Hotel-catered meals at home

Hyatt Regency Manila’s newly appointed food and beverage director Marc Cerqueda has an ambitious target–to significantly increase the 35% share of outside catering to total F&B revenues.

"While Hong Kong and Japan residents have the money to spend on entertaining, they are constrained by space as most of their homes are relatively small, even for the affluent ones. Here, in the Philippines, houses have gardens and lovely patios ideal to entertain their guests," said Cerqueda.

To achieve this target, F&B is working closely with sales, which now shows a CD on the hotel’s catering service when making outside presentations.

"We offer personalized services to our clients. Our menus are tailor-fitted to what our clients want. If they ask for a specific dish, we will do it for them. Our menus are flexible enough for any budget," said Cerqueda.

The hotel accepts catering requests for a minimum of P5,000 and on a lead time of 24 hours. Peak periods are the wedding month of December and the dry months of February to June. To date, the hotel has catered to events as far south as Cebu.

Satisfied

Opened for business in 1968, the hotel is owned by Hotel Enterprises of the Philippines and is managed by Hyatt International. Its two major restaurant outlets have been included in the Philippine Tatler’s list of the country’s top restaurants for 2005.

"Satisfied customers have brought in a lot of repeat business for us. We call this the ‘Hyatt touch’. Every client is important. We want our client to enjoy the party and mingle with the guests. Our supervisor in the party site does all the worrying," said Cerqueda.

Equally important is the competitive pricing. On top of its value-added creativity, quality of food, and manpower, the hotel is able to cross-sell or get discounts from its other facilities, which it passes on to clients. For example, the prom and graduation ball packages, that range in price from P90,000 to P111,600 for the first 100 persons, includes a professional mobile disco, backdrop, balloon decors, floral centerpieces for the guest tables, ice carving, guest book, and an overnight stay in a de luxe hotel room plus a gift certificate for a 10% discount at the hotel’s restaurant outlets.

Now, that’s having an affordable touch of the Hyatt without leaving your home.