Catering for the festive season and beyond in today’s ‘new normal’
Ordinarily at this time of year, booking for festive season celebrations would be fast filling up the calendar. But in the wake of lockdowns and with the industry beset by social distancing restrictions, bookings have been slower than usual, with potential customers adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach while businesses have been forced to make changes to their function menus, pricing structures and dining policies. We spoke to foodservice professionals across the pub, club and catering markets to glean some insights into the changes the ‘new normal’ has wrought and what is likely still to come.
“The end of year for us is shaping up pretty well, although we would ordinarily have a lot more bookings than we do right now – I think of a lot of people are holding off, waiting to see what restrictions may be lifted before Christmas,” says Gary Johnson, National Executive Chef for ALH Group which operates more than 340 hotels nationally. “That said, there are certain things right now that are clearly not going to change – we won’t be seeing share platters or boards, we won’t be seeing self-serve. Instead, customers will be served individually by a team members who’s gloved up and will be passing out portions.
“Those changes which have come into being due to Covid will remain – I think it’s shone a bright light onto hygiene and especially within communal dining. I doubt very much whether we’ll see the resurrection of buffets in their former presentation. ”
“Instead, we’ll have what we’re now calling full service buffets – customers will go to food stations staffed by our team members. Pre-Covid you would see customers scooping their own ice cream but now they’ll go up to the freezer and be given a pixie cup. From a commercial standpoint, this will make portion control easier and be better for us in terms of forecasting volumes and potential costs.”
Despite bookings not being as strong as usual, Gary says the group’s hotels haven’t scaled back their festive season menus to any great extent. “Queensland, which is the largest slice of our national business, is pretty well back up to speed and we’ll be doing full service banqueting manned by team members and overseen as much as we can. In NSW and Victoria we’ll only be serving plated full service model. We have had to make some adjustments in back of house, in that where we might normally have been able to accommodate 300 customers we can now take only 230 due to social distancing, which means costs have gone up incrementally as our capacity has been thinned out.”
Sit-down, full table service is back in force
At the Ary Toukley on the NSW Central Coast, it’s a similar story – all festive season and end of year events will be what Executive Chef Alex Patterson calls “modified buffets”, with the usual stand-up cocktail functions scrapped. “There’s no walking around with food, no share platters, everything has to be individually packaged and served, so we had to adjust our business model and pricing accordingly,” he says.
“We’re focusing on sit-down, full table service menus for our festive functions. I’ve just put together our Christmas package which has a range options scaled in price, from one course to three courses across three different styles of menus.”
As with many venues, the biggest issue for The Ary is the limited numbers allowed for dine-in due to social distancing. At the time he spoke to us Alex and his team were planning for a range of events including Melbourne Cup Day and end of year presentations for the local football club – “in all cases we have to create a Covid safety plan with the function coordinator prior to the event, our guests need to understand that everyone who attends has to sit down, that there’s no standing and mingling. We have lost a lot of our function business over the past few months, and there’s where much of our end of year profit comes from, so we’ve had to adjust pricing to make it more cost-effective for those functions we’re having while abiding by the rules and regulations.”
Alex says his main focus is to ensure the Ary can still deliver a memorable experience for guests. “That’s always our aim, it’s just a question of minimising the cost by focusing on economies of scale. We’re still doing high quality food, but we have to be a bit smarter about the way we approach it. That’s why we are offering three menus, your basic, your next level and your highest quality which is the best we can possibly do. Given those options, most guests do take the basic menu because a lot of people are mindful of their spending right now. We’ve also introduced a three course set menu for our Ziva restaurant which is not limited to a minimum number of diners. This makes it easy for customers to choose a few options from the menu and create their own three course meal at a reduced price, and that’s very popular at the moment.”
The re-emergence of small scale banquets
“I personally think the large-scale end of year events won’t be happening,” says Markus Werner, Corporate Executive Chef at Delaware North Australia which operates a wide range of hospitality venues. “People are waiting until the beginning of December to book, and by then it will be too late to organise. What I think we will see is a resurgence of the old style function market with private room dining – where the wine waiters bring the cigars and cognac out of the cupboard and you offer an exclusive menu. People don’t want the style of dining where they have to get checked in and finish their meal in an hour and a half because you’re doing three seatings and have to worry about contact tracing. This is not what hospitality is all about – it’s about connecting with customers and being hospitable.
“I think we will see a move back to the approach of the 1980s where we had little banquet rooms, six to eight courses and a sense of exclusivity, a special occasion. People will want to keep their function private and make it a memorable event. This is what we’re all looking for – a way in which we can celebrate hospitality again and create an immersive connection. It might be a degustation menu, it might be a cooking class where the chef is talking to the group – all these elements which have been forgotten a little bit. And of course this will lend itself to any cuisine style – it could be fully organic, it could highlight sustainability, it could have the best of French cuisine or Chinese cuisine, whatever you can imagine.”
While acknowledging that bookings are beginning to pick up, Markus says it’s been an unsurprisingly slow start to the season. “There will be smaller events here and there – in November we are reopening Sovereign Hill and our other venues in regional Victoria, we have a few functions booked at Crown Sydney of around 100 people, so there is movement in the market. From what we saw post-lockdown in Sydney, it takes a couple of months for people to find the confidence to start booking events again, and Melbourne of course is two to three months behind Sydney.
“I do think regional Victoria will see a boom in functions this Christmas – a lot of people will go to experience the regional areas, which they may not have done for a long time. We saw before Covid that there was a renewed interest in local produce and people asking about provenance, and that has generated an increased awareness of the quality of produce in Gippsland. There are some really remarkable restaurants in regional Victoria, so I’m sure we’ll see people asking where are the best day trips, the best dining experiences, where can you find the best cheese, the best farmed pork? And I think this will be even stronger going into 2021.”
