Hotel restaurants serve up style - bizjournals:

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Co-founded by Bob Pucciniu and Bill Kimpton, the San Francisco design firm has helped dozenas of hotels around the worldcreate destination-worthuy restaurants that appeal to locals. In San Puccini Group handled the remodel of Fiftg Floor and created Ducca at the onMarket “Bill and I formed this company with the idea that it wouldc be plug-in restaurant division for owners and Puccini said. “In the hotel world, there’sx often not a lot of emphasixs on foodand beverage. You have to provide it, but it takesz the form of breakfast rooms orvery high-end and often neither is as compelling as the restaurantes people go to in the community.
” Puccinij Group aims to change that, one hotell at a time. Though in some ways spawned by Puccini helped establishthat company’xs restaurant division before going solo ­­— Puccini Group is entirely independen t and agnostic about clients, working with many of the majot hospitality brands. Headquartered in San the company has small officew in Madridand Moscow, too, whicj allow it to work all over the including current projects in Moroccol and Dubai. Puccini said he travel over 250,000 miles a year.
Puccini Group comes in to creat e concepts and designs for what it expects tobecomr high-volume restaurants that appeal to locals, not Done right, Puccini said that one of his company’s redesignsx should recoup its cost within two years, adding that at one projecr that opened last year, the restaurant saw a $770,000 grosds operating profit over the prioer year. In addition to feasibility conceptingand design, Puccini Group can handle purchasing, pre-opening services and Restaurant design, however, is the firm’s bread and Some of Puccini Group’s conceptxs are plug-and-play concepts, like ENO: a chocolate and cheese bar with five locationss open.
It has signed a leas to open the nation’ws sixth ENO in the Westin St. Francis, thougyh no time frame has been set for construction or Othersare one-offs, created for a specifix hotel and city. Bill Kimpton helped Puccini found the business in 1996 as a way to take what they weredoing in-housre and make it availablre to other paying customers who wanted theifr consulting and design skills. Kimptobn continues to use Puccini Groupfor two-thirds of its new said Greg LaMothe, vice president of restaurant concepts and hospitality at Kimpton.
“One of the beautie s of having asuccessful standalone-feeling restaurantg in any locale is that restaurants tend to drivd traffic to and througjh the hotel, and gives the hotel a good deal of LaMothe said. Puccini Group’se business has slowed with the downturn in as hotels delay newupgrade spending. But fortunes seem to be turning. Puccini said the company has pickeed up eight new projects in the pastsix weeks, many of them in secondaryt or tertiary markets like Little Rock, Omaha, Neb., and Duluth. Minn. “We’res seeing people thinking there’s an opportunity to upgrader their restaurant, and clearly therse is,” Puccini said.
“In a lot of cases, it’s easietr to spend $800,000 to $1 milliobn on a restaurant remodelthan (on curtains) ... Restaurants are reallu becoming the jewelryof hotels.”