Engaging Guests, Keeping Consistency and Having Fun!

Sam chats all things bar with F&B manager for Clarion Hotels Nordics, Tore Carlsson.

Tore Carlsson is the Nordic Food and Beverage manager for Clarion Hotels. Yep, this sounds like a big and important role, and it actually is.

Starting in the industry in his mother’s hotel at the age of 15, Tore now looks after the F&B operations of 28 hotels throughout the nordics. 

Personally, I have always been in awe of hotels. Along with cruise lines, the logistical precision, strategic insight and plain hard work that makes a great hotel work well is very impressive.  And of course the food and beverage operations are absolutely central to this. 

I’ve always thought of F&B managers as part analyst, being able to judge performance and make decisions based on hard numbers, and part visionary, injecting the heart and soul into a concept to ensure it connects with their guests. And this connection with the guest is critical to create loyalty in a competitive market, as Tore explains;

“I’m the support to the General Manager of a property, to the Business Performance Manager, to the Department Managers.  My role is to try to help  maximise profits, keep consistency across venues, implement trainings, oversee openings but overall, to create food and beverage programs that spark guests enthusiasm, that makes them choose us next time.  It’s a big job, a fun job.”

“I started as a chef at my mothers hotel, loved it, moved into Michelin Star restaurants in Sweden, worked almost as a slave for 5 years, 300 hours a month. I am passion driven in a passionate profession, a profession that’s similar to bartending in a lot of ways.”

“I have always been focussed on development. A few years ago I started educating myself in wine, I completed all sommelier education available in Norway and I now sit on the board of the Norwegian Sommeliers Association. My goal is to be as good at everything as I can, or as my girlfriend says: ‘I’m never satisfied’.”

“In 2012 I started with Choice Hotels, I opened the Thief as Head Chef, I worked with a wine seller for a year, and I have been in my current role for 2 years.”

“What I love most about the hotel branch is that it’s an exciting, living thing. It’s so broad, with so many sides to it. It’s an industry that can never be boring as there are endless opportunities to do different things depending on your passion.”

So as an F&B manager, who travels 100 days a year, do you feel like you’re always on? Can you still enjoy the breakfast without casting a critical eye over all the small details?

“As F&B manager I am on all the time. But in order for a concept to succeed over multiple properties, people need clear and concise instructions and a good plan, and of course, good support. That’s my job. And of course I’ve had to learn to let go of details I can’t control.” 

“Because I travel so much, for me, when it comes to good hotels, it’s all about timing and convenience. And that is what we need to do as F&B, we need to appreciate and anticipate our guests needs. We need to ensure that their home away from home is working smoothly so that they can focus on the conference or meeting or sightseeing that is the real point of their stay.”

And when you’re planning your hotels or your F&B, how deep do you go into the details of the psychology of your guests?  How do you decide how much resources to dedicate to F&B?

“Revenue management and forecast is of course super important. But hotels should have everything, all kinds of guests which is really cool, but it also throws up a challenge to the F&B because you need to try to meet all these differing expectations but within the overall framework of the broader hotel. Monday to Thursday, maybe business travellers, weekends maybe families and leisure travellers. We need to understand what are our competitors doing,  What are the F&B outlets around us doing, how can we differentiate and how can we execute.”

So is a focus on F&B in hotels in Norway changing?

“The Hotel as a destination is much more alive in Stockholm, Copenhagen, London, other capital cities than it is right now in Norway. In other big cities, often the hotel is the meeting place, a place where the highest professionals can create amazing F&B.”

“In the Choice group, we plan our F&B ambitions and investment across all the different brands depending on what fits. Each has a slightly different focus, and a different level of ambition for the F&B.  One thing that doesn’t change though, is the quality, but different hotels will attract different guests and we see a huge potential to build further on the potential of F&B.”

“Our challenge is to create destination concepts that are interesting enough by themselves, but that are inside hotels.” 

Here at Behind Bars, we speak endlessly about how we can contribute to hotel F&B. We make great bars for sure, but we also understand that bars and the revenue they generate directly, through drinks sales, and indirectly by being an attractive offering that helps get guests through the doors in the first place, is just one element of a much bigger machine.

So what is the future of F&B in hotels, and how can Behind Bars contribute? 

“F&B is constantly evolving in hotels. We’re seeing a move away from old school buffets and things like that to wanting to understand how we can use space flexibly. What we need is smart, flexible, sexy furniture pieces that can serve multiple purposes. And they do need to be good quality.”

“A problem we often have in the hotel is that there is not enough care given to the bar. Two big projects we had recently, we used a cheaper competitor of yours and now we’re tearing out both bars less than two years after they were installed.  This is because of a combination of poor quality and poor design.” 

“If we want to make a Michelin Star Restaurant we can’t do it with a frying pan and an induction plate, and the best chefs will refuse to work there. Well, we’re discovering that the same is true for the bar.  If you have a vision and a goal for a bar, you need the right people  and the right equipment, like a well designed, high quality bar.”

“The hotel branch has a massive turnover of bar staff. We spend a fortune on replacing staff who leave to fullfill their professional ambitions elsewhere. We have a job to do to create a concept and environment that good people want to work in. The workplace should be comfortable to work in, they should take pride in it, and they should be able to realise their professional ambition there. And a well designed, good quality bar is a huge part of this.”

“Behind Bars has a stamp of quality, and bravo for that, because it’s not easy to get that reputation. You guys are not the cheapest but if you want to drive an expensive car, you need to pay a bit more. And what you pay for is peace of mind, good quality, good service, and good design.” 

And hopefully we’ll be designing many many bars for the exciting concepts Clarion Hotels has coming down the road.