NEW WAYS TO USE
TECHNOLOGY : F & B
Sous-vide has many potential uses beyond meat dishes .
cards for preordered breakfast room service . The casino-hotel is conducting a pilot program for a reinvented door-hanger that contains a QR code guests scan with their phone , and then order breakfast online .
“ When you have a 7,000-suite property , you need a small army of people just to retrieve every one of those cards every night — it ’ s a really inefficient system , and then you have a stack of door-hangers that you have to enter manually ,” Silvestri says . “ This initiative is going to reduce a lot of labor .”
Once room service delivery is complete , technology can also aid in cleanup . Silvestri says he ’ s exploring solutions for retrieval of room service carts and tables based on sensors that alert staff whenever a used tray or table is placed in the hallway . “ The sensor will tell me where the tray and table are , and dispatch a server right away using a mobile device ,” Silvestri says . “ The nearest busser gets an alert on their iPhone .
“ I ’ m sure it ’ s going to be a huge capital expense ,” Silvestri adds , “ but I ’ m looking forward to exploring it .”
The problems with serving wine by the glass — namely what remains unsold in the open bottle — are being addressed by technology too , through devices like the Enotech machine employed at the Kerry . Clarke says the equipment enables a better selection while reducing waste and cutting costs , which is particularly essential when importing foreign wines into China .
“ Typically you go into a restaurant and they can offer you two or three wines by the glass ,” Clarke says . “ We can offer up to 12 , and in some restaurants , 16 . Once open , normally wine has a shelf life of about 24 hours ;
this machine gives us up to 20 days .” Waste can even be trimmed from the most notoriously gluttonous location of all : the buffet . At the Kerry , Clarke points to the hotel ’ s sprawling outlet “ The Cook ,” which features 13 themed kitchen stations where “ buffet ” dishes are all prepared à la minute . Using a system of cards coded by a server , guests select the items they would like prepared , including portion sizes . For a buffet of The Cook ’ s size , the cost savings are tremendous .
“ If we ran it like a traditional buffet , the average cost and the average waste would be about US $ 250,000 per year ,” Clarke says . “ Now , we save a significant amount of that waste through this card system .”
Seeking the source In this era of “ Top Chef ,” Gordon Ramsay and the Food Network breeding more armchair gourmands than ever , food sourcing is increasingly critical . Nelson says Marriott is increasingly working with seafood purveyors who use QR codes to track and document their catches in real time .
“ Through a QR code put on our menu , a customer who scans it with their iPhone is taken to a picture of that day on the boat , with the picture of the fish there ,” Nelson says . “ Technology is allowing us to do what people have always wanted , and that is the traceable knowledge of where the food has come from , and in some cases , who brought it to them .”
You can ’ t ever have enough information about fine wines , either . At Jumeirah , Kopera increasingly is employing wine inventory management software , not just to monitor levels of inventory , but also the
NEW WAYS TO USE
SOUS-VIDE
The term sous-vide , French for “ under vacuum ,” is undergoing an evolution . With sous-vide , individual components of food and beverages can be pre-prepared and then stored , greatly saving time for prep and service staff .
For example , the recently opened Hilton in Columbus , Ohio , is currently using sous-vide to create numerous fresh ingredients for various designer cocktails . “ The kitchen is producing things like infusions , which bartenders may not be adept at , in sous-vide format — for instance , breaking down blueberries into a format where you ’ d infuse it into the vodka ,” explains Beth Scott , vice president of F & B strategy & innovation – full service and luxury brands , for Hilton Worldwide . “ The bartender can pull it and reserve it when they need it .”
Other chefs are pushing the envelope with the kinds of foods they prepare with sous-vide techniques . More than just a time-saver and consistency tool , sousvide can help create entirely new flavors and textures .
“ There ’ s a ton of applications — marinating , flavor transfer , pickling — and we use it for things that have already been cooked ,” says Brad Nelson , vice president of culinary and corporate chef for Marriott International . “ If you want to take watermelon and infuse different flavors in it and press it , you can take a seedless watermelon and flavor it , and after it ’ s pressed and sliced it almost looks like tuna .”
60 HOTELS July / August 2013 www . hotelsmag . com