Commercial property & office buildings are shifting into the new era that demands a flexible rethink to the traditional commercial model and this creates opportunity to challenge the conventional approach to food and hospitality only playing a passive ‘tick & flick’ role in this environment.

Driving in-office participation is now an all to familiar topic that many property managers and asset owners must address following a wave of commentary in the media, architectural journals and thought-leadership papers across the property sector.

Across Australia in a diversity of sectors, employees that have live-in accommodation and food provided by their employer, as part of their working life, experience a gap in living standards. The gap in expectations is continuously fluctuating with everyday home life, no more so than from the perspective of millennials and Gen Z who have high expectations…

The topic of this blog is one that many will be glad to have personally overcome. It has tested the strongest of families at the best of times, and is pertinent to my family right now, yet had previously acquired very little of my attention: ‘Conquering the challenges of ‘Family Dining’

As Australia’s top food and hospitality consultants, Future Food work with and travel to, many of the leading Clubs in Australia who have already made food, beverage, and hospitality a central focus of their strategy. In doing so they continue to differentiate themselves in the market, providing their members and visitors with multiple reasons to engage, of which gaming is but one element.

As a Food Consultant working with shopping centres and mixed-use development clients in Australia, New Zealand and globally, I share with you the changes I see across various industry sectors regarding the diversity of food, hospitality and entertainment as the future for maximising market share, sales, rental growth and asset value.

The ups and down of the past 24 months has; and is continuing to batter the food and hospitality industry from every angle. It is hard to plot a road map for the industry’s short and medium terms due to the non-stop challenges that face each specific sector, none bigger than the shortage of trained staff, increased operating costs, rent, and fitout costs.

Future Food are leaders in Food & Hospitality Consulting to the hotel industry, partnering with developers and hotel operators around the world to maximise the benefit food and beverage can bring to their property.

Throughout 2018/2019 it seemed that every week we were picking up the newspaper and reading announcements of the “Next New” hotel being built in one of our capital cities, or the first of its kind new ‘Lifestyle’ hotel brand entering the market to cater towards new customer demands in the aspirational hotel market.

With the introduction of brands like 25 Hours Hotels by Accor, Voco Hotels by IHG and W Hotels by Marriott, it appeared that the ‘lifestyle’ product was on-trend and in high demand, yet the announcement of global leaders including St Regis, Ritz Carlton and Mandarin Oriental also eyeing off new locations in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne revealed the push across all levels of hotel positioning.

Australia’s food and beverage operators have been striving to return their businesses to some degree of normality in order to drive sales, stabilise costs and prepare themselves for the imminent financial obstacle of Job keeper payments ceasing in three weeks’ time. It is clear from the ABS that the future is bright for food and beverage operations, however, operators need to be creative, flexible and innovative in order to comply with the remaining Covdid-19 restrictions around social distancing and the control in patron numbers in any one enclosed space.

In the course of our work, we have noticed that there are some venues that just say ‘Sydney’. We also know that over the years, Sydney restaurateurs haven’t lit up the world in Melbourne (and vice versa, we might add). All of which got us thinking about why this is so: What is it about the market that creates a ‘Sydney’ venue?

Here we highlight a few of the differences between the Melbourne and Sydney food scene.

Although 2020 will be remembered in Australians (and the world) for all the wrong reasons, hospitality operators continued to push the boundaries, open new concepts providing a welcome haven for Australia’s at large with new experiences that raised our spirits and reminded us that life, food and hospitality will not only survive but thrive.

There are stand out restaurants and bars that have opened across Australia with new and enticing food and beverage as well those who have traded through the ups and downs continuing to deliver excellent food and service.

Here we highlight a few of the many new ones (and can’t wait to try) and share a recent food experience at Ish in Melbourne.

The hospitality industry - restaurants, cafes and the very people that operate these establishments - have received considerable customer backlash of late as they seek to receive advance payment for future table bookings. Venues are requiring pre-payment as a strategy to reduce the costs of no-shows which slow their financial recovery caused by the pandemic. By establishing a degree of commitment from their future customers, restaurateurs can eliminate the considerable financial harm caused by the unconscionable conduct of some customers.