We Are Working On To Increasing Our Wedding Portfolio: Karanbir Singh Gulati, Renaissance Mumbai
As Mumbai is an overloaded market with F&B brands, who all you consider as competition?
In today’s time, in the Food and Beverage industry, we just don’t consider hotels as our competition but also the notable standalone restaurants which are on the brink of occupying the ranking positions. The restaurants don’t necessarily offer top-notch service like we provide at a five-star hotel but nevertheless, in terms of the quality of food and experience, they stand unequaled which is evident. Some good and well – recognized standalone restaurants like Hitchki in Powai, O Pedro in BKC, Pa Pa Ya, Masala Library, Bastian, and some others, in my accordance, are considered as competitive as they are known to be serving to the needs of the millennials.
What is your strategy to compete in the market?
We like to give our utmost attention here to each step that is needed to attain a better outcome considering top-of-the-line hospitality since we have a huge number of F&B offerings. Firstly, we are working in a manner that we can target the non-residents who have the well-known outlets on the top of their mind for their outings. Especially taking into account the millennials, our aim is to replace the same with our hotel's bouquet of F&B outlets in their mind and working on our dishes in an innovative preparation style to attract them and then the quirky and chic ambiance also takes over. Secondly, we are working on increasing our wedding portfolio with regards to our events and banqueting. Like Shaadi by Marriot is quite successful in pulling the wedding crowd to the hotel. Thirdly, while we consistently and tirelessly strive to provide the best service to our guest, our strategy is to focus on quality-driven Food & Beverage, thus aligning with the earlier mentioned strategy of replacing the standalone places with our F&B options.
Is sourcing fresh ingredients on a daily basis a challenge?
These days sourcing fresh ingredients on a regular basis isn't a challenge. The better the vendor, better the ingredients. All you need to have is a right experienced vendor and that will reduce all the stress and provide you the best. Lot of our customers come to the hotel and enjoy dining due to the freshness served as they visit the property knowing about the dishes being prepared using locally grown ingredients. We have introduced the freshly grown micro-greens at the NEWLY opened Lake View Café. Guests can cut these greens on their own and use it for their dishes and this has enticed a lot of patrons. So at Renaissance Mumbai, more freshness is the option chosen for our guests instead of always frozen.
What is your USP to attract more people?
We have various food and beverage outlets that are recognized for their individuality. Like Fratelli Fresh, which is an Italian restaurant is now back in action since the newly opened Lake View Café (LVC). This All Day Dining offering marked its superiority due to it’s ability to present global cuisine with local flavor at Renaissance. Emperor’s Court is known to serve excellent Cantonese and Sichuan dishes. Then is the Nawab Saheb which is ranked amongst the Top 5 restaurants on Trip Advisor. There is the minimalistic and comfortable A-Bar where the in-house DJ plays fantastic lounge music and bartenders mix cocktails featuring exclusive spirits. Besides the above, the 2 lakhs square feet of banqueting is also something that is known to have witnessed the best weddings at the property.
What is your footfall on weekends?
At the moment, our restaurants witness around the number of 550 – 700 people on weekends and this has been stable from the past 3 months. However, we are all set and aiming to touch the number of 1,000 plus in the upcoming seasonal months of October-December as now we have worked on the best options for every time of the day as well as enough covers to serve and accommodate any amount of guests in good number.
