Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Winter Feast Festival

More than two years ago, in a clear case of sleeping with the enemy, Wyndham Hotels and Resorts hired an independent restaurateur to keep hotel guests eating on the property.

"We have lots of people who know hotels, but we wanted someone who thought like a restaurateur," says Les Bentley, president of the hotel chain. That someone was Patrick Colombo, a man well-versed in luring hotel guests to his restaurants.

Before signing with Wyndham as senior vice president of food and beverage, Colombo had operated the 21-unit Sfuzzi restaurant chain. He also spent five years as executive vice president of food and beverage at Dallas' The Mansion on Turtle Creek fine-dining restaurant.

"Hotels were one of the best places to get customers for our restaurants," he adds. "We had concierge programs, general-manager programs; we knew how to deal with the Convention and Visitors Bureau, things like that."

"Hotels are always directed to sell their own facility, but it's a double-edged sword," he explains. "If guests are there for three or four days, they want to go out. So the hotel must be responsive to that, and it also must give them a reason to stay."

One of the first moves Colombo made after arriving at Wyndham International headquarters in Dallas was to get the food and beverage staff thinking like independent restaurateurs. "What I brought from the commercial side is that you always have to keep evolving," he says. "If you stay stagnant, your staff will stay stagnant."

Stagnant has no place today at Wyndham. Seasonal promotions and new branded concepts are center-of-the-plate at the hotel chain. For example, Colombo's group has launched a number of successful limited-time-offer promotions, including one with the Alaskan Seafood Council, another focusing on shrimp and a third highlighting the foods of Tuscany. This summer the hotel chain will roll out a Pan-Asian promotion. In the fall all the restaurants will be turned into steak houses for 60 days.

One of Wyndham's best-ever limited-time offerings was its Beef Festival called "Winter Feast: Looking for Some Tenderness Tonight?" which earned the chain a MenuMasters Award. Running from Jan. 15 to March 15, 1999, it accounted for 44,000 covers and generated more than $1 million in food-and-beverage sales.

"Beef was hot around the country," says Colombo, explaining the genesis of the promotion. "We looked at the recent rise of steak houses and said, 'Hey, maybe there's something here. Let's not reinvent the wheel; let's give customers what they're going to other restaurants for.'"

Among the beef entrees for dinner during Winter Feast were aged Angus beef filet, grilled bone-in rib-eye steak, braised aged Angus beef short ribs and aged Angus skillet steak.

The team that creates the promotions under Colombo's direction consists of John Coletta, regional executive chef at the Chicago Wyndham; Tom Welther, regional executive chef at Dallas' Wyndham Anatole; and Frank Dameron, corporate chef and director for operations in Wyndham's corporate offices.

More than 140 of Wyndham's 150-plus properties participated in Winter Feast. "I view our work as the starting point," Colombo says. "I hope chefs at the hotels take our materials and enhance them. I want them thinking: 'OK, here's what corporate gave me. I still have 50 yards to go.'"

In Colombo's book the seasonal promotions have a purpose even beyond generating revenues during their 60-day runs. "They challenge the staff," he says. "If you're sitting back and not surrounding yourself with good people, the competition is going to blow by you. This is how we raise the bar."

The promotions also help Wyndham implement new service standards. He cited the chain's recent Martini Festival; "It gave us a new standard for serving martinis, including bringing the glass to the table with the silver shaker glass, shaking it in front of the customer and pouring it there." He adds, "These are things that independent restaurateurs do every day, but sometimes when you get into a big company, they get lost."

Hotel dining is on the rise today, Colombo notes. "In the 1980's and 1990's, it was depressed and a lot of food-and-beverage amenities were stripped away. Now it's a point of difference. There are no more irons or coffee makers or things you can put in the rooms, so hotels are using branded concepts and bringing in star chefs. Just look at Las Vegas."

Wyndham also is moving aggressively in this direction as more of its restaurants feature separate entrances and exterior facades. A prime example is The Nana Grill at the Wyndham Anatole Hotel. Another is the chain's Caliterra Restaurant at the Wyndham in Chicago, which Colombo calls "Our first truly branded concept."

Of the analysts in the hospitality arena, few know Colombo as well as Mark Mutkoski of Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown in New York City. From 1991 to 1992 he was an operations analyst for Sfuzzi, the chain that Colombo expanded to 21 units before selling to the New York-based Coco Pazzo company in 1997.

"Patrick is a great food-and-beverage guy with some really neat concepts," Mutkoski says. "He's very much on top of what's going on in the industry. He looks at what independent restaurateurs are doing, and he's bringing some of that flair to Wyndham. The more customer counts you can bring to a fixed asset like that, the better off you'll be."

If Wyndham Hotels and Resorts wanted to keep its guests eating on premises, says Mutkoski, they got the right guy: "Patrick knew how to attract hotel guests. In fact, at Sfuzzi we definitely targeted them."