The limited-service hotel concept is constantly growing. While guests are becoming more price-conscious, the price alone no longer makes the difference.
According to RATIONAL Kitchen & Catering Equipment Trading, there are other factors gaining importance: from the mattress and hairdryer, to the design of the bar, and the food and beverage menu. Some hotel chains are already getting to grips with this trend and have found the right answer for them: sophisticated F&B concepts.
When staying at a limited-service hotel, you can rely on a few things: friendliness, a comfortable bed and the food. This is of course on condition that it follows a clever food and beverage concept, which accommodates guests’ wishes, but doesn’t lose sight of the costs.
“Focus on offering just a few dishes that are easy to prepare. For consistently high quality, you can use a combi-steamer such as a Rational unit,” says Simon Parke-Davis, managing director at RATIONAL Kitchen & Catering Equipment Trading FZCO.
“Rational sees itself as a complete solutions provider, which is why we start looking after our customers long before the installation of the first unit,” he adds.
As such, limited-service hotels are developing their food concepts together with RATIONAL or independently, and then working out the right recipe with them. Once the cooking process has been developed, this is often transferred to all units at all locations with a single click using ConnectedCooking, RATIONAL’s networking solution.
The company then trains employees using a certain mechanism, ensuring reliable results to guarantee quality. Parke-Davis says: “The SelfCookingCenter has pre-installed shopping carts in which the various dishes are sorted by theme.”
The “Breakfast” shopping cart is popular among a lot of hotels, as it includes sausages, grilled tomatoes, fried eggs and mushrooms. Products in a given shopping cart can be cooked together. Kitchen staff simply need to place the desired food items in the unit, and then take them out again when the corresponding signal sounds. The cooking system does the rest by itself.
“Each SelfCookingCenter can also be supplied with the option to display planned dishes as images on the user interface from its very first use. Then, all that needs to be done is to tap on the corresponding image and the process will start,” highlights Parke-Davis.
This function is called MyDisplay and is used by many hotels for evening mealtimes. This is because when it’s very late, even the barman may have to go into the kitchen. And if it tastes good, then the hotel will once again have impressed its guests.
