key trends and changes in the hospitality food and beverage sector
The food and beverage sector is experiencing pivotal changes within the hospitality industry, especially around the issue of food waste, which has come into sharp focus, and which we’ll dive into in the next section.
There are other shifts that a hotelier should be aware of too, including:
- Plant-based dining: It’s critical that your menu features vegetarian and vegan options, and that your kitchen is able to adapt to the needs of your guests in terms of allergies and general tastes and preferences.
- Health-conscious menu options: There are plenty of ways to enhance the health of your menu, from removing deep-fried items to reducing the amount of sugar in your desserts.
- Take-out options: If you already offer room service, consider offering your menu for takeout and delivery too, to significantly expand your market.
Sustainability in hospitality food and beverage
Taking a sustainable approach to F&B offers a number of advantages to a hotel business. It minimises costs, it’s better for the environment, and it creates an enhanced, guilt-free guest experience. Here are just a few ways a hotel can improve the sustainability of its food and beverage operations.
Reducing food waste
Food waste is a huge problem globally. How huge? Around a third of the world’s food is wasted annually: about 1.3 billion tons, leading to an unbelievable $940 billion in economic losses. In the US alone, 40% of food is lost or wasted, which costs an estimated $218 billion, or 1.3% of the country’s GDP.
If we look specifically at hotel kitchens, the issue remains significant. Hotels waste 79,000 tonnes of food annually, and in some kitchens as much as 0.46 kg is wasted per plate.
Leaders in the industry are setting ambitious goals to tackle this issue. Accor Hotels has aimed to cut food waste by 30% by 2030 across all its properties, while Marriott International is striving for a 50% reduction by 2025. These targets are not only environmentally responsible but also financially savvy, as studies indicate that for every dollar spent on reducing food waste, hotels can save an average of seven dollars in operating costs.
Furthermore, efforts to reduce food waste have proven effective, with a Champions 12.3 report stating that hotels seeing a 21% reduction within the first year and 95% of them recouping their investment within two years. The cost of implementing these waste reduction programs is relatively low, with 90% of hotels maintaining their total investment below $20,000, less than 1% of average sales.
These figures underline a growing recognition within the hospitality industry that responsible food and beverage management is crucial, both for sustainability and for the bottom line.
Sourcing locally and responsibly
The smaller the distance food and beverage needs to travel, the lower the costs and environmental effects of that travel. Sourcing locally also helps you to support the local economy, and showcase all that your area has to offer in terms of food and drink.
Be selective with who you choose to buy local products from. All products should be sustainably cultivated and created, with no adverse effects to the environment during the production process.
Eco-friendly packaging and waste reduction
Trade single-use plastics like cups and cutlery for reusable alternatives. Where single use is unavoidable – take-out, for sanitary reasons – choose biodegradable and recyclable alternatives.
Shadi Wijaya,
Corporate Director of Revenue
The Phala Group
How food and beverage shape the guest experience
Eating and drinking are a couple of the more visceral and memorable human experiences. The taste, smell and sight of fine food and delicious drinks can come to define a trip, and linger long in the memory, which can see the happiest guests return on a regular basis.
By investing time, effort and money crafting a unique, high quality drinking and dining experience at your hotel, you give yourself the opportunity to create those guests memories, and enjoy the return customers that are so valuable in the travel industry.
Food and beverage operations
The operations side of food and beverage can be a complex dance, and is really a subject that deserves its own guide. But in broad strokes, a hotel business needs to consider the following aspects of F&B operations:
Services
Hotel F&B operations can provide a range of services, including à la carte and buffet dining, room service, take-out and restocking the minibar. Services may also extend to bars, cafes and event catering, all of which should be tailored to meet guest expectations in terms of quality, variety and efficiency.
Processes & systems
Efficient F&B operations rely on well-defined processes and systems. These include procurement, inventory management, food preparation workflows and hygiene protocols. Modern hotels often use POS (point-of-sale) systems, integrated with inventory software, to track sales, manage stock and streamline billing and reporting.
Staff & roles
The roles within F&B teams will change depending on the hotel and service offerings. Examples include front-of-house staff like servers, bartenders and hosts; back-of-house personnel like chefs and assistants; and leaders like supervisors, restaurant managers and F&B directors.
