The Evolution of Breakfast in the Lodging Industry

Recently I took one of my daughters on a fishing trip to West Virginia. Along the way, I wrote few observations- here and here- about economic activity levels in various locales along the road.

One of the enduring lessons for me anytime I travel is the evolution of the provision of breakfast at hotels over the past 40 years.

Going back to Revolutionary War days, taverns provided a bed and probably a breakfast with the room. The room, or even the bed, might be shared.

Fast forward to the 1960s, when I was young, and hotels and their kitchens had become big business.

By doing some estimating of inflation, salaries, and room rates as far back as the late 1970s, I would guess that the nightly room rate for a mid-priced, Holiday Inn-style hotel of the mid-late 1960s was about $25.

Breakfast for our family of five in the hotel's dining room would probably have run around $15-20. Almost as much as the room. Maybe more.

As I recall, you might get a hot breakfast- bacon and eggs, etc.- for something like $4, but then there was the tip and tax.

From the hotelier's viewpoint, breakfast must have been a regal pain in the ass. You had to have a kitchen crew to cook, and waitresses showing up at 6:30 or 7AM. Plus the omnipresent 'host' or 'hostess.'

As I recall, an interstate highway-sited Holiday Inn, Ramada, or other comparable chain of the era didn't usually do a land office dinner business. The dining rooms typically served pretty similar, average beef and poultry meals. Nothing to distinguish them from other restaurants, but their prices were, of course, higher, than nearby local or then-expanding national chain dinner houses.

Building and operating that full restaurant kitchen must have been a nightmare for hotel management and owners.

How much more elegant is today's solution. I really marvel at how, with time and technology, the lodging industry solved what must have been a horrific labor management, staffing, cost and operations headache, and even managed to get customers to pay more, implicitly and automatically, for less.

I'm referring to, of course, the now-ubiquitous in-hotel lobby served buffet breakfast. Most modern mid-priced chains- Hampton Inns, Fairfield Inns, and even the lowly MicroTel- provide a 'free hot' breakfast of some sort.

Now, you never explicitly reach into your pocket to pay for breakfast at a mid-priced hotel. And you can enjoy fairly decent spreads of cereal, fruit, a hot protein dish, such as pre-made scrambled eggs and a breakfast meat, or waffles, plus the usual beverages- juices and coffee. In essentially unending supply.

Of course, the cost is built into your room rate. Which also pretty routinely includes wireless internet service, too.

For the hotel management and owners, there's no kitchen to build, operate or maintain. Just a utility room near the lobby with some sinks, freezers, refrigerators and microwave ovens. A normal hotel staffer is assigned the duty of maintaining food stocks in the lobby, and cleaning up debris. Guests serve themselves and clear their own plastic and paper tableware. No chef, waitstaff or hostess to pay every morning.

How much simpler can it get? Few guests will pass up a 'free' breakfast. Yet the hotel actually has recaptured the revenue, if not the stomach, of each and every guest for their share of the cost of this decent, hot, but minimalist breakfast service.

Plus, there's no need to rouse sleeping children all at once. Each family member knows they can meander down to eat within a set time period, with no reservations required.

If you stay long enough to notice, or visit the lobby at various times, you'll see the breakfast crowd change from business people to childless couples, adults eating before their children and, finally, children with one or both parents finally making it to the lobby before the food is removed.

To me, this is just a marvelous solution that hoteliers have developed to actually make more money by providing a somewhat less-extravagant to the problem of feeding guests in the morning. Both capital and operating costs are lower, yet the revenues from the service are assured.

There aren't that many really clever, productive and elegant business solutions to problems like that of the provision of breakfast in far-flung hotels. But this is one I just continually admire.