F&B interview: Stefan Breg

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.

The F&B team at the operator researches the market thoroughly to gain knowledge about current conditions, and Breg says it is standard practice to work with the owning team early on to determine F&B mix at the property.

“We ask the hard questions of: ‘Should we bring in a franchise; should we bring in a name from the outside; is the site strong enough to justify a name or investment in a franchise fee?’ We make that judgment quite early on. Some of our owners find leasing an appealing business model, and then we look at our own selection of home-grown concepts,” he adds.

A project Breg is excited about is Furn at the Westin Bahrain City Centre Mall, opened in association with Majid Al Futtaim. The venue provides breakfast and group dining to guests at the property, and also caters to diners who discover the spot through the mall.

“Furn, which means ‘oven’ in Arabic, is a mixture of Khaleeji food created by a Bahraini chef, and an international menu — it is doing really well. We knew there was a demand for Khaleeji food and we knew there were many Saudi visitors to the mall in Bahrain. So that taps right into that, and it’s working,” Breg says.

He also mentions Namu, the Japanese-Korean concept in the W Dubai Al Habtoor City, along with Il Capo and Cook Hall in the Westin Al Habtoor City as being some interesting F&B concepts to recently go live.

Another is Besh Turkish Kitchen in Sheraton Mall of the Emirates, which is a link-up with Vedat Basaran (a celebrity chef in Turkey), who uses authentic products from Turkey to re-create his 150-year-old Ottoman recipes.

And these are concepts which have gone live recently. When it comes to upcoming projects, Breg is excited about the W Dubai — The Palm, which the website lists as opening in March 2017. He says the rooftop restaurant has the best view in the city, and echoing the rooftop element is the Aloft Dubai The Palm (July 2018).

In the Golden Mile on The Palm Jumeirah, The St. Regis Dubai The Palm is also set to add to the F&B scene in the next two years. With these hotels set to make its mark on that destination, Breg confidently says: “The Palm is going to be a very different place in a few years.”

Saudi Arabia is also a zone for F&B creativity. Aloft Dhahran is set to open soon, and Breg alerts us to the fact that something “very cool” will activate on the rooftop, which picks up on this whole interest in food trucks and pop-ups”.

Breg credits this to the property’s general manager, Titus Rosier, and adds: “We are that good that ideas don’t just come from us but other people from the business.”

He circles back to the point he made earlier about F&B being an integral part of the business: “The fact that our owners tell us F&B is important, the fact that our guests tell us it’s important… We don’t need to look any further than that.”