Restaurants and restaurant innovation

Good day everybody. My name is Frank Schuetzendorf. I'm a professor at Boston University and my background is hospitality industry. Within the hospitality industry, it has been in the food and beverage business. I've worked for multiple different types of operations and hotel companies, including Four Seasons Hotels, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Dorchester Collection, Waldorf of Astoria. I'm going to talk to you today about a topic which is very close to my heart, which is food and beverage innovation.

We'll talk about industry overview, what happened in the past, how do we get to where we are today, and what is the scenario looking like in a post COVID situation we have encountered over the past couple of years? What will we look forward to tomorrow in regards to food and beverage operations around the world? We'll talk about the food and beverage business side, we'll talk about the food and beverage experience side, and we'll talk about next generation of business models that we see popping up today and which can be very interesting business drivers of tomorrow.

To begin with, let's talk about the evolution of fine dining. What is la nouvelle cuisine? The new cuisine, and what happened towards the end of the 20th century? In order to better understand this, we need to take a look back at what happened in history. Fine dining and ultimately the impulse for next generation of business models, because they all evolve around experiential dining and what is in your plate, and the surrounding of what is around the plate related to service and the environment. The initial kickoff for this type of cuisine and type of experience we encounter today has been a chef that has been very famous. His name is Paul Bocuse. Paul Bocuse was the first ambassador that globally traveled the world and brought the French cuisine around different areas, in different geographical locations around the world. He was the ambassador that basically introduced the brasserie, the all-day-dining concept, and very much geared towards specialized recipes which have evolved over the past two centuries in France. Paul Bocuse was the master in regards to this brasserie-style environment. Paul Bocuse was then replaced, or also seconded, by somebody called Joel Robuchon. Joel Robuchon took Paul Bocuse's concept to the next level. Paul Bocuse, as he was more focused on brasserie style, which means casual French traditional heritage dining concepts, Joel Robuchon, he moved more and more into the fine dining environment, using old techniques and old recipes to tweak them, to develop them into an ultra-luxury environment. The ultra-luxury accolade we have today in regards to fine dining is the Michelin Star Guide. The Michelin Star Guide allows us to really earn different types of stars for the different levels of experience we are having in those restaurants. The Michelin Star Guide is a well-sought-after guide because it is considered as a springboard for young and upcoming chefs to make a name. When you have a name and you create an environment that entices people and customers to come in and explore your cuisine and the environment and the craft of service. That will allow you to create a sense of recognition and a reputation. The reputation will allow you to expand your business model into different types of culinary concepts. Hence, in the past, Michelin-star chefs always were interested in becoming a three-star chef, which is the highest level of Michelin star guide you can achieve. To then, hopefully, have investors inject revenues in order to expand the business to create a second, third, and fourth location. This is exactly what Joel Robuchon had achieved. He was also the first chef that took fine dining to the next level by bringing the kitchen into the service environment, which means into the dining room. He created the first counter experience where customers are sitting at a counter having a Michelin-star meal, whilst being able to see and follow the different steps of production processes that are involved in the kitchens. Kitchens had to adapt to that next level of service environment, because kitchens being very loud, being very noisy became more and more refined and created that sense of luxurious experience within the dining room. Joel Robuchon has been accumulated to become one of the most highly sought-after chefs. He had won most Michelin Stars and always focused his main concept around his countertop seating in an ultra-luxury fine dining setting. Joel Robuchon, then was replaced from a conceptual point of view by a gentleman, by a chef called Alain Ducasse. Alain Ducasse took that restaurant concept to the next level by focusing a lot more on innovative culinary concepts. Alain Ducasse was the first one that already foresaw at the end of the 1990s that vegetarian and vegan dining will be the future. He also focused mainly on service and on the design of the environment. He put mainly the kitchens back of house again, which means the customer was not being able to see how the production steps were generated in the kitchen, but he is more and more focused on the service experience, on interior design, on playing with different types of elements which make up a meal for example, the craft, the service, the ceremonies, the rituals around fine dining, and raised the bar quite substantially to reinvent what fine dining stands for today. These were the past three identities that have made up what ultra-fine dining stands for today. Once again, Paul Bocuse was the initiator, the very first ambassador of French fine dining around the world. Moving on to Joel Robuchon, that took Paul Bocuse's traditional recipes and turned them into fine dining craft and brought the kitchen into the restaurant setting. Finally, Alain Ducasse took the kitchen to the next level by reinventing what fine dining stands for. It's less about the product or a specific quality of product, more it's about excellence driven in combining the product with the service, with a design experience. We will see later on, how the design has then taken on an own world of itself.