Objective – Deck 11 is the most indulgent deck, including two speciality (paid for) restaurants and a feature cocktail bar. The objective was to retain this indulgence feeling but to rebrand the venues and tailor the dining to the target market, but working with the limitations of the existing layout and very small galley serving both restaurants.
My role – to oversee concept development, ensuring operational and budget feasibility and work with Apollo catering to develop menus and operations to deliver the concepts.
Solution – We managed to introduce three restaurant concepts:
- Surf & Turf Steakhouse was a new dining concept for Marella Discovery
- Kora La (a Chinese/ Indian menu) was an existing concept on the Marella Cruises fleet, but this was extended to include Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese by working with famous chef Ian Pengelley.
- The third concept was a sushi bar, offering a different experience within Kora La.
- All concepts are grounded in feature crockery and silverware, plus story telling is encouraged as part of the service with signature dishes. The key challenge here was ensuring menus were operationally deliverable given galley restrictions.
Outcome – The speciality restaurants are extremely popular and often booked up from the second day of a cruise, the experience sells itself and word of mouth from customers is strong. Revenue has gone up significantly and the restaurants are booked via the new touch screen kiosks by reception.