Those pieces of paper that like to call themselves "Menus" - just what are they? Menus - recitations of food items? That's the job that we give them but for so many meeting planners and for all the social market, they are the value added reason to book - the clincher, the closer. In so many clients' eyes those "menus" are the vision of the whole property.

All those room nights are resting on a set of papers that are usually created by:

1) an exec chef who really "doesn't care" what the comp set is doing or what the market's caterers are doing, or what the local market responds to, or who says "My food is what they come for."

2) an Admin who is thrown the task of making the menus look "pretty" and what does "pretty" mean, to whom is "pretty" speaking and what is the outcome required? Right, "pretty".

Seldom do those menus ever get built by a marketing team that understands what food can really do for the psyche of the potential client and how it can bring in, rescue even, whole rafts of abandoned "feeder" markets - not just the markets but the sales team itself that is doing the soliciting. They need to believe in their hotel's substance - in the rooms, the front desk, the kitchen and the paper that they use to communicate with those markets.

It can be done with menu ideas crafted for the feeder markets and then with the added heft of writing and artworking the "menus" for those different markets. So there is not one menu sitting there ready to be sent out, to be e-mailed to be downloaded from the web page but a variety that fit the hot buttons, the innate interests of the feeder markets. Too much work? How is there ever too much work in selling?

Really, menus need not be left to the hand of a single chef but can become collaboration of marketing savvy - what will work for the markets not just what will "work" for the chef. How many chefs have we met who tour the comp set, sit in conference for hours with the sales team, talk to the meeting planners, test menus with the fundraiser chairwomen, and spread a panoply of options before different bride markets. We've met one.

A paradigm shift. Scary. Not just in the hands of a chef.

Let's take the possibilities presented to an upscale new spa hotel opening in the unique market of Boulder, Colorado. Have look through a laundry list of what this town is like and ponder where you might take the food service:

To solve the food needs of these markets, most hoteliers would reach for the answer of a "star" chef. We are struck by how few chefs with whom we've worked are capable of looking at the market needs and skilled enough to address them neutrally. Perhaps we're asking the wrong person to do the wrong job.

The model that we're going to work from is almost the inverse: start with the markets and build the parameters of the food so as to speak to those markets. Not make the food and then find the markets.

Paradigm shift.

1. Position the menus as marketing tools to sell rooms and "feed" the target markets into the property.

2. Figure out how to get the town behind the new property - by using menus and the "personality" of the property as reflected through them.

• incorporate all the local farmer-grower products throughout the year.
• rent a stand at the Farmers' Market with a chef (temporary) in place selling foods prepared from the local produce, dairy, herbs, honey, meats, and game - the Best Tasting of Boulder.
• use the farmers' market stand to cross market to the social and wedding market: nitty-gritty guerilla marketing at its best.
• use the farmers' market stand as a real "feel-good" extension for hotel guests to visit on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
• guarantee purchases from produce farms in area - of which there are many, thereby creating real symbiotic relations as well as terrific PR - a story waiting to be told.
• use local name-brand products developed and run from Boulder: Celestial Seasonings, Silk Soy, Horizon Dairy, and Wild Oats Markets. Mention them by name. Network with those brands.

• build into the menus a national image of cutting edge, health, outdoors, Front Range of the Rockies sensibility. Not just another property with a boring old menu set.
• discover who can supply "mountain-gatherer-hunter" foods that give a unique Front Range image and that reflect Boulder's sensibility of itself.

These are the emotive products that we can use to create an atmosphere that will be a unique sales tool for the rooms. We'll bridge the plains - cattle, buffalo, and cactus - with the mountains: berries, wild flowers, pine, spruce, fir, elk, and deer, and lamb. The "gatherer" and artisan products would include dried chokecherries, birch syrup, fir tip tea, fir tip seasoning, wild range sage, rose hip jelly, prickly pear cactus juice, cheeses and heritage cattle, lamb, and game.

springboard stories from the support and use of local, natural, and organic products.

send chefs to local school classrooms for natural preparations and healthful living "show and tells"; incorporate the power of food to live a better, active life.

develop a 2 minute weekly NPR and Pacifica radio spot for Front Range NPR stations on natural front range health.

cross pollinate with NPR and Pacifica sponsorship of liberal issue programming - uniquely reflective of the Boulder sensibility. Take a risk - be a part of the culture rather than apart from it.

Both nationally and in Colorado, the food competition is very strong.

• create menus that rival the complexity and layering of our national comp set
• use copy that brings the food, atmosphere, and locale of the property to life
• reinforce the uniqueness of the locale throughout the menu composition
• Figure out how to price for the local comp set so as to ensure that value is perceived yet "snooty overpricing" is played down for first year of operation:
• give price value for breakfast and lunch menus based on both the local and national corporate group markets
• give "organic" value for social market
• give different and unique service values for a fair but high price point
• stay below national destination comp set pricing - acknowledging that we have an equal or superior product at a lower get-in cost -- always understanding that we have no track record yet

• develop system and methods to do kosher; rent local synagogue kitchen
• develop "kosher-like" menu
• develop full children's menu
• develop "spa" menu
• develop service styles and food presentation options that exceed that of local catering menus: grilling stations, tapas tastings, "family style "table d'hote", French service
• develop food service styles that reflect the hip nature of the local market: sushi stations, organic salad stations, and tapas dinners

• compile menu options with specific, written, and elaborated details - so that the "recipe" is in the description of the food
• compile entrée food combinations that are not just meat and two veg but meat with accent plus 2 detailed, named vegetables along with detailed, named starch, making it extremely difficult for the kitchen to take a short-cut

Does a music group fundraiser chairwoman speak the same language as the 45 year old female meeting planner putting together a CME group of kidney docs for a pharmaceutical company based in San Francisco?

No, they have different hot buttons - different sensibilities and they are representing different aspirations. When selling rooms to them, we don't talk to them in the same language. We know that the meeting planner's food needs will end as a variation on filet of beef, in our case with a chokecherry salsa and a fur tip glazed portabella (just enough to make a unique difference that sells the Front Range experience) and that the music group chairwoman will likely be more adventurous, more reflective of her own tastes - the food for her will be the primary reason to book and 10 room nights will flow as a result. Does a single menu answer different needs?

We all know that that cannot be so yet it seems too difficult a task to re-write and re-artwork for the different markets.

Our answer is that the value of the task lies in the added revenue opportunities of food and rooms.

Then the decision is one of investment not cost.

If we can do this paradigm shift, we can put the right marketing tools in front of the right audiences.

But we still need to make them visually engaging, and dynamically able to cross sell. The visual stimuli that we use for a bride are not those for the fundraiser chairperson, just as they are, again, not those for the pharmaceutical meeting planner.

The cost of the separate artworking and printing of three or four sets of menus would have been prohibitive six years ago but now with the advent of electronic pdf documents delivered on demand by e-mail or downloaded from the website, the costs are supportable.

More than supportable, they are an investment.

In designing the menus, get big not small. Go complete, not partial. If a client at a business in Cleveland wants a set of menus for lunch, build the menus so that you'll send them the full packet of goodies with references to weddings, spa, children, kosher - all of it. Why? You don't know what other event they could be planning, or a friend/colleague could be planning.

Give the menus heft. Why? Who knows who could see that set of menus on her desk? Who knows who has family in Boulder? Detail works. Detail says that the hotel will produce. Why? - simply by dint of the fact that the hotel has gone to the length of producing it on paper and it's organized detail. What will the client want - sketchy, half-baked and partial with a script style font centered on the page? No, we thought not.

Cross selling can come from anywhere. The two page fax - now we ask you what message is that giving: "Here I am, choose A, B or C and get on with it!" Yes, that action does have its purpose but less so than one would think - particularly if the sales team has both collateral and substance to both believe in.

The meeting planner sees the spa food menu and excerpts of the spa treatments menu - they are part of the whole packet. Maybe a spa party for the spouses?

And that is how we leverage the room sales. Belief in the product - the paper product and the real product can be a powerful motivator. We see it recurring.

More food sales and more room sales. The care evinced in just doing menus for markets will automatically make it so. Action - reaction.

More food sales and more room sales. The care involved in the doing of it will automatically make it so.