Troon Golf has helped properties improve a la carte menu variety while keeping quality and costs under control by instituting by-the-ounce beef or fish charges and uniform lists of preparations, sauces, starches and vegetables. |
As food becomes more vital to the club offerings, management firms aren’t skimping on quality or creativity.
When you tell your average club member or resort guest that management and control of their dining rooms and grills is about to be turned over to an outside operation, they’re more likely to envision cafeteria lines—not five star restaurants.
The skepticism and scrutiny stands to be especially sharp once it’s learned that the outside operation is a golf-oriented company, not a firm specializing in foodservice. In the club and resort diner’s eye, F&B naturally would get short shrift.
Golf management companies (GMCs) are keenly aware of this perception and are making it a point to demonstrate their commitment to non-golf areas in general—particularly, food and beverage. In addition to glowing examples of F&B excellence within the larger management firms such as KemperSports, some smaller, emerging “boutique” GMCs are seeking to differentiate themselves by demonstrating unique backgrounds and abilities in the F&B arena.
For example, RDC Golf Group, where the principals have extensive backgrounds in hospitality, places a high priority on F&B and goes out of its way not to treat it as “just another club amenity,” says founder and President/CEO Christopher Schiavone, who previously ran Dartcor Food Service, an owner/operator of corporate facilities.
Summing It Up
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One RDC property, the private Forsgate CC in Monroe Township, N.J., has won Wine Enthusiast magazine’s Awards of Distinction for two consecutive years—recognition given only to those establishments “that offer a notable experience in fine dining, along with a wine list devoted to imagination, passion, and success.”
Only one other New Jersey country club has earned the recognition, Schiavone notes.
Honours Golf says that its property-wide commitment to fully stocked beverage carts and extra touches such as chilled apples at every turn helps to “provide the perfect win-win between improved customer experience and increased profits.”
Creative Control
At the same time that GMCs want to prove that they’re not just hash slingers, a big part of why course and club owners and operators want to bring them on board is their ability to maximize buying power and cost efficiencies while instituting better controls and creating profitable foodservice operations. So the constant challenge is to work bottom-line magic without sacrificing customer appeal and satisfaction.
Honours Golf is another emerging regional GMC that has implemented a unified, companywide strategic plan to help grow both a la carte and banquet business at all of its properties. |
At Troon Golf, this is achieved in part by helping properties “create more variety on a la carte menus by offering many choices,” explains Paul Hadreas, VP of Food & Beverage Operations.
“For example, we [show properties] how to offer different cuts of beef or fish and have the guest be able to order, and be charged, by the ounce—six, eight, or 10 ounces, and so on,” says Hadreas. “We also have created lists of preparations (pan-seared, poached, grilled), sauces (pan gravy, peppercorn, piccata, provencale), starches (mac & cheese, rice pilaf, mashed or au gratin potatoes) and vegetables (asparagus, broccoli) that the guest can be offered.”
Increasingly, even smaller GMCs are organized to have all properties’ food and beverage operations report directly to a corporate F&B department that exerts as much, if not more, influence on them as the individual property’s GM.
For example, F&B at each Western Golf Properties-managed location—from concepts, menu collaboration, corporate management and leadership of field operators—is facilitated by Frank Denniston, Corporate Director of Food & Beverage. Engaged in all phases of restaurant and catering operations, he is responsible for conceptualization, organization, operations analysis and improvements. In addition, Denniston, who held F&B and banquet management positions at both clubs (Heritage Hunt G&CC) and hotels (Sheraton and Loew’s) before taking his corporate post, is also responsible for “solicitation, selection and procurement of economically viable national accounts with [F&B] and hospitality vendors, to provide substantial savings to our owners while not compromising quality and service to our guests.”
“We’ve improved our consistency in quality and freshness through structured and detailed pre-meal line checks, creative menu planning and accurate product builds,” reports Scott Sawyer, Director of Operational Services. “To reduce costs, we’ve leveraged our purchasing potential by consolidating F&B products on our menus, resulting in a savings of 8 percent annually. We rolled out a quarterly plan to recruit quality team members. And our commitment to beverage carts provides the perfect win-win between improved customer experience and increased profits.”
These corporate-wide initiatives don’t mean Honours holds individual properties back from being innovative in how they feature F&B at their locations, such as a family-oriented “Blues & BBQ” event at Moore’s Mill Club in Auburn, Ala.
Increasingly, GMCs that didn’t even set out to focus on F&B now report it’s an area where they’re helping client properties make some of the biggest scores.
“We’ve formed strategic partnerships with specialized [caterers] in high-volume F&B environments that have produced, quite frankly, very large profits,” reports CourseCo President Tom Isaak. “At one property, we took a break-even F&B operation of about $700,000 annually to a volume of $1.3 million with close to a 30% margin, primarily by focusing on the banquet and wedding business as it fits in with golf. We’re finding a pretty significant market in Northern California for combining the two, as an alternative to more traditional—and expensive—settings at wineries or San Francisco hotels.”
F&B IDEAS from Management Firms and Their Properties
Feeling good in many ways…ClubCorp generates both gastronomical excitement and good will with culinary events that benefit charitable causes. The Celebrity Chef Tour merges the talents of a visiting celebrity chef with a ClubCorp executive chef to create distinctive dining experiences at each host club. Monies raised during the events benefit The James Beard Foundation, which recognizes, promotes and preserves all aspects of the culinary arts. The Lobster Feast, which began in 1992 to help victims of Hurricane Andrew, is an annual fundraising dinner held at ClubCorp properties that now benefits a different charitable organization each year. Working up an appetite… Properties in the Intrawest line of private-branded Raven Golf Clubs are making special efforts to reach out to the after-golf and couples sets with F&B specials this season. At the Raven GC at Three Peaks in Silverthorne, Colo., the popular Three Peaks Dining Series is being offered again to anyone who tees off on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays between 2:00 and 2:50 p.m. The greens fee ($119 per player on Fridays and Saturdays, $109 on Sundays) includes a three-course meal afterwards in the Raven Grill. Non-golfers can join the dinner for $35 a plate. |
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