Big Deals, Big Impact? Plus, Hilton's Top F&B Exec Tells All.

26:14They're just rolling out in Whole Foods right now. So it's their latest product and they're entering into a new category. So they've never really touched breakfast. They have been in frozen with their frozen pizzas and that seems to be doing pretty well. So they went into another category. And it's interesting because you're seeing a lot of other frozen waffles pop up now too. But I think they're just trying to capitalize on their branding, introduce another protein, high protein, high fiber product. And the one thing amongst all their products is that it is chickpea based. So that's pretty simple.

26:51Are those toaster like Lego My Eggo style? Or are they more like the liege waffles from Belgian boys? Yeah, they're very similar to an Eggo. So you just pop it in the toaster. It's very simple. I gotta tell you, Yeah, these look good, but I'm on their website and they are pricey to say the least. So three boxes, if you buy directly from Bonza, is, drumroll please. $50. $35.99. $35.99. How much was it in Whole Foods? $35.99. Could have been that much. She used a company credit card. It's fine. We'll find out later. That's also your shipping. Check the receipts on that one too. You're shipping a frozen product.

27:32So I don't know if we should knock them for that. Well, it's$12 a box. Yeah, but you probably need dry ice. It's probably trying to tell you, you should just go to Whole Foods and buy this. Which is fun. Which is fun. Don't do it. No, I mean, I have not tried this product, but I like the idea of brands that are looking at what's selling well in frozen goods and what's kind of ripe for disruption. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. Sure, we need better for you stuff like that. I mean, obviously there's other brands out there, but I mean, I think that's a pretty sick looking box. Have you tried it yet, Jackie?

28:09Yeah, I did try it. They are very tasty. They taste like an Eggo, but like a better tasting Eggo. We got to try this, Ray. Better tasting Eggo. I'd eat it frozen. Will you have any? No. Oh, darn it. Yeah. I think also just people look at Bonza and they know they make quality products, at least their pasta, their mac and cheese, their frozen pizzas are quality. So I think they associate that with the name. And then also their packaging just stands out anywhere, but especially in Frozen, just, you know, a block of orange in the Frozen aisle. And that honestly is what caught my eye. Yeah, I mean, I think this is very similar to what Rudy's who we sampled earlier is trying to do to, you know, create a beautiful looking box, put it in a set that's, you know, needs a little, a little nudge for some cool new stuff.

28:55Yeah. I mean, yeah, you bring up a good point because that box that you just did hold up, you could see from 20 feet away. Now that should be 20 feet away from opening a freezer aisle door, but it is a good looking package and I'm sure people will pick it up and want to know more. We actually recorded an interview. I recorded an interview with Brian Rudolph, who is the co-founder and CEO of Bonza about five years ago. And it's one of the best quotes I think that we've ever had on Taste Radio. and I'll get to the quote in a sec, but basically he was talking about how he developed a lot of Bonza's early retail relationships, and they came from cold outreach.

29:36And what he had said was, you'd be surprised that you can call the headquarters of a retailer and say, who's the buyer for XYZ? And you'll find out, and you'll just leave them a voicemail. But the key part of that discussion was when he said, of course, be polite, but be polite and be relentless. So make sure that you get ahold of that person, make sure that, you know, that person knows about your brand and hears your pitch one way or the other, but just be polite when you're doing it. Always good advice. And I think also just retail relationships are super important when you're launching another into another category because they're launching just in Whole Foods right now and they have their products and other categories within their stores.

30:21Another frozen waffle that is launching is Brazi Bites and they're launching in Sprouts. So it's just interesting to see where products roll out and their frozen waffles are based on TikTok trends. So they actually have a cheesy frozen waffle. I was going to say how they pizza waffles. They have pizza waffles, right? We got to try these. Well, the Brazi Bites is known for their Brazilian cheese bites. They do have their pizza flavored empanada persons or i forget how they describe it but a cheesy waffle that obviously that's for me they made that specifically for me you know so yeah it's called the ray waffle the ray waffle what are you sipping on in john craig i'm gonna call one over here no uh this is cha cha which is from the fine folks at better booch i have to step in here right because this is my time when I say C-H-A is how the brand name is spelled.

31:13Yes. The letter C as in car. Which is the Chinese word for T. H is in helicopter. And I don't know. Yeah. Something or other. But anyway. Helicopter. These are their new line of sparkling pre-batic teas. They've got a couple of flavors. This one's Yerba Mate. I think there's a hibiscus. I think there's a green tea and a white tea variety. You've got the green tea, the tropical green tea there. Oh, geez. I don't even know what I'm drinking. But anyway, yeah, this is pretty tasty stuff. I dig it. Only 10 calories. Organic. Apparently. Yeah. So, yeah. Better boot branching out. I like it. I liked it too.

31:50Cool looking package. My only piece of feedback for the can, because it does stand out, and I like the, I think the flavor call-outs are pretty cool. I just wanted to know how much caffeine's in each of the flavors, because I was like, hibiscus, ginger, lime, maybe no caffeine, and green tea probably has a bunch, and white tea sometimes has caffeine, sometimes doesn't. It's a little confusing. Hibiscus ginger lime. First ingredient is brewed white tea. So possibly some caffeine in there. Going to go with yes. Yeah, so unknown, right? Don't know. Haven't read the fine print. I just like to call it of two grams of sugar on the front of...

32:21I would even make that a little bit bigger because that's what people are also looking for on these products. Yeah. It's not a lot. Not a lot. Yeah. So pretty tasty. What are you sipping with your truffle treats? Honey Mama's truffle treats, Mike? I haven't really sipped anything yet, but I've got some all-day superfruit soda over here. Oh, yeah. Lightly caffeinated with cascara superfruit. And 11 grams of sugar. So, soda. I'm going to give it a shot. Very nice. All-day is a rebrand, by the way. Yeah. From? Well, sorry. It was all-day. It's still all-day, but it had more of like a cold brew coffee kind of vibe.

32:57Cascara. It was very much focused on cascara. Yeah, and it was like in a regular 12-ounce can. Right. They laid off the cascara, which I think is a super smart move. And it's tasty. Yeah. Super fruit soda. I think that's a better description positioning than cascara, seltzer, or whatever it had been called prior. Once you lead with that, it just confuses everybody. Yeah. Make sure you try the ginger one, too. Great to have Ryan McDonald come to the office to drop these off. He's the co-founder and CEO of Allday. As a reminder, we always welcome founders and entrepreneurs to the office. If you're going to be in the Boston area, going to be in the San Diego area, let us know.

33:38Send us a note to askittasteradio.com. What is that? This is from RSRV Collective. This is a non-alcoholic cocktail, RSRV Kensho cocktail. This one's called Botanica. 50 calories, 13 grams of sugar. It is non-al cocktail. Can I give it a shot? Fire it up. You were saying before that the hop-flavored seltzers have like that adult flavor about them. And this definitely has that too. You start off with, I mean, the lime just takes over from the get-go. So you know that it's going to be challenging. And then, yeah, it's just carbonated water, cane, sugar, lime juice concentrate, and natural flavors.

34:25but it has a lot of complex flavors like you'd expect in a cocktail. So I like it. Complexity is key to a good cocktail, I would say. Yeah. Botanica is a good name for this too. It's very floral. I like it. Unless you're having a mimosa. I was going to say, unless you were drinking your weekly mudslide, Ray, but you know. I was just thinking about a mudslide actually. It goes great with Twinkies. Anybody speak French? Because I don't know how to pronounce this next brand. Let me see this. Boost. Boost. Boost. Boost. I don't know if it's boost. Boost. Anyway, it is a Canadian product in fairness.

35:04In Chinese, it would be boost. Sparkling energy water. Which would mean boost drink. Good packaging. I feel like this, if I saw this in a grocery store or convenience store, I would want to know more for sure. It's 100 milligrams of caffeine, 75 milligrams of L-theanine. It's zero cow. Well, I mean, I'm assuming it's supposed to be an energy drink. Let's have a taste. Sparkling energy water. It's tasty. I have the Passion Mango. Yeah, it tastes like a seltzer. It's a caffeinated water sort of product. I feel like we're seeing more caffeine combined with L-theanine, just so people don't crash and they have a more mellow caffeine experience.

35:47And also that's just what's in tea. Yes. I just love the cola at the top of the can. which in French is caffeine naturel. So natural caffeine, but it sounds better in French. Caffeine naturel. I'm butchering all this. I apologize to everyone who actually speaks French. We'd like to apologize to the entire French-speaking population and all Canadians for the previous sentence. I want you to say sparkling energy water in French. Say it. Come on, Ray. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to post an apology on Twitter. How about that? Oh, boy. I'm sorry, X. Thanks. Ex-pology. Ex-pology. All right, it's time to get to our featured interview for this episode.

36:32As I mentioned at the top of the show, Adam Craccini is a senior vice president and the global head of food and beverage brands for Hilton. A five-year veteran of the hotel chain, Adam has been at the forefront of enhancing Hilton's food and beverage offerings across its 7 ,000 properties, which span 122 countries and territories. His strategy guides everything from partnerships with Michelin-starred chefs to grab-and-go pantries. In the following interview, I spoke with Adam about how Hilton has navigated a post-COVID shift in guest expectations for food and beverage, how local and artisanal brands factor into its strategy, and how interest for low and no-out beverages impact its bar menus and in-room drink options.

37:21Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. Right now, I'm honored to be sitting down with Adam Crocini, who is the Senior Vice President and Global Head of Food and Beverage Brands at Hilton. Adam, great to see you. Nice to see you as well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I will fully admit to having looked at your Hilton bio on the website to read your entire title, because it's a long one. There's a lot that goes on in your life, I'm sure, as it relates to your work at Hilton. Yeah, I think that's pretty fair to say. 22 brands across the globe, everything from focused and all sweet brands to our luxury and lifestyle brands.

38:00So it's a full-time job, to say the least. Yeah. Talk about your role, because, again, you have a lot to cover. You have a lot on your plate. There's so many different properties. You know, what is your primary responsibility? Yeah, so my primary responsibility in the team that works with me is to really lead the strategic development of all food and beverage products, programs, and experiences across those 22 brands. And so that ranges everything from our prototypical food and beverage experiences that you would find in a Hampton or a True or a Homewood Suites where breakfast is included and consistent across all of those brands, all the way to bespoke work that we do in creating concepts and narratives and experiences on property in our full-service luxury and lifestyle brands.

38:51I think across the board, customers and hotel guests are looking for premium options, but premium options that are accessible and affordable in most cases. And that convergence of premiumization and accessibility seems to be a challenging one, or it seems like it could be a challenging one for operators to navigate. How does that convergence impact global food and beverage strategy for Hilton? Yeah, I think it's a good point. What we've seen from our research, Ray, post-pandemic, where for two and a half plus years, people were home, you know, knee deep watching Masterclass, taking in Food Network shows, having to cook for themselves.

39:37That primatization of product has come off of that because now people are much more knowledgeable about the food products that they're purchasing or they're cooking for themselves at home, knowledgeable about cuisine types and styles. And so what we've taken from that research and understanding that that's where our customers are, we've worked hard to try to kind of step things up, if you will, across the brands from Hampton all the way to Waldorf Astoria by finding higher quality products. Less is more done better was an approach we took coming out of the pandemic, streamlining our offerings, finding ways to improve on quality over quantity.

40:20And because we're finding as a result that people are really appreciating the fact that this has been our strategy. They're noticing the fact that we're using a higher quality product in the offering for breakfast or in our retail. We find an incredible impact by changing out a lot of those products in our retail or what we call grab-and-go markets and adding premium products, things that are really relevant to the consumer in today's modern day, lower in calorie, better for you, freshly prepared products that are moving the needle from a sales perspective, but also from customer satisfaction.

40:56because people are looking for that premium product now. And so we're finding ways to weave it in across the board from breakfast programming to our retail marketplace. As someone who is sort of a food and beverage nerd and been in this industry a long time, one of my favorite things to do is to go to a grab-and-go pantry at a hotel and see what they have. And I often look for offerings that I'm not familiar with, typically small, local artisanal brands that are just really interesting, but just don't have a lot of distribution. How do those local artisanal brands fit into your strategy for grab and go and for kitchen pantries?

41:37Yeah, and they fit in in a big way, actually, because we are now rolling out with the success that we had after doing a large scale beta test on some of these new products. We tested over 100 new SKUs in Homewood Suites that were going into our retail. We saw incredible success. We rolled that out and brands standardized that for every single Homewood Suites in the United States. We're following that principle and we're going to continue to standardize grab-and-go products at all of our brands, but we leave about 20 % of the available merchandising space for localization. We think it's important that we still, even though you're in a grab-and-go market and you want those things that are comfort foods or things that you snack on or introduce maybe things that are new interests and some things that you're unfamiliar with maybe before.

42:28But also from a local point of view, our guests are, this is the travel business and this is, you know, hospitality. And when you land in a certain market, you want to maybe taste the flavors of that particular community. That could be from going down to, you know, Savannah and having local peach jams that are showcased inside of the grab and go, or maybe it's a local craft beer that's produced within that community as well. We think that's an important aspect of travel as people learn to discover the community and the area in which they're traveling to. So we make sure that we're allowing that 20 % of the retail product offering to be up to the general manager, the management company of that marketplace to program as they see fit and to their knowledge base about what's great in that community.

43:17How often are those review cycles happening where you are looking at that 20 % that you currently have in a particular grab-and-go area and saying, okay, now's the time to bring in some new products or brands? This past two years, we've been really working diligently on the retail component and the grab-and-go. We really wanted to give it a lot of focus. Obviously, it was an area that was highly utilized by guests during the pandemic that were staying in our hotels because so many places were closed. And then when we started digging into it, we just didn't feel really good about the kind of products that we were offering our guests.

43:53We didn't think it was responsible of us to offer products that were typically maybe enjoyed by many, but maybe not the best for you. And so we really kind of took that lens of being better for you and healthier, as well as current. We now have a full team stood up here at Hilton that just focuses on retail. And so every single year, we will go back and review each brand. We review them quarterly to see what products are moving, what products aren't moving. Are there opportunities to try new products in certain markets? we're constantly receiving samples from vendors to look at and examine to see whether or not it's the right fit.

44:37And so we always look to continue to reinvent ourselves. We do it on a quarterly basis. On a yearly basis, we think about what the plans are for next year, look at the data and say, okay, we need to go back and revisit this this year and make sure we're upgrading these products or giving our guests new experiences. Within that team, are they forging, to use that word, are they looking for products to bring in? Or do the vendors that you mentioned, are they the ones that is that inbound kind of inquiry into how to get into your hotels? Is that where more of the traction is coming from and placement of these products and brands?

45:16I would say it's a little bit of both. However, our team is comprised of, you know, real foodies. And when they're out in their personal life or at the grocery store, or they're traveling to a different market, they're finding items, they're buying them, they're tasting them, they're bringing them back here and be like, hey, we should look at this. And we try it, we eat it, we all eat a lot here. And, you know, we say, you know what, this is maybe, this is something we should definitely try and put it. There might be certain markets where it works well at. In certain markets, it doesn't. So we know our customers.

45:53We know where our hotels are. We know it moves the needle in certain markets. So we're constantly kind of taking it from both sides. People send in their products and we're out there foraging and kind of trying to look for all the next best item to introduce to our guests. One more question about those inbound inquiries. Is there a formal process? Is there something on the Hilton website where, say, someone says, hey, I think my brand would be a great fit for your grab-and-go areas or for the in-room snack offerings? I mean, how does that process work? Yeah, I don't think that there's any, to be quite clear, I don't think that there's any formal process.

46:32It usually just ends up with big boxes at my front door full of snacks and water or bagels or, I mean, you name it. We see everything come across our front door here. I think that's probably the path that people have chosen because, you know, probably going through more of a process would be probably more time consuming, I think. Yeah, well, sometimes opening up those boxes is fun. It's like Christmas. You know, you don't know what you're going to get. And then sometimes those products and those beverages or those food and those beverages are really, really delicious. And then I guess you can make that call as to whether or not they belong in those areas.

47:08I know you have emphasized and you've prioritized breakfast as an important part of Hilton's offerings. And I wonder how branded items fit into your breakfast areas, whether it's self-service or otherwise. Yeah, it's a good point. We've looked at this quite strategically over the last few years coming out of COVID. We kind of reinvented and reimagined, I would say, all of our breakfast programs for our focus in all suite brands where breakfast is included. And we looked at opportunities to say, should we be bringing in a branded partner to help elevate the breakfast experience? And, you know, I think that the results were kind of flat in the customer surveys that we did as to whether or not that would really drive them to stay per se, rather than they're more concerned with quality.

48:00of items and variety of items on the buffet that we serve in the morning. We have some areas where we are doing this, you know, in our new brand Spark that's going to be opening its first hotel here in Mystic, Connecticut in just a few weeks. We have Just Bagels, which is a bagel company out of New York. They make a really high quality water bagel that is fabulous and individually portion controlled and wrapped in package. It's a good New York bagel. It's got a nice chew. It's great quality. And it is a brand in itself that's emerging in different markets. And so we're using them and we're using Folgers Coffee.

48:38And Folgers has kind of reinvented their brand and kind of speaking to a new younger audience. And so given the positioning of Spark, we have a beautiful bagel bar with just bagels, Philadelphia cream cheese, and Smucker's jellies. And so there's areas sometimes where we have some placement of brands that kind of help to leverage the quality. But I would say generally, we focus on just the product itself and the quality. If that should coincide with a brand, fantastic. If it doesn't, we're doing that white labeling it ourselves. Then as long as it's a good quality product, I think that that's the most important aspect to us.

49:16Again, we mentioned and we talked about premium and quality offerings being very desirable to consumers. Often I hear from entrepreneurs that sustainability is really important to consumers as well. But I feel like that might be more on the grocery store front than it would be, say, in a hotel or the hotel industry. Is that the case? Or are your customers, your guests, asking for and demanding more sustainable products out of their food and beverage offerings? You know, to be honest, we don't see a lot of our guests asking that specific question. I think people are more focused on, from what we've seen from our consumers, more focused on kind of in the same vein, I guess, to a certain extent, necessarily sustainable, but maybe more organic, better for you in the quality of the products.

50:10cage-free eggs that we use here at Hilton, appropriately sourced fish, meat, and vegetables. We promote that when and where we have those products in play. So it's more about that aspect of, I guess, kind of under that umbrella of sustainable, properly sourced farmed rather than sustainable products in maybe the disposable things, things like that. So more towards the growth, the farming, the agriculture, the fishing. We see maybe people more leaning into that and appreciative of it, not necessarily demanding of it. One category where we've seen significant change in evolution is in beverage alcohol.

51:00And it seems like there are people who are looking to reduce their consumption, but also drink better quality products. How has this evolution in beverage alcohol affected food and beverage strategy for Hilton? And maybe I'm off track here, but I guess what have you seen in terms of that shift? Yeah, I mean, listen, and again, kind of coming off of COVID, where I think people had some self-reflection about how they live their life, how they take care of themselves. We saw an immediate impact in them, as I mentioned before, by putting better, higher quality products for you that were better for you in our retail marketplace, the interest in better quality products that are better for you in our buffet areas.

51:46But then that pattern has carried on to the drinking space. We are seeing people looking for those low ABV products, both in the retail space, like your canned seltzers, the big movement in seltzers, lower alcohol than most beers in many of those canned seltzers. And, you know, what started off, I think, was White Claw. And truly, now there's probably 200 different types of seltzers if you go to a liquor store. And those are just lower in alcohol for you, lower in calorie consumption. And so that was part of, I think that that has stabilized a little bit of the movement there. But as you go into the spirited world and you're looking at the cocktail programs, we saw a real interest in this and from our consumers to the point where we launched our newest brand Tempo, which is really a brand that was catered around young professionals that are really in tune with the rhythm of their life.

52:44And they wanted to make sure that they were able to carry that rhythm of their life from their workouts in their morning to what they had in their breakfast experience and why we partnered with Bluestone Lane because they wanted that fresh, healthy product offering. But then in the evening, when they return back to the hotel, they may want to alternate their cocktail with what we call free spirited cocktail. So Tempo as a brand, actually their entire strategy for the beverage program is spirited and free spirited. So where we offer a selection of handcrafted cocktails, you can have the identical cocktail with no alcohol.

53:24It tastes the same, it looks the same, and it's garnished the same. And it's in the same presentation that the guest would have. And so you can mix as a guest at a bar and feel very comfortably doing that in a social setting and move from one cocktail to the next without anybody really noticing the difference. but you're actually enjoying it in the flavor profile, but without the alcohol. Are these cocktails that are well-known, are they traditional cocktails like, say, Manhattan or Negroni, or are they created by Hilton mixologists? They're created by Hilton mixologists, but they're riffs, if you will, on things that are maybe more familiar with people, like margaritas and Palomas.

54:05And so there are drinks that will be familiar in their tastes. And we use that as a selling tool when we're talking to our guests. Yeah, these are handcrafted. They're unique to the Tempo brand done by Hilton Mixologist. And they might be similar to a margarita, might be similar to you for a Paloma. And so when we're speaking with the guests, we will sometimes use that as we're describing the cocktails. But when people enjoy them, I think they'll find that level of familiarity with our own unique twists. How has this shift and demand for lower ABV and, quote unquote, better for you alcohol options impacted the selection inside your hotel mini bars?

54:50So, you know, hotel mini bars is an interesting space and we really see hotel mini bars in the luxury and lifestyle space more than anything else. Most of our full service brands have really kind of done away with mini bars, I would say. And most of the mini bar offering that was in your room is now being represented inside of those retail markets. Like I said, we're really kind of double clicking on the retail grab and go space, offering a larger variety and quality of products. But, you know, in the mini bars, we were doing in our luxury hotels, we're doing handcrafted cocktails in a bottle.

55:30We're offering liars as an example in some of our mini bars, which has a phenomenal selection of handcrafted cocktails that are spirit free or free spirit, as we like to say here at Hilton. And so when and where possible, we do try to incorporate that same approach, usually left up to the regional management teams of those hotels, understanding their market, understanding their consumer. But we do try to represent it in all of our retail markets for certain. And when it comes to traditional non-alcoholic beverages, is it the same sort of approach where, you know, it's sort of a nuanced kind of take on what's already available on the market?

56:13I mean, I guess what I'm asking is if folks are looking for a different, better for you option than, say, a full calorie, full sugared soda, are those increasingly appearing in those hotel mini bars and those snack areas inside the rooms? A hundred percent. I mean, that strategy, the product, we know where the consumer is moving. We know that they don't want just a selection of Kit Kats and Snickers and things like that that used to find. Where now we're offering, you know, Boom Chica Pop or Smart Pop. And again, where you're literally cutting the calories in half, there are organic products. They're responsibly sourced.

56:55And so we are seeing that as part of the supplements too or the replacement of some of those products. So that strategy is kind of carrying through. and you'll find that in most of our brands across the board. To be fair, and just to be clear, I do love a Snickers bar. And when I get into a hotel room and see that Snickers bar after a long day, I'll definitely reach for that. And occasionally, the old Toblerone is just a mainstay for hotels. I mean, you got to have a Toblerone in your room at all times. I think that that's fair and why we've also, we've left those kind of those key items that we know people are looking for.

57:32We're not saying that we've taken away all the Snickers or all the Doritos, but we didn't need to have eight types of Doritos. We only need maybe two. And then the rest, you know, we're supplementing again with different options that fit into those same categories. And honestly, what we're seeing is the sale of what were those classic snack items like your Snickers or your Doritos have honestly fallen to the bottom of our sales mix. where majority of our sales are actually all of these newer products that we put on the shelf that are better for you, higher quality, and more unique in their offering.

58:11When you do have those brands available in those grab-and-go areas inside the room, is it helpful for the brands or do you work with brands to promote the fact that they are available in Hilton Properties? Is there a social strategy? Is it more on the brand side of things? Is there a collaboration about how that relationship works or the fact that these products are at least available in your properties? We've not really taken a large-scale marketing approach to this yet, other than just speaking about the fact that our retail offering has been upgraded to really not only have what you forgot at home, potentially, as essentials, but also that the retail market, when people walk into it, the way we merchandise it at the property level, is with these new packages and these new products, the look and the feel, if you will, it's fresh, it's bright, the way that the packages are being labeled and colored.

59:16And then what we've done, too, is provided our hotels with what we call new merchandising solutions. So when the guest walks in, they can see all of the products. They can visually see them, all of the facings of the products, as we say, and by brand, have some association and representation that these are definitely an upgrade from where they were before. They were in one of those hotels before and they walked in today. I think that there would be surprise and delight, the look of it, the merchandising of it, the way it's been packaged. I think as we continue to build out the retail strategy across all of our brands, we'll start looking at how we maybe market them or communicate about them more broadly.

59:58But for now, it's being done at the brand level. And for the guests, when they walk into the lobby of the hotel and they see that beautifully new merchandise retail shop with products that are real interest to them or how they shop and live their life at home, then that's where we're seeing the connection. Yeah, and I mentioned this because typically when I'm flying a particular airline and you open up that food and beverage menu and you see some of those branded items, you're like, oh, great, I'm really happy I'm flying this airline. Now, I'm not going to choose my airline solely based on their food and beverage options, but it definitely might move the needle in one direction or the other if they are essentially the same option.

1:00:38It's the customer satisfaction scores that we're seeing, where people are taking time to openly comment in our surveys about the products that they found, about how happy that they were, what surprise and delight it was for them to walk into our sweet shop at Homewood Sweets as an example and find these products that are organic, that are better for you. And as a parent, that's being able to buy snacks for their kids that are in this space as well. So to us, that means more than anything that our guests are satisfied with the strategy that we're implementing and that it's really moving the needle on their customer satisfaction.

1:01:20Because if our guests are happy, then the probability of them returning back to our hotel or telling a friend is worth more than anything to us. Adam this has been such a great conversation before I let you go I gotta ask for our listeners who are wondering hey you know Adam's probably been all over the world I'm sure he has some favorite places in the world to stay obviously at a Hilton property but if you could recommend a city that say the average person maybe not have visited what would it be well let's see my My favorite city destination, I would say internationally, would be Tokyo. We have some incredible hotels there.

1:02:03And the food and beverage scene and culture in Japan is, I think, to me, one of the best in the world. It's a totally accessible place to visit. I think most Americans are somewhat, I find maybe going to Japan somewhat daunting. But to be honest with you, it's an incredible place to visit. our teams and all of our hotels, there be Hilton's or Conrad's, make it very comfortable and warm and inviting for you to visit. And we have great food and beverage experiences at those properties and in those cities. So that would probably be my go-to, I would say, from a city location. And from a resort location, there's nothing better than the Waldorf Astoria Maldives.

1:02:40It's one of the best hotels in the world globally. And I think it's got one of the best food and beverage programs that we offer internationally. And then domestically, I would say, stay tuned for the new Conrad Orlando. We are going to have two bars represented each by two world's 50 best bartenders. Giancarlo Mancino from Mancino Vermouth is going to be doing our spritz bar at our Italian concept. And then we have Paul McGee, one of the world's most preeminent mixologists in the Polynesian cocktail culture that's going to be doing our Papaya Club, which is a Polynesian tiki-inspired cocktail bar that we're kind of hearkening back to Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic and going to be doing poo-poo platters and such.

1:03:28So two world's 50 best bars, bartenders championing two different bar experiences at the Conrad Orlando. So that'll be kind of one to watch in the next couple months. Outstanding. Well, I have been to your Conrad property in Las Vegas. And I'm forgetting what floor it was on. The bar, I think it's on the 54th floor. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. So kudos on that bar and that property in general is just spectacular. So if the Orlando property is going to be anything like that, then I'm looking forward to visiting that one as well. Well, we look forward to having you and thanks for having me.

1:04:05Yeah. Adam, once again, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. And let's stay in touch. Will do. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. Thank you. That brings us to the end of this episode of Taste Radio. Thank you so much for listening. Taste Radio is a production of BevNet.com Incorporated. Our audio engineer for Taste Radio is Joe Cratchy. Our technical director is Joshua Pratt. And our video editor is Ryan Galang. Our social marketing manager is Amanda Smirlinski. And our designer is Amanda Huang. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues.

1:04:41and of course we would love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcast app or your listening platform of choice. Check us out on Instagram. Our handle is BevNetTasteRadio. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to ask at tasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening and we'll talk to you next time.

1:05:12Thank you.