You stagger into the lodge after a morning of epic powder riding. Coated head to toe in wet, heavy flakes, exhausted and elated at the same time, you arrive at the lodge to fuel up with nourishment and camaraderie.

Stoked and starving, you tuck into…. lukewarm fries and a wax paper-wrapped, two-hour-old burger. As an extra kick in the pants, the combo was a mellow $12 with soda. Ouch.

It appears that as an industry, we’re not doing the best job of keeping our guests’ bellies full of great-tasting food. A 2006 customer-satisfaction survey conducted by the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) found that food service consistently ranked near the bottom of the list. At some areas, food service received a negative score. It was a plea for help from the very people that keep resorts in business—the guest who arrived for the day with cash and calories to burn.

So what’s the problem? Many of the people SAM spoke with for this story linked it back to perceived value. People may not necessarily care as much about the price of their meal if they think it is worth it. Reconsider the above scenario: if that burger was made of top-grade Angus beef, brushed with a savory sauce, grilled to order and served on a fresh-toasted bun with juicy tomatoes, lettuce and a big ol’ pickle, would you mind paying more for it?

That’s the philosophy Jason Brewer, food and beverage manager at Tamarack Resort in Idaho, has been working with since the resort opened in 2004. Using the burger to benchmark resort cafeteria fare, he outlined how he tries to enhance its value by using good beef, a selection of specialty cheeses fresh-melted on the patty, a toasted bun and the option of adding grilled onions or fresh veggies.

“What I’ve found is that if I have a good product on the plate—toasted bun, melted cheese, the works—is that the perceived value is consistently very high,” he explains. “What we’ve traced that back to is giving guests good service and a quality lunch at a price point that’s not necessarily really cheap, but is one that they feel comfortable with. That burger is going to be around $12 with fries and a drink, but people are still giving us a really high perceived value.”

What people are willing to pay for their meals, of course, varies from region to region and resort to resort. There are, however, myriad ways resorts can achieve culinary greatness without breaking the bank, nor asking their customers to. The following are some examples.


Use Your Suppliers!

Suppliers are a great resource for information, suggestions and solutions. Since the health of their business depends directly on yours, many are keen to share their expertise and experience. Suppliers can work with resort staff to address:

• menu development
• menu pricing and organization
• portion analysis to optimize profitability
• trend identification and recipes to match
• product suitability for the market
• service tips
• marketing suggestions
• physical display of products.

Best of all, these services are often free to clients of the supplier.

“The best tool we have is really partnering with the distributor,” says Nancy Brooks of SYSCO, a supplier of all things food-related to the U.S. and Canada. “And that’s not just a phrase—we have people who come out and say, ‘all right, what can we do to help you?’ For instance, when a customer says ‘my food cost is too high,’ we say, ‘what’s your recipe?’ And then we’ll audit it [to make sure the menu price matches the portion actually being served].”

Tamarack’s Jason Brewer uses SYSCO as his main supplier, and he has leaned on the company to help solve problems. For example, he says, he felt the quality of the pizza crusts being served was not up to par, so he called SYSCO and asked for help developing a new recipe for the dough. A food specialist came out to the resort and worked with his chefs to develop the new recipe that everyone felt was more appropriate.

Frank Tansey, national sales account manager for PepsiCo, encourages others to do the same.

“Don’t be afraid to ask the silly or simple questions,” he says emphatically. “You are not alone—someone else has probably been through a similar experience.” Asking questions, Tansey says, can result in finding a simple solution to a problem that may be costing you money or the loyalty of your customers. Both he and Brooks emphasize the importance of viewing suppliers as a resource, not just as people who deliver product to the back door. These are big companies and they have lots of talented people working for them—don’t be afraid to tap that knowledge base.


Love Your Food!

Nelson, B.C., is a true foodies destination, so much so that it’s often joked that Nelson has more restaurants than people. So when husband and wife duo Mike and Shelley Adams bought Whitewater ski resort in 1997, they knew they wanted food to be front and center.

“I just changed the menu right away,” Shelley explains. “I couldn’t work somewhere that served bad food, but I wanted to keep the prices low so that everyone could afford to eat here.”

Shelley learned her craft at the Ecole de Cuisine La Verenne in Paris and honed it during years of catering movie sets in Vancouver, B.C. She wanted to serve the same quality of meals to Whitewater’s guests as she did to actors and celebrities. She sources the food as locally as possible, makes almost everything from scratch, and makes sure there is a variety of food on the menu to please every palette.

As a result, the resort offers everything from burgers and fries (or yam frits) to curry bowls, paninis, homemade granola bars, Thai-inspired dishes, and “old Russian-recipe” borsch. “It’s all ski food,” she says, “only better!”

It wasn’t long after opening her on-hill café, Fresh Tracks, that Shelley says the idea of a cookbook started to percolate. People were asking for her recipes and friends encouraged her to pursue it. She took the plunge and self-published a cookbook called Whitewater Cooks; pure, simple and real creations from the Fresh Tracks Café. A professionally photographed, beautifully presented book, it’s full of recipes from the café and from her days of catering. It also sold a respectable 5,700 copies in its first six months. It was picked up by a publisher in 2005 and is currently available across Canada and the U.S. A Whitewater Cooks “at home” edition is currently in the works.

“The book turned out to be a real hit,” she admits, a mix of surprise and pleasure in her voice. “It’s actually a really good marketing device for us.”


Good People Equal Good Food!

That kind of passion is key to a good food and beverage program, says Brewer. “Getting skilled people and qualified people and training them in the proper way is where I think it begins,” he says. “Getting people that buy into the standard (of quality) that you are looking to create is key.”

Easier said than done, you say. But Brewer, who has worked in food service for most of his career, says that looking for people who are self-motivated and take pride in their work is a good start. Then, he says, you have to keep them challenged and happy in their work if you want to hang on to them.

“Once we find these people, we work hard to retain them as employees. You have to give them growth opportunities, allow them to pursue a creative edge and do the things that they want to do. Sometimes they don’t work out, but sometimes it’s a big hit.”


Be Trendy!

Ski resorts should not be immune to food trends just because the terrain is supposed to be the star of the show. Key trends to watch right now are healthier foods and diversity in dishes offered, says Pepsi’s Frank Tansey. If you want different kinds of people to come to your resort, he says, you have to give them an experience they can identify with. This means adding different kinds of dishes to the menu, such as curry, roti, Thai food, or Mexican food. And these cuisines often fit in with the trend toward healthier foods.

North American waistlines are expanding and people are taking notice to the point where entire cities are banning trans fats. Shelley Adams says she used to have many customers asking for fast-food style items, but the requests have died off and healthier items prevailed. She makes sure to point out, though, that people don’t want to eat bland, boring food just because it is better for them. Adding goat cheese, oils and flavors to healthier items gives people the “grease without the grease,” she jokes.

Julie Wilson, director of Deer Valley ski resort’s highly regarded food and beverage program, says that she and her staff keep on top of trends by going to trend-focused cities such as San Francisco and Las Vegas every two years to check out what is on the menus of the top restaurants there. She notes that because Deer Valley is a destination resort with guests from across the country, their food has to match what people are eating in those places. She doesn’t think that the health-food trend is taking over the nation, but notes that people who are staying for a week don’t want to eat junk food every single day.

“People still want the option because when you’re at the resort for a week, they don’t want to have fries and burgers every day, they want to have healthy alternatives. They want a broth soup, they want something that they are going to feel good about eating.”

For smaller resorts that are more day trip focused, Frank Tansey recommends a simple strategy for tracking trends in beverages: go to local convenience stores. Their fridges will likely be organized to reflect the best-selling beverages in the most eye-catching places, just like a grocery store. Their product line-up and display organization at these stores are a very good gauge of what is selling well and what isn’t.


Make it an Experience!

Tuxedo Ridge ski resort in New York opened just this year, after purchasing an existing resort (called Sterling Forest) and renovating it into the new business. They opened with the principle that their food and beverage program was going to be as big an attraction at the resort as the skiing. In doing so, they hope it will forge the foundation for a year-round business.

One of their main goals in renovating the resort was to create an environment that would make people feel good about spending a bit of money on their lunch or dinner at the hill. That meant making it feel more like a restaurant and less like a cafeteria.

“We renovated the cafeteria and turned it into a café,” explains Brian Birch, F&B manager and head chef. “We took out the picnic benches, added leather-padded seats, and really stepped up the elegance of the common cafeteria lounge. I think that once you walk in and you see that you’re on a real chair with a leather seat, you are immediately expecting something better. I think people are more able to absorb higher prices when they’re not sitting on a picnic bench.”

Winter resorts work hard to give their guests good value on the hill by grooming snow and buying bigger and better lifts. A carefully cultivated food and beverage program can do the same—why shouldn’t their break for lunch be as enjoyable as carving a groomed run or frolicking through knee-deep pow?