Rethinking Hotel Food and Beverage: Heleri Rande on the right strategies for commercial success.

Hotel F&B has a reputation problem - and not without reason.

Margins are thin. Complexity is high. Stakeholders are many. Restaurants are expected to feed guests, attract locals, host events, uphold brand standards and still turn a profit.

For Heleri Rande, strategy consultant and partner at Think Hospitality, the starting point is refreshingly pragmatic:

“If you don’t need to do F&B, don’t do it.”

It’s not a rejection of food and beverage - it’s a call for clarity.

Not Every Hotel Should Run a Restaurant

One of Heleri’s strongest views is that F&B is too often treated as a default requirement rather than a strategic choice.

“If it’s not done properly, it will lose money. In many cases, it should be seen as a marketing cost - not a standalone business.”

Before committing to a full-service restaurant, hotel owners should ask a more fundamental question: is this actually the right model for this property?

Partnerships, limited service, or carefully structured third-party operators may offer a more commercially realistic alternative.

Context Before Ambition

“You can build something beautiful - but if the local market can’t afford it, it won’t work.”

For Heleri, location and audience matter more than aspiration. Cost-of-living pressures mean guests are increasingly deliberate about where they spend.

Ambition without alignment - to price point, catchment and competition - is a fast route to empty tables.

Design Matters - But Strategy Matters More

Heleri is unequivocal about the value of design.

“Design shapes how guests feel - even if they can’t explain why.”

But she is equally clear that aesthetics cannot rescue flawed fundamentals.

“It might carry you for a while, but it won’t save the day.”

Lighting, acoustics and atmosphere all matter - but only when built on a commercially coherent concept.

Strategy First - or Pay Later

Hotel F&B is emotional, complex and deeply human - which is precisely why it demands cool-headed thinking at the outset.

“They question spending on advice,” Heleri notes, “but lose far more by getting it wrong.”

If F&B’s role isn’t clearly defined - commercially and operationally - it will underperform quietly. And correcting it later is almost always more expensive than getting it right at the start.

This is an extract from our wider report, Hotel F&B Insights 2026. You can download the full guide here.

You can find Heleri here > https://www.hrande.com/