Last month I was at an event catered by La Bohème, a Madrid-based catering company.
La Bohème specialises in high-end corporate and private events. But that’s not what caught my attention. What caught my attention was the waiter.
He wasn’t walking around with a tray of pre-assembled canapés. He was carrying a wooden board hung from his shoulders: two silver bowls, fresh flowers around the edges, a small squeeze bottle of mustard sauce.
He stopped in front of me. Picked up a small brioche bun. Placed the raw beef on top with black-gloved hands. Added a precise drizzle of mustard. Handed it over.
Thirty seconds. Live. In front of me. I ate it before I could think about it. And I immediately wanted another one.
What just happened there…and why it matters for your hotel
That wasn’t a canapé service. That was theatre.
The product was steak tartare on bread. Relatively inexpensive to produce. But the experience of watching it assembled in front of you, decorated with flowers, served with deliberate care; that transforms the perceived value completely.
Guests stopped conversations to watch. People asked where the food was coming from. The waiter became the highlight.
La Bohème’s own philosophy is that the small details are what make the difference — from floral decoration to the choice of tableware to the service itself.
They understood something that most hotels still haven’t: the moment of service is a revenue opportunity.
Now let’s talk about the revenue chair
The Revenue Chair has four legs: Room Revenue, F&B Revenue, Ancillary Services, and Experience-Based Revenue. Remove one leg and the whole thing wobbles.
Most hotels obsess over the first leg. Rooms. Rate. Occupancy. RevPAR.
They treat F&B as a cost centre that needs to break even. They treat experiences as a nice-to-have, not a commercial strategy.
La Bohème’s waiter just demonstrated the fourth leg in under thirty seconds.
That steak tartare was not F&B. It was an experience. And experiences, when done well, command a completely different price point.
Research consistently shows that a large majority of travellers will pay more for a better experience. The willingness is there. The question is whether your hotel is giving them something worth paying for.
A live preparation at the breakfast buffet. A guided tasting from the bar team. A chef presenting the catch of the day at the table (instead of a server reading a printed card). These are not expensive to execute. They are expensive to ignore.
Three things you can steal from that waiter today
Turn static service points into live moments. The breakfast station doesn’t need to be a buffet people walk past. It can be a fresh juice pressed in front of them, an omelette made to order, a local cheese explained by someone who actually knows the producer. Same food. Completely different experience.
Give your team a prop. The wooden board with the hanging bowls wasn’t just practical. It was a signal: something different is happening here. Your team can carry that signal. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It has to be intentional.
Make the service the upsell. A guest who just watched a waiter assemble their food live is not in a neutral emotional state. They’re engaged, curious, impressed. That’s the moment to mention the chef’s table. The private tasting. The weekend experience package. Not fifteen minutes later. Right then.
The honest version of this
Most hotel F&B operations serve food. A few hotel F&B operations create moments.
The ones that create moments charge more. Get better reviews. Build the kind of loyalty that doesn’t respond to a competitor’s lower rate.
A wooden board and two silver bowls.
That’s all it took.
Want to explore how your hotel’s F&B and ancillary strategy can be redesigned around experience? Book a working session at torreshospitalityconsulting.com or find me directly on LinkedIn.
