Why We Created A Recipe Book - Richard Garcia, Remington Hospitality

I hear a lot of creative ways on how to build and strengthen organizational culture, but what you'll hear in today's episode just might take the cake, so to speak. This is Hospitality Dealey, the show that helps you stay informed and inspired each day by the most interesting people in hospitality. My name is Josiah McKenzie and my goal is to help you reconnect with why you work in this industry and get fired up to go out there, delight others and reach your goals. Let's get started. Richard Garcia and his teams at Remington Hospitality care about their culture so much that they created and published a very special book for their associates, more specifically, a recipe book. A number of weeks ago, you had the big annual convention and you got everybody together. It was just so cool to see And I saw some photos coming out of TravelTaste, your new recipe book. What was the origin of that? How did this project come to be?

Yeah, listen, i appreciate you noticing So. It was a passion project, for sure for a lot of us at Remington. But look, it was about a year ago. I was talking with our chief commercial officer And he had mentioned to me that our traction with beverage and food has gotten extremely heavy. We're getting a lot of business development requests to come in and talk about what we're doing in beverage and food. How can that become an asset to a potential hotel deal that they're trying to make? But one of the things that was missing was we didn't have a platform to really show off everything that we've done, and this was a great way to do a bunch of things for us, all wrapped up into one book. So the first thing was great way to really showcase not only our independent portfolio but some of those branded hotels that are really doing some amazing things from a beverage and food perspective. So that's number one. The other thing it did is that it really allowed us to showcase and to ultimately praise what's happening out in the field and really make sure that these hotels and, frankly, the people at these hotels really know that we care about what they're doing and we want to showcase that to the world. So I think from a morale perspective, that was number two And, i'll be frank, number three. There really aren't that many other hotel management companies that can say they've got a hotel recipe book with some of their best recipes. So I think for us it was also a differentiator to be able to say, hey look, we've got the ability to do this And I think it shows what a hotel company can really do in the kitchen and also at the bar. It's a book that has both food recipes and beverage recipes. We've selected them from what we believe are some of our more unique. Not necessarily I don't want to say the best, because all of our hotel teams are all unique but definitely these have a great story attached to them And all of the recipes have a story in the book. So, at the end of the day, great way to showcase what we're doing at Remington. But I think, more importantly really to say to our teams thank you for all the hard work you're doing.

What always stands out to me is how well you all at Bremington leverage social media and very active on LinkedIn, and I think it's a tremendous way to communicate all the cool things that are going on within the company. That said, i spent my career in media and I find it really fascinating your decision to launch this as a printed book, and it seems, in this ephemeral nature of just media, is constantly flowing through our phones. There's something about commemorating this as a moment in time. You have this physical product, you can gift it to someone, and so that's interesting. But you know, i guess tell me a little bit more about the decision to package this as a book versus some other medium.

Yeah, totally. Look, i think you hit the nail on the head. You could touch, you can feel it. You know we've all gotten so used to being able to pick up our phone And the reality is that, listen, we think social media is great. Obviously it's a big part of what we do and kind of the message that we send. We feel social media can really get that message out there quickly and frankly to the targeted audience that we're looking for. But the reality is that if we would have launched this as a PDF, you know flip book, that would have been cool and people would have said, oh, that's really neat. But the reality is to me it's kind of like scrolling social media. It would have been looked at once, maybe twice, shared for that week, you know, amongst the industry and amongst some other people, but within a week or two it would have been old news and you know what's kind of the. What would be the next thing, right? Well, i think in this particular way, you know it is, to your point, something that we can gift. You know, if you walk into our offices it's sitting on the coffee table in our reception areas. You know a few of our hotels, especially the hotels that have participated in the book, you know you walk into their lobbies or even in their bars, they've got a copy of the book and they're able to hand that to somebody And I think, just like writing a letter is, you know, something to be said about holding that book and being able to physically take it with you. Being able to physically give it to someone. I think it really makes a very quick connection, first being able to quickly look at it on your phone and then move on to the next best thing. So I think bringing it back to you know, kind of old school ways, i think, also just really shows our commitment to this not going away, not being something that you can quickly slide through. You know, travel taste is not going anywhere And we hope that in the future there's more revisions to the book, with incoming hotels, new recipes, new chefs, new mixologists. So for us, you know, we hope that, hey, five years from now there's some people that might be collecting a few of these, these books.

There's something about the medium that speaks to the quality of what you create, just because it is there for years and years and years, right, and I think that's that's pretty cool. I think something that people may not be aware of is just how much work goes into creating a book, and that was me, and my wife actually went through a process of writing and publishing a book. It took years and you see, like all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, i'm curious for you when you went through this project, is there anything you learned about the process or about yourself or your teams that surprised you on that journey?

God, i think we learned a lot, right. I think the first thing we learned is that if anyone's looking to do, you know, a book on their own, it really showed us, right, what what it really takes to to kind of get in there and make it happen. No, i think the biggest thing that we learned is how many departments and how many different people needed to be involved, right, i think when we went into this, we we assumed that, hey, you know, we'll have the creative team, we'll have the, you know, beverage and food team, and then we can quickly go online and upload everything and magic will have a book in a week. And you know, i'll be frank, we probably could have done that and the quality would not have been what it is. You know, we went out and we found food photographers. We found the right creative team, you know, to publish the book. We found, you know, the right social media teams to be able to promote the book internally And then even within our company. What we learned was that we have some really, really talented individuals. Give you an example the forward of the book was actually written by one of our executive chefs, our executive chef, julia Brandt, who's at the Hilton Boston, back Bay. She was a culinary school instructor for a long time And one of the first things we thought of was OK, most of us are chefs. If we write this, we're going to be made fun of for our grammar errors and spelling errors. But utilizing our team's strengths was something that I think we learned is, we should lean on a little bit more. But I also think some of these contributors learned that they've got a skill set that can be used elsewhere. So, for example, this particular chef, you know she said, hey, i've always really wanted to write a book or, you know, do something. So we gave her that opportunity to write the forward of the book And it was amazing how surprised she was that we didn't edit it, that we used it, you know, as is. So I think that's a huge learning for us. Is that, you know, just because you're a chef, now, all of a sudden, she also knows that, hey, she might have a future in writing or helping us with other projects as well.

It's a really interesting point because I used to manage a team of writers And I think what I found over time is that, yeah, everybody has a slightly different way of phrasing something. But if you go and rewrite something, that honestly is kind of okay, as is it I don't know it doesn't feel great on the other side of that sometimes, and to just be aware of that, you know like, hey, maybe you're going to say this in a way that's going to be a little different than I would phrase it, but it, you know, it's a vote of confidence in that person And I think just hearing you talk is really interesting. A creative project like this allows you to see these different talents of your team. Keep them engaged.

Yeah, well, listen. I also think what was interesting too is the amount of emails and thank yous we got from the team that were that participated. You know, i think a lot of these you know gals and guys, they've never had the opportunity to be in a cookbook. I mean that's something huge. I remember, god, this was I couldn't even tell you, probably almost 20 years ago one of the first cookbooks I was asked to be in. I think it was the first cookbook I was asked to be in. I'm literally in the same cookbook as chefs like Eric Rapay and Danielle Ballood and David Burke, and I mean that to me was like the best thing since sliced bread and being able to showcase that and say, hey, look, you know, i'm in this, i'm in this book. And that feeling kind of came back to me when a few of these guys and gals wrote me and saying, hey, you know, really appreciate the opportunity to be involved. And I think it also shows that, remington, we are invested in these people. You know, we are invested in their career and their growth, but it might not be in the traditional way that you may think. So now, these, these particular chefs and mixologists, in my opinion, you know, i think it gave them a little bit of a boost to kind of get out there and be a little more creative or do things that they may not have thought they could have done in the past. And I think that to me is extremely exciting to see what's next for a few of these people because, frankly, they performed extremely well in the field. Given the opportunity to be in a book, it's kind of like, okay, what do we do next? Right, and I love that challenge that we were able to put out there.

I love that, because my next question was going to be sort of what is the response been? And it sounds like phenomenal internal response. You touched a little bit earlier around the opportunity for a business development perspective. Is there any other results or responses as a result of publishing this that you want to share?

Yeah, totally, look, i think I think the biggest response internally and keep in mind that this book was was written for us internally, right to be shared internally, to be shared with, you know, potential new clients and even to be shared with with some of our amazing owners, who actually were the first people to take a look at the book. You know, we invited them to a very special dinner and we wanted them to be one of the first to really showcase what they've allowed us to do. Right, because, at the end of the day, for some of these hotels, you know, we don't own these assets, we are purely managing an asset for somebody else. But they allowed us to do this And I think that by by incorporating that into what we're trying to sell internally with this book, i think it also really sent the message that, at the end of the day, remington is very serious about what we do when it comes to beverage and food, and I think that this book sent the message to I'm not gonna say naysayers, because I don't think we have any of them, but there were definitely some people internally that were trying to understand okay, where is beverage and food going and how is this gonna impact me. And the reality is, i think this book really showcased what the halo effect could be, because here's the reality right, we have 120 hotels. We were only able to put about 20 hotels into the book, and it wasn't that we didn't appreciate the other hundred hotels, we just had to make a decision. But that halo effect of what we just put out there, i think is gonna trickle into all of the hotels and really show them that, hey, we are very serious about what we do, and I also think it also gives people something to reach for. Hey, when the next rendition of this book comes out, how do I get in it? And we've actually had a few of those emails already.

So talk about motivation, that's great. I do wanna talk about where beverage and food is going for you, but before we do that you mentioned this is primarily for internal use is the only way to get your hands on a copy to work for you or, if you're an owner, to work with you, or is there another way that people listening to you?

Right now, yes, but I will tell you that the response from the field has been so tremendous. I mean, we have some hotels saying, hey, i wanna sell these, send me 500 of them. So the reality is we are actually working right now on trying to do a bulk deal. The reality is it costs money to print a lot of books, as we all know, and, i'll be frank, we didn't wanna go down the pay to play model where, essentially, someone orders and then they print it and ship it. We just felt that the quality of some of what we saw in that respect really wasn't representative of what we wanted. So right now, we're working very hard, essentially to try and come up with some funding to be able to print another batch of books, and then the goal will hopefully be to be selling them via an online platform here soon, so you'll be the first to know.

We heard it here first.