There comes a pivotal moment at every hotel organization when hotel owners and managers finally decide they are ready to stand out from the competition. While other hotels often have similar rooms to rent — including comparable amenities and room rates — that does not mean they should enjoy more revenue and occupancy than you.

Sourcing specialty food and beverage products through a reputable company that provides hotel sourcing services will help leverage your hotel and/or restaurant in a highly competitive hospitality market.

Hotel sourcing services allow you to customize what you offer to your guests while also enabling you to deliver on your brand promise. Source1 Purchasing provides a comprehensive suite of services to the lodging and hospitality industries and offers flexible options and purchasing solutions to meet all of your hotel procurement and buying needs. Source1’s purchasing power can also help your hotel exceed guest expectations when they choose your specific facility or brand over any other hotel; you can net customer loyalty without wasting a lot of energy and without overextending your financial budget.

So are you ready to rise above the status quo?

You very well may be known by the brand your hotel represents, but it is also important for you to create your own signature, a “wow” factor that guests and customers will remember. When you take advantage of hotel sourcing services you can be more consistent in branding your hotel while attracting new customers to your property and growing a loyal customer base.

According to Jim Holthouser, senior vice president of brand management for Embassy Suites Hotels and John Lee, vice president of brand marketing for Embassy Suites Hotels and Hilton Worldwide, you must find a way to stand out from your competition, including other hotels within the same brand.

Together, Holthouser and Lee shared the following reality check in an article published on the Hotel Business Review website: “The sheer size of the domestic hotel industry — over two hundred brands boasting 51,000+ properties and over 4.8 million rooms (according to STR’s census and chain-scale segments listing) — makes it even more important for hoteliers to find ways to make their offering stand out among the competition.”

In their discussion about successful branding, Holthouser and Lee also encouraged hoteliers to learn when and how to be flexible within their own brand. “Flexibility also comes in the form of allowing each hotel to develop a distinct personality and embrace the local culture of its market, as long as it always ladders up to the overall brand vision.”

The hotel sourcing services provided by Source1 Purchasing empower you to deliver creative food, ensure consistent quality, stay true to your brand and achieve higher customer satisfaction. You can actually surprise your customers with hard-to-find food and beverage products that they will enjoy experiencing without losing the consistency they are accustomed to with your hotel brand.

This is when you will begin to pull away from your competition. If you already cover the basics of good customer service that guests have come to expect from your brand and your property, then the special food and beverage items you have discovered and shared with them will be what is unique about your operation.

Seasonal items on your menu can also create a unique experience for your guests, but you can easily waste a lot of time when you try to do the shopping yourself. Instead of running from store to store and trying to find everything you need at the best prices, why not explore a new option? One of the greatest benefits of using Source1 Purchasing.

Purchasing is that you will have more time and energy to devote to your guest because you don’t have to worry about your food and beverage purchasing.

After all, the guest is the most important element of a hotel operation. Hotel sourcing services help you bring all the other important components together so you can concentrate on providing a most memorable hotel experience.

Do you spend a major amount of your time and energy trying to create or even sustain a level of growth at your hotel property? Do you find it difficult to maintain the expectations of both your guests and your hotel owners? Hotel management demands expertise at multitasking.

When you are pulled in numerous directions and responsible for overseeing various departments, including sourcing and procurement, you can easily become overwhelmed and lose focus on what your hotel is all about – the guests. When your attention is on bidding products and services, or meeting with suppliers, you are not paying attention to the guest experience and the growth of your hotel.

Even if you are well organized, it can be difficult when you’re running a small hotel. You still need to deliver high levels of service, but you’re at a disadvantage when it comes to purchasing. Large hotels and restaurants qualify for volume discounts, getting top-quality foods and beverages at a lower cost. Smaller hotels want to compete on food and beverage quality but this can mean ballooning budgets.

Managers have the option to either feel powerless and frustrated, or find experts to contribute to their success. Your hotel could operate at a higher potential and experience recognition from your owners by implementing solutions.

After all, they want to see a return on their investment, and rightly so.

Aside from booking as many rooms as possible, you will feel pressure to discover every way possible to cut down on your expenses, save money for the business and generate more revenue.

How much time do you spend sourcing and procuring food and beverage items and hotel supplies? Do you really have time to seek out true comparisons of costs versus quality and quantity for all of your hotel departments? Chances are you do not.

There is a time element involved when it comes to sourcing and procurement best practices. Fortunately, you do not have to shoulder the pressures and burden of these expectations alone. In fact, there is a way to take your operation to the next level.

Why not explore a new way of managing your hotel operations?

Source1 Purchasing can help you:

• Save time and money by customizing strategic purchasing and procurement programs for lodging, leisure, entertainment and event operations of all sizes.
• By creating a partnership with you that adds value to all operational relationships.
• Source key products and get volume discounts with key manufacturers and service providers.
• Deliver on your hotel’s promise. By co-sourcing with Source1, you can honor the reputation of your brand and maintain your promise to your guests.

Co-sourcing allows for a procurement specialist to harness the entire supply chain in order to meet specific needs, while allowing owners and operators to remain in control of the purchasing decisions. Unlike outsourcing purchasing, which can be seen as surrendering, the co-sourcing formula works in that it keeps the purchasing power in the hands of the owner or operator. Small hotels, which once felt powerless, can now feel powerful when they leverage the power of co-sourcing.

Instead of stressing over sourcing and procurement for the needs of your hotel, choose to empower your hotel operations to provide quality products and increase the value for all of your guests.

Source1 wants you to see for yourself how you can put this purchasing power to work for your hotel. Locate the savings tool box found on our website home page. Select your business category and see what Source1 Purchasing can do for you.

By participating in a co-sourcing relationship with us, you will have more time along with the needed resources to make your business grow. This gives you time to develop other important elements of your hotel business. Are you ready to take your hotel operations to the next level?

Are you searching for that elusive edge to get a leg up on your competition? You might be surprised to
realize how close you are to the solution. As a hotel restaurant, you may feel like you can only focus on
hotel guests, but why not expand your vision?

What sets you apart from your competition is whether or not you have a well-planned restaurant along with purchasing best practices that reflect current food and beverage trends. According to an article on HotelNewsNow.com, a quality restaurant already provides a convenient dining experience for guests because they have the luxury of dining without leaving the hotel. If you really want to enhance your hotel’s reputation and edge out your competition, you will need to think outside the box with your food and beverage purchasing.

Implementing these best practices can help you use your cuisine to transform your restaurant into a favorite destination in your community, which helps fuel and sustain your potential growth. New purchasing best practices are necessary to reach customers beyond the hotel property.

Locally-sourced food and beverages provide numerous choices to complement your current menu. You may feel that this type of procurement outsourcing will be beyond your budget or that you’re wasting resources because you are uncertain of the outcome. However, you need to be mindful of purchasing food and beverages that diners are excited to experience, such as local fresh food and beverages. Nutrition and diet continues to become more relevant as customers are becoming more aware and involved with their food intake. They want fresh and, if possible, organic food.

You should also research your competition so you can strategically implement a new purchasing perspective. Focus on your real competitor. Although your restaurant is located inside a hotel, your competitors are not. Local, free-standing restaurants have been profiting from local business while you have been depending mostly on guests at the hotel.

You can unlock your potential growth if you are willing to get creative. Think beyond traditional food offerings and adopt new purchasing best practices.

In the past businesses have turned to outsourcing to gain assistance with controlling costs and managing operations tasks. Over recent years, outsourcing has begun to receive negative connotations due to the idea that control is given up once the decision to outsource is made.

However, a new trend is emerging in the hospitality and food service industries that allows owners and operators to remain in control while still being able to minimize cost risks and increase product and service consistency, which is co-sourcing.

By definition, the term co-sourcing is a business practice where a service is performed by a staff from inside an organization and also by an external service provider. Co-sourcing, unlike outsourcing, doesn’t involve simply handing work off to a third party. Instead, co-sourcing is teaming up with an external service provider to make food and beverage purchasing operations tasks easier, more efficient and cost-effective.

For instance, co-sourcing may involve supplementing the internal purchasing staff with a specialized skill, such as order entry program implementation services, which provides centralized standardization across the purchasing platform. Doing so would help in-house and culinary departments to ensure menu consistency and optimized cost effectiveness for the field operators.

“Part of our co-sourcing design is to have the management staff in a quarterback position,” says Scott Hoffmire, president of Source 1 Purchasing. “Management is on the front lines and expressing their needs, challenges and expectations to us, which allows us to help them navigate and get the best product fit with optimal pricing.”

Co-sourcing allows for a procurement specialist to harness the entire supply chain in order to meet specified needs, while allowing owners and operators to remain in control of the decisions. Unlike outsourcing purchasing, which can be seen as surrendering, the co-sourcing formula works in that it keeps the buying power in the hands of the owner or operator.

In addition to helping owners and operators meet sourcing and procurement needs, co-sourcing helps to protect the brand’s promise and reputation. “On top of procurement management, owners and operators are also in charge of guest experience, the overarching theme and various promotions,” says Hoffmire. “Since we are operators serving operators, we are able to offer industry know-how and the ability to maintain a brand’s reputation through co-sourcing, which can take the powerless to powerful.”

For more on Source 1 Purchasing’s strategic procurement solutions, contact us today at 901.334.4000.

It’s no secret how popular the environmentally friendly movement has gotten over recent years. Now it seems everywhere we look businesses are going the extra mile with eco-friendly practices, including the hospitality industry. Incorporating green choices and features into your hotel’s operations not only has the ability increase cost savings, but overall guest experience as well.

The CNN article, “Hotel Towel Dilemma: Replace or Reuse?” found that green options and features can have a positive impact on guest experience. Guests who partake in the green initiatives offered by hotels have reported to have more positive experiences than the guests who do not participate.

Now hotels are offering features such as, eco-friendly disposable plates and silverware, recycled coffee cup sleeves and water and energy efficient in-room appliances and fixtures, and the choice to reuse towels instead of replacing them with new ones.

According to a recent TripAdvisor survey, “57 percent of participants said they “often” make eco-friendly travel decisions, such as their choice of hotel, transportation, or food source.” In addition, half of those surveyed were recorded saying they would spend more money to stay at an eco-friendly hotel.

In an effort to help you boost customer satisfaction, we increase environmental sustainability in restaurants in a variety of ways, including: meeting the demand for sustainable products, including regional fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy, supporting small farms and local economies and reducing our own carbon and water footprint.

For more information on sustainable food and beverage purchasing options available, contact us today at 877-717-5566.

As a hotel owner or operator, guest satisfaction is one of the most important factors in your decision making. Ensuring that guests are receiving the best possible experience involves a variety of different factors, one of which is food and beverage options. According to Michelle Grant, author of the Hotel News Now article “Updating F&B Options Leads to Positive Results,” altering your food and beverage choices will not only increase guest satisfaction, but ROI as well.

Consumers continue to prefer food that is not only healthy, but sourced locally as well, which means it is important to take your hotel’s menus into consideration. “According to the Out and About online survey conducted in 2012 by Euromonitor International, approximately 37.7% of Americans said one of their preferred features of a restaurant is the healthiness of the food and 13.3% said locally sourced/organic food was a preferred aspect,” Grant cites. Choosing food and beverage items that are local as well as nutritious can demonstrate the high value you place on guest preferences.

In conjunction with your food and beverage selections, the accessibility to these items also plays an important role. In the past, hotels used to have rigid hours when guests could dine. Now, however, the trend is moving towards presenting guests with food options throughout the day. “Starting in the mornings, hotels serve informal breakfast traffic, offering to-go coffee, snacks and freshly squeezed juices. During working hours, the area is transformed into a casual common living and working space, offering guests an environment similar to what they might find at a nearby specialist coffee shop. During the evening, the same space becomes a combination restaurant/lounge, serving appetizers and small plates alongside alcohol beverages, allowing guests to customize their dining experience and partake in anything from a light happy hour to a full meal,” says Grant.

Presenting guests with locally sourced, healthy food and beverage items around the clock allows you to exceed customer expectations as well as increase ROI. Learn more about supply chain management and procurement services by calling 877-717-5566.