The Secret That Makes You Look Good In Front Of Your Boss

Regardless of your role, all of us in hotel F&B have a boss. Line Manger, GM, VP, Owner, Asset Manger, Client, we all have one. While they challenge, frustrate and even disappoint us, let’s be honest, deep down we all want to look good in front of them, right? I know I do. I also happen to know a secret that’s guaranteed to make you look good, very good indeed. While I’m happy to share this with you, I should probably mention that it comes with a catch, in that it’s also guaranteed to make you catastrophically unpopular with a significant proportion of this glorious industry of ours. If that’s not for you then I wish you a great day and look forward to seeing you next time. If however, having been fairly warned, you’re still here, then strap in.

You already know, next time you’re developing a hotel F&B concept, you will at some point find yourself sat in a room being presented to by a seemingly endless collection of external specialists. What you might not know however, is that those planners, designers and consultants, those self-proclaimed experts, don’t care what your boss wants. In fact it’s worse than that, regardless of? perfect CAAD’s, CGI’s, fly-throughs and mood boards, their endless, endless slides; they don’t actually know. Yes that’s right, despite their impressive credentials, and fees, they don’t know what it is that your boss wants. And this is my secret, I do. Although I should be honest, it’s less of a secret, more of a blindly obvious truth, there for all to see, if only they’d look. The thing your boss really wants, needs, above all else? Well it’s profit. I appreciate that the business of hospitality can be far more complicated, nuanced and emotional than that. Indeed having been in love with this industry my whole life, I’ve drunk the cool aid too. It’s just that the simple and inescapable truth is that what really matters to you boss, and therefore the thing all of us are here to deliver, including those gloriously talented specialists, yep it’s profit.

So next time you’re sitting through one of those beautifully crafted concept presentations, simultaneously pretending to be impressed, while wondering if it will ever end, ask this question. “How will what you’re proposing drive sales?” In fact, while you’re at it, ask your architect and designer the same question, and your kitchen consultant, how their proposals, lovely as they are, will reduce operating cost. Fuck it, ask everyone involved, after every slide they’ve made you sit through, how their proposals will increase sales, reduce costs and drive profit?? ?

Of course there are brilliant exceptions, indeed some of our industry’s bravest and brightest innovators repeatedly use big budget design and development as part of their armoury. Indeed the bold and heavily invested reimagining of several “Grande-Dame” hotels spring to mind. While the transformation has been dramatic and of course eye-wateringly expensive, everyone involved understood, beyond all the creativity, design and curation, the objective was always profit. And now you do too. So ask those questions your specialists will hate, our industry need, and your boss will love, go on I dare you.