Taking shape: new hotel dinnerware trends are designed to please the guest and satisfy the bottom line

Hotel & Motel Management, April 19, 2004 by Julie Gustafson

You're opening a new hotel. It's a 400-room property with all the amenities. You've dotted all the "i"s and crossed all the "t"s, but wait--you need to order dinnerware for your hotel's restaurant, roomservice and banquet service. No biggie, right? A plate's a plate. Round, white, send me $40,000 worth, end of story.

Hardly.

Buying hotel dinnerware is a balancing act between the desires of the chef, the requirements of the purchasing department, the expectations of the management and the emotional needs of guests.

"The single greatest thing a hotel demands and we produce are plain, white, round plates," says Mike Coggins, vice president of sales and marketing for Villeroy & Boch USA, a manufacturer of retail and commercial dinnerware.

Round and white has been the industry standard for a number of reasons. White goes with everything, so there's no need to change dinnerware with the change in carpet and curtains. And chefs love a plain white background to set off their food. Plus, it's functional. Round plates fit easily in a lowerator--a cabinet that holds dinnerware. In addition, plate covers, which are ubiquitous in the banquet arena, most commonly are round.

But according to Coggins, one of the latest trends in dinnerware is adding new china in different shapes and materials to compliment the existing round white plates.

"We call these [uniquely shaped items] emotions pieces versus the typical round plates, which are functional pieces," Coggins said.

Probably the biggest reason hotels have trended toward shapely changes in their dinnerware is because chefs are insisting upon it.

"The chef always wants to push to the next level," said Paul Gebhardt, senior vice president of design and advertising for Oneida, a manufacturer of dinnerware for the retail and commercial sectors. "We look to him or her as the most sensitive person in the house. We provide him or her with different canvases in which to do this."

Jay Finkelstein, general manager of Arthur's 27 restaurant at the Wyndham Palace Resort & Spa in Orlando, agreed.

"Our chef would like to use a different shape for every dish," Finkelstein said. "She's always experimenting with presentation."

No purchasing department is going to give a chef free rein to buy whatever he or she wants. Those in charge of purchasing have several key criteria that must be met before placing a dinnerware order. Jack Boykin, senior vice president of Boykin Management Co., which manages 31 hotels in the United States, oversees dinnerware purchasing for the company.

"The No. 1 criteria, for me is availability," he said. "We prefer a manufacturer who we're assured has inventory available. Cost and durability of the product are also important. Some of the specialty items don't hold up."

Boykin said the company reorders dinnerware at least quarterly, and the company typically builds on an existing china pattern based on requests from his chefs. These requests are primarily menu driven. In other words, the chef feels a particular menu item would present better to the guests on a different shaped dish. Seafood, steak and some breakfast items, as well as desserts, are presented on specialty dinnerware.

Arthur's 27 restaurant, which uses the Foglia pattern of white bone china from Villeroy & Boch, also presents many of its menu items on different styles of dinnerware.

"We use a different style of plate for each course," Finkelstein said. "Some appetizers are placed on rectangular plates, and we serve some entrees in oversized bowls. We use a dessert plate by Mikasa with a rose-colored outer edge with gold trim for our creme brulee. We also serve our intermezzo, a palate-cleansing food, in a lily-shaped glass flower dish. This causes lots of "oohs" and "aahs" with the guests."

So what's the purpose of all these specialty-shaped dishes? It's that "ooh and aah" factor along with smart marketing.

"Part of the criteria, or rationale, for these different dishes is that when people are enjoying this dining experience, they want to feel everything has been customized for them because it's on a special dish," Finkelstein said.

"Hotels try to surprise the guests a little bit," Gebhardt said. "You eat with your eyes first. Consumers react to a square plate much differently than they react to a round plate. The shape of the plate can cause the guest to pause for a second, then experience it. If we can get people to look at the experience in a different way, just maybe their taste buds will turn on to the next level."

Coggins also said that from a merchandising standpoint, it's about impressing the diner by dressing up his presentation.

"I can, by picking the right plate, sell more [food] and at a higher price than I can by saving money and buying more, boring, durable dishes," he said.

Boykin agreed.

"You can, to a certain degree, increase the price of an item on a specialty plate," he said.

Gebhardt said current trends in specialty-shaped dishes include anything that's not round.

"Tilting [the dish] on its axis, star shapes, squares, organic shapes and more [are popular]," he said. "The practicality of the dish has become less important as improvements in the product have been made to make them work better and be more durable.