Steve Palmer knows a lot about food & beverage. Some would call him an expert, having authored a book on the restaurant business and having been a four-time semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation Awards’ Outstanding Restaurateur.
He’s also the founder/managing partner/chief vision officer of hotel and restaurant management company Indigo Road Hospitality Group (IRHG), which has grown from one restaurant in 2009 to a current portfolio of seven hotels, 10 hotel restaurants and 36 standalone restaurant concepts. At the company’s hotels, F&B contributes 40%–70% of total revenue, outpacing the industry’s usual 20–30%.
So what makes a great hotel F&B outlet, one that both guests and locals choose over any other local establishment and keep coming back to time and again?
“We open a restaurant that we want locals to engage in and is busy all the time, where the cooking reflects all of the ethos of modern-day restaurants,” said Palmer. “By doing that, we inherently think that makes for a better hotel experience and incrementally drives rate.”
Historically, he pointed out, the restaurant has been tucked in the back of the hotel somewhere and “the menu’s got a little bit of this and a little bit of that. None of it executed particularly well, so it’s kind of an afterthought.”
It’s that idea of being “all things to all people” that’s been one of the downfalls of many hotel restaurants, according to Palmer.
“You have to have a particular point of view because that’s the way people dine out,” he said. “When they go to their favorite restaurants, they’re not saying, ‘Let’s go to a restaurant that has a little bit of everything.’ They’re saying, ‘I want Italian tonight’ or ‘I want steak tonight.’”
IRHG’s F&B outlets are designed and marketed as separate businesses where the restaurant or bar is not relying solely on hotel guests.
“We think it just makes for a better hotel experience when there’s a great bar and restaurant that’s engaged by locals,” said Palmer. “The outlet certainly interacts with the hotel, but it has to stand on its own, have its own identity and its own business model. And we think if we do that, it just makes the hotel that much better.”
Palmer offered two hotel restaurants his company manages as examples of outlets that stand out with guests and locals—Luminosa at the Flat Iron Hotel in Asheville, NC, and Osteria Olio at Rivet House in Athens, GA.
“Luminosa is our our Italian-inspired, Appalachian-sourced restaurant,” he said. “We hired Graham House, who is an established local chef, and we told him, ‘We see this is an Italian restaurant with wood-oven pizzas and handmade pastas,’ but then we got out of his way and let him did do what he does. The restaurant has just been a runaway success.”
Osteria Olio, he said, is “packed every night, and I consistently get texts from friends in the area who want to make a reservation two weeks out. Our chef, JR Bearden, has just been phenomenal. He’s engaging the local purveyors in a meaningful way, and the results speak for themselves.”
Palmer offered some advice to hoteliers who wish to include standout restaurants in their hotels.
“From the first time that the pencils are drawn to design the hotel, the restaurant has to be considered,” he said. “You want it visible to the street because you don’t want to have to make your guests go meandering through some long, narrow corridor. You also want to treat it like an independent restaurant, buying from local vendors and engaging with the local community.
He also pointed out that hoteliers don’t have to concept and build a restaurant on their own, especially if they have little or no F&B experience.
“I think hoteliers also should be honest with themselves,” he said. “If they don’t feel like food and beverages is in their wheelhouse, they can always engage a local restaurant group that already has a local following.”
His last bit of advice? “Be willing to spend some more money designing the restaurant. It doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune. Also, be curious about the market you’re in. Eat in the market. What does it not have? Every time we look at a location, the first thing I say is, ‘Take me to the busiest restaurant.’”
