MILAN — Customizing hospitality and the importance of glocalization are key drivers for Dominique Bellas, group membership director of Soho House; Lydia Forte, group director, food and beverage of Rocco Forte Hotels, and Michele Tacchella, business unit director of Giorgio Armani and EA7.
In a panel with James Fallon, chief content officer of WWD and Fairchild Media Group, the conversation was steered toward the topic of blending hospitality into their respective offerings.
“Soho House is meant to be a space that feels like a home away from home. So I think, for us, hospitality blends into the space because we want people to feel relaxed. We want people to feel at home,” Bellas said. “Everything we do, we think about how it would feel if you were at home, so the style of the way we serve our food, to the design being very comfortable, but also we curate the people that are in the room, so we want people to feel like they’re sitting somewhere that feels very familiar, friendly and fun. It should be fun. Home away from home is really at the core of what we do to try and create those spaces.”
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The Rocco Forte group is expanding and is planning five more hotels in Italy, which will bring the total to 11 in the country. But whatever the size, Forte concurred with Bellas, saying that “we are hosting people, in what feels like a home.”
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She attributed the build-up in Italy in particular to the fact that Americans make up the group’s biggest demographic, and the number-one destination for Americans is Italy. “The number-one reason for traveling to Italy is food. And so for us, it’s essential that we get that offering right in our hotels, and that we do hospitality and we do Italian food in a way that’s truly authentic and extremely well done.”
Accordingly, Forte works with Fulvio Pierangelini, the hotels’ creative director of food. “He won’t like to be mentioned like this, but he’s probably the father of modern Italian gastronomy, and through his knowledge and culture, we collaborate very closely to deliver what we hope is a very high quality of food experience. And then there’s all of the service that goes around it.”
Giorgio Armani was a pioneer as one of the first designers to expand into food and Tacchella confirmed that he “understood many years ago the importance of food as a natural extension of the brands.” He recalled how the first Emporio Armani restaurant that opened in London’s Brompton Road in 1989 was “very successful for us,” and that it is “one the most important things how we talk with our customers” to reflect the Armani brands also through food, through quality and “to be recognized for the standard level of our chef and interpretation of Italian culture.”
Armani is also expanding its food offer globally and is expected to open a new restaurant this month in New York, in the new building comprising the brand’s flagship, Casa store and residences on Madison Avenue unveiled last month.
Asked how Armani adapts the food and beverage offering to each respective market, Tacchella said it’s important to be global but at the same time, to understand what the customers need in different locations. As an example, he said “we have a very important Armani restaurant in Ginza tower that’s one of the most prestigious locations in Tokyo. And it’s important to understand what our Japanese customers are expecting from us, and to be open, to have this kind of touch of Japanese culture into the restaurant, while being consistent with the vision of Armani.”
Bellas said that, similarly to Armani, “in terms of global but local, I think some people find it very comforting to go to Soho House and always be able to get an avocado on toast. And other people, they want to try something different.” Soho House is opening a post in Tokyo, which led Bellas to consider the kind of food that should be available there. “I think there’s lots of similarities, actually, between Italy and Japan in the sense of how they approach food, so the highest-quality ingredients served simply and well. So what do they want to see on that menu? And maybe it’s not what I would expect or what we would have assumed, but it’s really listening to that local market so that it feels very local. But there are those touches, those home comforts that members expect at every house.”
Forte said that food is adapted locally, but “we don’t always do Italian food. I think there’s an inherent contradiction sometimes in being authentic and being local and being a brand. And obviously we’re all trying to brand build. But how do you do that in a way [that] is still adaptive to your local market? It’s very challenging, and for us, our food and beverage offerings do target a local audience. It is extremely important for us and for our hotel guests that the locals are in our restaurants and in our bars; it gives the essence of the place that they’re in. It’s the worst to go on holiday, to be in a hotel, and to be surrounded by other people from the same country as you.”
To manage this, Forte has been building small teams in-house, developing their concepts internally “because it’s very hard trying to find that balance with external brands. And we’ve started to develop a roster of different concepts, from classic Italian to more contemporary Italian. But also we do French brasserie in Edinburgh because we see the local market appreciates that, and our hotel guests don’t really want to eat Scottish food that much.” The local tweaks include, for example, differentiating the filling of the ravioli depending on the city, she said.
A feeling of home can also be conveyed through pop-ups, as with Soho’s Cities Without a House membership. “We’ve been doing it in Milan for seven years, but we do it in about 85 cities around the world, and it’s a really great way to date the cities to see whether we like them and they like us,” said Bellas, adding that the group prefers buildings with “lots of history,” which may come with “lots of restrictions,” leading to a longer time frame for the opening. As reported, the members-only club format has selected in Milan a historic six-story building for its second outpost in Italy, following a location that opened in Rome in 2021, and that is scheduled to open in a couple of years.
Forte has also started opening pop-ups in restaurants, which help add “a little bit of interest and excitement. It’s a way of creating some news, but without completely transforming and turning upside down what our inherent concepts are. So we did Zuma in Munich this summer, and that was a big success drawing in new customers into our hotel that wouldn’t have come before. We’ve done something with Dinings SW3, which is one of my favorite London restaurants, they’ve come to Sicily with us.” However, it is key for the pop-ups to have “a sense of play or at least a philosophical alignment with the concepts that we have in-house.”
Asked what advice they would give a brand looking to set up a food and beverage operation, Forte said she would suggest “finding a way to have happy and well-trained team members, because they are the ones that deliver heartfelt and efficient service to your guests, and in hospitality, without your teams, then you have nothing. I think that would be crucial.”
While it may be easier said than done, Forte added that “being a family business, knowing who your boss is and seeing them regularly since there are many members of the family that are constantly traveling to all the hotels,” leads to a “human side to the business that makes a difference, and also just general good HR practice, I think.”
In Bellas’ opinion, “putting the customer first is a great place to start. It’s a community, you know, you’ve got to care.” If the team members feel supported and they are “passionate about what they do and they want to see people having a great time, then it should be something that comes naturally.”
In accordance, Tacchella said customer satisfaction is crucial, as is training and “hiring the right people that love the hospitality world.”