The International Foodservice & Manufacturer Association awards Silver Plates in nine different foodservice categories from hotel food and beverage to healthcare. At its 52nd annual banquet and celebration of the awards (Monday, May 22, during the restaurant show in Chicago), IFMA will announce who, among the nine, will receive its Gold Plate award, the association’s (and arguably the industry’s) most prestigious award.

This year’s Silver Plater in the hotel category and one of the favorites to win the Gold Plate (a jury made up of business press editors and previous Silver and Gold Platers decides who that winner will be), is Elizabeth Blau, a Las Vegas-based consultant (Elizabeth Blau &Associates). To understand why, among a field of several exceptional hotel F&B nominees, she deserves the award in this category, one must make note of her work with hotel tycoon, Steve Wynn at the Bellagio, where she persuaded some of this country’s finest and most celebrated chef/owners (Sirio Maccioni and Todd English to name just two) to open restaurants there. And, later, once Wynn had divested himself of his Mirage holdings, she convinced some of the best—yet relatively unknown—chefs in the country to open restaurants in the brand new (it opened April 2005) Wynn Las Vegas.

We will tell you about those other nominees who competed with Blau for the award, but first ... let’s forgive Elizabeth Blau her modesty. It wasn’t so long ago she told this writer that she never would have had the chutzpah to round up the appropriate constituent chefs to work at Bellagio and, subsequently, at the Wynn, had it not been for Wolfgang Puck’s whisking into Vegas in 1992 with Spago at the Forum at Caesar’s Palace. She insists he set the table for subsequent superchefs to lay claim to leased spaces in any one of a number of major hotels/resorts/casinos that line South Las Vegas Blvd.

If that’s true (and we have our doubts), why was there a lengthy hiatus before anyone had the nerve to tag along? Nice that Puck kindled the trend, but it became a dying ember until Blau arrived five years later to reignite it. And she did so with a fire that set Vegas finedining blazing with restaurants darn near matchless.

We talked to Elizabeth Blau about winning this special award.

“The Silver Plate award? It’s recognition by your peers. When I look at who’s won this award over the past 30 years, it’s everybody in the business I admire and respect.

“Steve Wynn gave me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I was fortunate enough to handle restaurant development in two multi-billion dollar properties and to work hard on revolutionizing the way not only food & beverage is done in Las Vegas, but how it’s done around the world.

“The restaurant has become the focus, the anchor—not just in hotels. It’s the power of branded identity, be it celebrity chef or branded concept. Either way, branded restaurants have evolved everywhere: retail malls, casino hotels, condos, an integral amenity in large developments. Chef and the branded concept have become marketing tools.

“That being said, when you talk about celebrity chefs, you are talking about a small number of people, not enough to go around. You eventually reach a point of saturation. The project we are working on with Ritz- Carlton involves supporting internal food & beverage to help create and conceptualize independent restaurants. While your food & beverage executive is running a dayto- day operation, it’s very hard for him or her to devote the time and energy to creating an individual concept from uniforms to menu design to recruitment to finding his next generation talent; to help mold your aspiring young chef. That’s very much the direction our company has gone into: to not only help leases and franchises and celebrity chef deals, but to help develop restaurant concepts internally.

“I have a passion for food. My strong marketing background combined with my operational experience is what gives me the edge. I can look at trends and know how to interpret and apply them conceptually; how to communicate them to the local community; to the visitor/tourist community, to the press, so that the media understands what it is we are doing.

“Communicating to all of those groups differs depending on the market we happen to find ourselves in. To be successful now, we have to embrace the local community, the visitors, the tourists; and be able to tell a story that is special and different so that it gets noticed by local and national press. Our concept—our interpretation and application of a trend—has to reach out to the local clientele. We have to understand what is important to them and what they want in terms of their dining experience. We never want to be behind the trends; we want to be one step ahead of them, so we look for trends in cities such as London, Chicago, New York, San Francisco.”

Contenders
All the nominees for the Silver Plate award in the hotel category were exceptional, but-—admittedly—- they were up against a formidable contender in Blau. We talked to four other nominees about F&B and how it impacts a hotel's sales and image.

Brad Nelson, VP of Culinary and Corporate Chef, Marriott International (Washington, DC) is responsible for identifying culinary trends for 2,700 hotels throughout the world. No easy task. If that weren’t sufficient to keep him busy full-time, he’s also accountable for menu revisions, additions, deletions in the hotels.

“F&B? It’s the heartbeat of the hotel; gives the hotel a personality, it’s an emotional and imperative component to the hotel’s image and success. Most of our guests have a passion for great food, preparation, service, and presentation, so we make every effort to fulfill that passion.

“Even in our limited lodging and extended stay hotels, food & beverage is major—it gives us a competitive edge. F&B is absolutely critical to the image and success and a sense of well-being of our guests; of their being comfortable during their stay with us.

“Our restaurants are a primary marketing factor of the hotels. For example, they might influence a guest to use our banquet and catering services.

“Leasing? We prefer licensing. We want that sort of partnership. We are very good operators. Our F&B infrastructure is first-rate. We have very good systems of quality, specifications, and purchasing in place. Our licensees are very good flavor-profile managers and brand managers of their brand. It’s a good relationship. Regardless of concept, our restaurants must have a sense of place, have to give the guest a true dining option that is competitive among the other restaurants in the area and adds to his or her stay.”

Edward A. Mady,VP and area GM for the Ritz- Carlton Hotel Co., is directly responsible for the San Francisco property while overseeing the management of four other hotels and resorts.

“There are two F&B features to total sales: the a la carte and the function room. You want to focus on a la carte. To us, F&B is a fashion statement, constantly evolving. It has a distinct personality on the a la carte side. All of our restaurants have certain operating criteria. We have various features in them that are unique: they help to reinforce the statement of excellence we make and that, in turn, helps subtly to communicate to our guests that we can do just as well—perhaps even better—in our banquet and catering services.

“The foundation of repeat business in our restaurants and our function rooms is a simple phrase that we use in our orientation and our training: Remember me, recognize me, anticipate my needs, and give me what I want on time. We use it throughout the whole property: it’s a service thought process.

“F&B can be very finicky. As people travel, as they check into your hotels, they are always looking for means and ways to enjoy themselves. You do not want to take your eye off of the profit, yet you definitely want to maintain that food & beverage buzz and mystique."

Dieter Kadoke, senior VP of food & beverage for Wyndham International, Dallas, has been featured a couple of times in HF&BE discussing beverage upgrades: everything from bottled water to special wine presentations.

“If it were not for food & beverage, we’d just be running a motel. Because we are a hotel, we must provide foodservice beyond compare. We have to do whatever it takes to present a quality product to the guest. We’re not just a hotel catering to a hotel guest. We are ahotel catering to guests.

“Our banquet business has increased dramatically over the years because of what we do in our restaurants. The restaurant is a natural draw.

“Leasing space to brands works very well in Vegas, but not everywhere. It’s not always what the businessperson wants or what the locals want. We have very few leased restaurants because where we manage our own, we feel we can do a better job. It’s certainly a trend: it depends on how appropriate it is to the location and the market.”

George Patten, director of catering for the Fairmont San Jose (CA), has been called an ambassador of the fine art of catering. Given the number of events the hotel hosts annually (from lavish fundraisers to after-concert banquets, both on and off-premise) and the number of distinguished guests catered to (from President Clinton to the Crown Prince of Norway) that’s hardly an exaggeration. “Food and beverage is extremely significant to the marketing, managing, and operation of our hotel: F&B sets the tone for our hotel, establishes our reputation, sets us apart from everyone else. We have a fine restaurant operation that influences our banquet and catering business. Because of the reputation of that department, it becomes the face of this property, equal to whatever we present and realize in our restaurants. We have some of the same folks in our ballrooms week after week. That being the case, we are compelled to present something unique and special to set the pace. We cannot be the same week after week; that’s not only boring for the staff, but it eventually becomes tiresome for our guests.”

Stephen Michaelides, president of Cleveland-based Words Ink, is a frequent contributor to HOTEL F&B EXECUTIVE.