In January 2016, I received an email from Stefan Breg titled: “guess who’s back”. I opened it, only to find out the eternal restaurateur had returned to the region after a sojourn in Asia with IHG to take on the mantle of F&B director for Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Europe, Africa & Middle East.

No small task. Under his remit, Breg commands more than 1,200 venues, out of which 325 are located in the Middle East. That number is set to grow, as Breg confirms and says: “The pipeline is here [the Middle East], and the growth is here. Europe is steady with renovations and a few new builds, but the awe-inspiring growth is here.”

Breg reveals: “We have got a big, fat pipeline, so there’s 100+ live F&B projects and two-thirds of that are easily in the Middle East. And that’s where it’s a good fit, because the company needed someone to drive that growth forward: who understood the market; who understood what investors want from us as well as operators.

“They wanted someone who understood the major competitors, and someone who knew what was happening in London, New York, Paris, and having had — luckily —time in South East Asia, I knew what was happening there as well,” he adds.

Breg is not impressed with any industry members saying that hotel food & beverage operations need a re-think.

He comments: “We know that, and a lot of that language of ‘hotels can’t run restaurants’ — we’re past that. When we read the competition saying, ‘Oh, we’ve decided that F&B is strategic to our business’, I’m delighted, because I think that if you’re at that stage, you’re a long way behind us.”

“Organisations that struggle with the question of ‘how important is our F&B’ have really got to think again,” he adds.

Restaurants in hotels have to compete not only with other outlets within properties, but also with free-standing F&B venues, points out Breg, and says that’s not their only consideration.

“Then they’ve got banqueting, in-room dining, and breakfast, and some have got catering and they’re now doing food trucks. There’s a lot of hard work going on in the hotel business by my peers,” he says.

Breg is convinced that the operator’s existing F&B has leadership position in many of its markets.

He ticks off the W Doha [see this quarter’s issue of Hotelier Qatar], Buddha Bar and Toro Toro in Grosvenor House Dubai, and the Westin and Le Méridien Mina Seyahi Beach complex under Tolga Lacin, which includes the likes of Barasti, and China Grill.

“These concepts are not one-off. We are place-makers. Let’s set the target high, and know that wherever we go, we are the place-makers,” Breg adds.

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