Global Head of Restaurants and Bars, and Senior Vice President, Food and Beverage, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts;
Board Director, Performance Food Group
Among the truly challenged segments of the hospitality industry as a result of the pandemic has been the hotel sector. With that in mind, Total Food Service sought out a world-renowned expert to help us understand what it is going to take for the hotel industry to once again flourish. Our goal — to share a food and beverage perspective that’s topical, that a hotel operator can control while waiting for tourism and business travel to return.
As the recently appointed Global Head of Restaurants and Bars, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts (in addition to being their Senior VP, Food and Beverage), as well as Board Director at Performance Food Group, Kimberly Grant is such an expert. Grant has over twenty-five years of hospitality industry experience leading and scaling restaurant and F&B companies in both the privately-held and publicly-traded sectors. Grant brings to her role at the Four Seasons, operational expertise that includes leading a decentralized workforce of over 30,000 team members, multi-unit operators, and support center operations.
In this exclusive interview, Kimberly Grant shares her plan for the Four Seasons food and beverage operations and with that, her insights into how the hotel industry will stage its comeback.
Please walk us through your career track prior to the Four Seasons.
I started at L&N Seafood (Morrison Restaurants) as a server in the early 1990s. Like a lot of us in the industry, I worked my way up through all the positions: as a server trainer, manager, General Manager and even kitchen manager from time to time as needed. We did everything when I joined the company. There were about 157 restaurants, and it was definitely in the growth stage of the company. I ended up after four or five years in operations moving to the finance department just as the Specialty Restaurant Division became Ruby Tuesday Inc and spun off as its own public company from Morrison’s. I eventually worked as the controller for the company, then VP-Controller, working for the CFO and doing all the activities of a public company that a financial executive would do.
After a handful of years doing that, I went back out and operated 40 restaurants in Atlanta. Then a couple 100 restaurants in the southeast. I actually went from server to COO of the company in about nine years. We were in our heyday and opening 50 to 60 restaurants a year with nearly 1.8 billion in revenue. I was there a total of 21 years before leaving a decade ago, when the founder, retired, I left shortly thereafter and went on to move across the industry to become the CEO of Jose Andres’ Think Food Group (TFG). That’s the next chapter in my career. The first was in the public company, casual dining world and then the second chapter was in the privately held Michelin starred chef world with Jose. Funny, many people ask me about that transition. Because in our industry, we generally pick a lane and stay in it. I really didn’t have to pick because I was working for Ruby Tuesday while I was on the board of BlackBerry Farm so moving to TFG was a natural evolution in my food and beverage career
I can’t believe you just mentioned Blackberry Farm, isn’t that the place in Tennessee where they do the weddings?
That’s one of the many things we did including a lot of culinary events. It’s beautiful land and people that create beautiful experiences. I was able to meet top chefs and vintners from all over the world and form relationships. One of the relationships that I had formed led me to become the CEO at TFG. I was there for almost seven years right before the pandemic. It’s funny I stewarded one brand for many, many years and then went over and had 16 different concepts and nine different cuisines. It was a total opposite of what I had done for so long. At TFG, we were operating in boutique hotels and casinos, and amusement destinations, as well as neighborhood restaurants. We did a little bit of everything. Our last project was to open a 36,000 square foot food hall in Manhattan. It was the full gamut. I tell everybody, now I’ve run everything from a food truck to a Michelin two-star restaurant and everything in between.
What attracted you to the opportunity at Four Seasons?
First of all, it’s the Four Seasons, let’s just start there! I’m obviously an admirer of the brand. But more importantly. I gravitate towards founder led organizations. I appreciate and really enjoy being a part of a deep seeded culture that is attractive to other people like me. I think that was one of the starting points and then it’s the opportunity. I feel like the 30 years that I’ve navigated through the industry and all the different types of formats and geographical diversity has prepared me to be able to lead, an organization that has a footprint of restaurants and bars, like we do at Four Seasons. I think it was a perfect match of opportunity and timing and skill set and passion for what I have in the business.
The name Isadore Sharp has been synonymous for a long time with the Four Seasons brand. Does it still sort of live on as you help to write a new chapter for the brand?
It’s the spirit 100% today. I was really fortunate because within the first three weeks, I was able to meet and spend time with him. He is not only a legend, but he continues to be the driving force behind everything that we do.
After spending time with him, how would you define the Isadore Sharp recipe for success?
My opinion is that he’s both happy and uplifting. He makes people smile as soon as he’s in the room. Start there and then it’s all about hospitality. Early on, the company culture was grounded in the Golden Rule — treating others as one wants to be treated. It’s been like that from the beginning, every person I met at Four Seasons as I went through the hiring and on-boarding process. It is an absolutely amazing feeling that we have for guests and team with everything revolving around their happiness.
What were the marching orders that Christian Clerc handed to you to create and implement this new vision?
We have been in conversation for quite a bit of time. It’s evolved obviously, with the pandemic that has changed our world, probably forever and in some ways for the better. It begins with an amazing footprint of restaurants and bars at just over 550 venues around the world. And it’s really around achieving a vision of strengthening our position as the preferred luxury operator of restaurants and bars around the world. We also happen to have this beautiful backdrop of spectacular hotels and resorts to do that in. The key becomes strengthening the skill and capability within our organization to accomplish our goal.
The last two years have been nothing short of devastating to the hotel industry. What are your goals as you look into engineering a restart through the portfolio of properties?
The real starting point is just getting back to business, getting all of our outlets, amenities and independent signature restaurants operating at full capacity. That relies on many factors but obviously, first and foremost is our team and their talent. There are the realities of navigating the supply chain challenges and all the mechanics that go into, producing guest experiences every day. That’s really the practical part. Once we get past today and the near term, really being able to be innovative and creative. That includes fine tuning all of our current food and beverage offerings that we have, from restaurants and bars, to in-room dining, catering, and special events.
We also need to look at our future that includes a number of properties under development that are in all different stages. With that we spend a lot of time thinking about the future of food and guest experiences. How those will evolve in two years, five years and a decade from now. It’s revolving around creativity and innovation, for both our hotel and neighborhood guests.
Do the buckets remain the same meaning business travel, tourists travel, and then local trade? Is that how you look at the landscape?
It may be even a little bit more nuanced than that. With a brand like Four Seasons, we have so many different types of properties around the world.
Some are destination resorts, others are urban retreats, some are small, and some are very large. The one consistent opportunity that we’re really embracing is more and more local guests are enjoying our restaurants than ever before. We also know that many of our hotel guests enter our brand through their first experience with one of our restaurants or bars. On the business side it could be a power breakfasts, an important lunch or a celebratory closing dinner. Personally, it might be an anniversary or their Easter brunch. The goal is that with a local experience at one of our hotels, the guest falls in love with our brand and our team. With that they want to try more and their next interaction with the brand may be an overnight stay on a business trip.
The hotel industry has taken a number of different approaches to restaurants including as a loss leader. For many years, you would rarely see a high-end chef or a high-end restaurant go into a hotel property. Can you talk about how that turned into Joel Robuchon in New York City at a Four Seasons and how you look at what goes into properties now?
We probably want to separate a chef joining a hotel project and the idea of a loss leader. It begins with what are the needs of the guest that is going to be enjoying the venue and our projecting what the guest is looking for: fine dining, approachable dining or even limited service dining. In many cases, it has a lot to do with not only what we are offering within the footprint of the hotel, but also who we are competing with in the neighborhood. That includes which cuisines are represented and offer an opportunity. We read the local trends in the marketplace with an understanding that different cosmopolitan cities around the world have different levels of sophistication with food and beverage. So we can be a little bit more envelope pushing and exploratory in certain markets or to be more predictable. We have so many incredible concepts that within Four Seasons, we’ve developed and proven over the years. Many of them have garnered, accolades and awards, not only from our guests, but from the industry. That has given us a stable of creative content that we can use at our disposal to launch new or renovated projects. Our priority is to look within first. Of course there are opportunities from time to time where we may or may not have the needed solution format or check. In that situation, we’ll look outside to partners that we’ve had wonderful relationships with or emerging talent that we feel are a good fit for the opportunity.
With that in mind can you build a successful culinary team and a career at a hotel?
It’s great that you asked that we actually just posted new culinary, corporate culinary director’s positions yesterday for three key roles on our team around the world. The talent that we’re looking for within Four Seasons to add to our already tremendous pool. They really love and want to be a part of innovation and creativity within the culinary world. What then resonates with them is the uniqueness of our Four Seasons career opportunity. Our venues to offer structure with the systems, processes and the support of a larger organization to succeed. At the same time, we offer nimbleness, the agility to be creative, and to be innovative within a framework. It’s kind of the best of both worlds. I spent the first 21 years of my career in a systemized organization, where you are replicating over and over again, and then the last seven years in a very fluid creative environment where anything was possible, and it’s kind of the blend of both.
Is the opportunity to work all over the world in hotels still an attraction for young people looking to build a career?
Here at Four Seasons, you can decide that you want to live in Tokyo or Dubai because that’s where you are in your life and you want a new adventure. The ability to be able to move around the world, but never change your employer is so unique. We also offer stability and continuity to stay in the same location or city.
Does a Four Seasons chef have input into menu design and local vendors to buy from?
Yes and foremost, it comes back to the skills and capabilities of the chef. Depending on where they are in their, experience and career, some get more autonomy than others. At the same time, we have leveraged the size and scale of our organization to get access to the highest quality products at the best price and to support our goal for consistency.
Do you come into this with any preconceived notions about menu trends? Do you see people wanting to eat healthier? Is sustainability something for them on the menu?
Our guests, want food with integrity and certainly that can now include plant-based items. The goal is to be as local as possible whether it’s a tomato, center of the plate protein or their water, we were serving to our guests. It really begins with our guests’ preferences, eating habits and how we can accommodate by saying yes.
Why is the Four Seasons a great place for a hospitality grad to build a career?
Today’s graduates have a different expectation of what companies need to do to make them happy. And that feeds a little bit of our labor issues and the industry overall. Four Seasons is a great organization with very deeply entrenched values, and a passion for excellence. If that resonates with you as a front of house, team member or at whatever level of our organization you would come in at, then we offer a great place to start your career.
For instance, if I’m a kid coming out of Cornell, I get to learn two businesses at the same time rather than one. Not only am I working in the food and beverage and restaurant business, but I’m also in the hotel business as well.
There’s a misconception sometimes out there in our industry that you have to go to Cornell to work at Four Seasons, right? No! But it’s a great question that I run into all the time. I don’t know that I as a young person in the industry would have applied at Four Seasons. I grew up a poor farm kid in Pennsylvania and I didn’t have those type of life experiences. What we’re really working hard to do is something that I learned while I was on the board of Blackberry Farm. We are looking for happy, kind, nice people that love the industry and want to make other people happy and wherever that happens.
There’s no academic program that teaches that.
Exactly right. I run into people all the time that will say to me do you think I could work in a hotel? Or I’ve never worked in luxury before? Absolutely. We need that core DNA of a happy, kind person, and we will teach you the rest. We have the most amazing training program, and our teams just live to help others learn and grow. We just need that starting point and anyone can flourish, if this is what they want to do.
What about in terms of an environment for women to grow their careers does Four Seasons provide?
The best way to answer that is it’s a journey for all of us in the industry. We know that the industry is underrepresented, there’s no doubt about it. There are a lot of reasons for it and the key is doing something about it and making Four Seasons and every company in our industry a great place to work and grow for everyone. We’re doing better than we’ve done before.
What I tried to do is just lead by example and be able to demonstrate there’s a pathway for all types of leaders. It’s something that we work at every single day.
I’m making the assumption that your definition of hospitality is still face to face. With that in mind, what role does technology play as we move forward in this business?
I think we look at technology as an enabler to be able to spend more time with guests. We also want it to be an enabler for our guests to be able to speak with us, whether they’re in our restaurants or hotels.
We have invested heavily into an app that is a tremendous communication tool. It helps us within the organization to serve the needs of our guests as quickly as possible. We are not looking to replace personalized service because it’s the foundation of Four Seasons, so that’s something that will never change. Perhaps a robot could run the dishwasher to help us be more efficient. I don’t see it in a scenario in which we are interacting with a guest that requires the personal touch of someone who cares. Robots can’t provide our standard of care and love.
When you started years ago, a restaurant would promote itself with a print ad or radio, ad and maybe some television. How has technology impacted how you market the Four Seasons restaurant properties?
This is one of the journeys that we’re, exploring further right now. Typically, in the past, a lot of venues that were located within hotels, relied upon the touch points that the hotel offered from a website to reservations or collateral within the rooms. Technology has enabled us to compete like a local restaurantand just like local restauranteurs,we use different reservation platforms like OpenTable and Tock so external guests can find us. Internally, we are using technology to make sure that it’s easy for a guest in our hotel to plan ahead and make a reservation in our restaurants.
With that what’s your approach to the branding of your restaurants in each of your local markets?
For instance, here in DC, we have a great restaurant within our Georgetown location called Bourbon Steak. It’s a partnership with Michael Mina and people here in DC when they say they’re going to eat or dine or have a meeting, say they are going to Bourbon Steak not the Four Seasons for dinner.
That’s a great goal for us in every city that we operate in as we try to establish a presence for our food beverage. Because in some cases, the majority of the guests that are dining in the restaurant are coming from local trade and not from our hotel rooms. It’s location dependent, of course. We need to make sure that we’re in the conversation if guests are deciding where they want to eat for a meal experience. We want our brand and our offerings to be in that conversation. That means in the local Eater and Thrillists as people search for what’s exciting and are really great places to experience great food and service.
Final question, when you get up in the morning, it’s a very far-flung worldwide portfolio. Where do you start this mission and what do you see in the proverbial crystal ball?
Someone once told me that when you’re looking at the next opportunity in your life career, if you can say it without having to explain it, then you’ve “got it”. I look at the collection of spectacular, gateway cities in the Four Seasons portfolio. With that I see aspirational locations all over the world as people get inspired to travel, again and to, experience our brands and places that they’ve either loved today or have dreamed of going, I want that list of restaurants and bars that we have within our portfolio to be of equal stature and presence and as inspiring as the locations that we have hotels and love. That’s part of having, celebrated brands, and gifted crafts people both in the back and front of the house to make it happen. The aspiration of our guests being willing to drive across town or fly to another city to have a Four Seasons created culinary experience will serve as our North Star for the restaurant and bar group going forward.
To learn more about the Four Seasons global portfolio of properties, visit their website
