By Sourish Bhattacharyya

THE F&B revenue of the Trident Gurgaon had been growing by Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 2.5 crore year on year. The last financial year, though, beat all expectations, that too in a market shaken up by the new kid on the block, DLF’s immensely successful Cyber Hub ’restaurant mall’. FY2014-15 saw the Trident Gurgaon register a steeper upward line on its growth graph ’ its F&B earnings saw a jump of more than Rs 3.25-crore, the highest in its 11-year history, primarily because of the hotel’s entry into the high-end wedding market.
It was a smart move by the hotel’s general manager, Nitesh Gandhi, that did it. Having worked his way up since his green years at Cilantro, the Trident Gurgaon’s all-day dining restaurant, when the hotel opened in 2004 under the leadership of Kapil Chopra, now The Oberoi Group’s President, Gandhi knows the hotel like the back of his hand. And he had this feeling that there was a revenue opportunity waiting to be tapped.
It all started with an inquiry from a major international client a year ago for an al fresco upper- crust party for 700 people. Till then, the hotel wasn’t able to entertain such inquiries because it had limited banqueting space to offer. But the client was too important for the Trident Gurgaon to be asked to look for another venue.
Gandhi therefore undertook a recce of the property and discovered that it had a vast under-utilised parking lot that could, on occasions, be turned into an open-air banqueting venue. The parking lot, in fact, has two little tree-shaded green islands ’ one ideal for a bar and the other, for a marriage mandap. Significantly, the approach to this parking lot is past the water body at the hotel’s main square, which presents a spectacular sight in the evening when it is lit up by flaming torches.
The corporate party was a huge success and it paved the way for the hotel to sell the space for what Gandhi calls ’uber luxury weddings’. Typically, a wedding reception in this league is for 500-700 people and the hotel charges Rs 7,000 per guest. Unsurprisingly, F&B revenues today contribute 55-60 per cent of the hotel’s earnings.
The hotel’s two restaurants ’ Cilantro and the Indian fine-dining destination, Saffron ’ have also given Gandhi an additional reason to look happier. Their earnings, year to date, are up by 20 per cent, which means they have bucked what is known locally as the ’Cyber Hub Effect’. In other words, unlike other Gurgaon and South-West Delhi restaurants, they’ve shown a revenue growth despite the phenomenal success of DLF’s Cyber City, which has snatched business out of the hands of established players in the neighbourhood.
Even the hotel’s 1,200 sq. ft. bar’s revenue has climbed by 40 per cent, year to date, in the first four months of 2015. All it took was an idea from Chopra, a mentor to many of The Oberoi Group’s young executives, to make this turnaround possible. Post-6 p.m., the lobby-level bar is lit up by more than 40 candles, the tempo of the music is revved up, the bartender, hired from Bacardi, shakes and stirs cocktails infused with birch or apple wood smoke, and the bespoke snacks menu doesn’t have any item priced over Rs 350 per portion.
The transformation of the ’bar’s landscape’, to use Gandhi’s expression, has had a dramatic effect not only on the bar, but also on the footfalls at Saffron and Cilantro. ’Once guests have had a couple of drinks at the bar, they want to stay on at the hotel and complete their evening at one of the two restaurants,’ explains Gandhi.
Another major attraction is the Harley Davidson parked at the lobby. It will go one fortunate room guest or a diner who spends more than Rs 10,000 on a meal at the hotel. The lucky draw, which got 750 guests to sign up coupons within the first ten days of the prize being displayed, will take place at September-end. For initiatives such as these, Gandhi takes inspiration from the words of the company’s executive chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi: ’If you look after your guests, they’ll look after your business.’ At the Trident Gurgaon, each employee is empowered to spend up to Rs 1,500 on gestures to ensure guest delight, like framing the picture a lady guest kept at her bedside of her daughter and leaving a toy behind for the mother to take back home. The best way to the guest’s heart, though, is through the stomach.
’Food is one of the top three reasons why corporate travellers choose to stay at a particular hotel,’ says Gandhi, offering a rationale for his F&B focus. The hotel, he says, has earned Rs 850 crore in the past 11 years and earned a gross operating profit of Rs 450 crore. ’Each room at the Trident Gurgaon has been sold 3,300 times in these 11 years,’ Gandhi adds with an air of self-satisfaction.
Food therefore is the new goal post for the Trident Gurgaon. Few people understand food as well as Gandhi, who’s been primarily an F&B ops person, and his target, set by his president, is to ’bring luxury back to Indian cuisine’.
As a first move, Gandhi got Izzat Hussain, a brilliant chef, unani doctor and descendant of Awadh’s last royal family, to showcase his cuisine at Saffron. Throughout 2015, Hussain will be coming back to Trident Gurgaon to share his secrets with Saffron’s chefs. With such inputs, Saffron will definitely find a place at the top of the must-visit restaurants of Delhi-NCR. For Gandhi, it translates into happier guests and the cash registers ringing a bit louder than usual.

The Author is Consulting Editor of BW Hotelier.-