A year ago Simon Pusey expanded the company he founded into the hospitality space with the bespoke hotel delivery offering Night Room Service. Working in partnership with 24 hour and late night restaurants across London, it allows hotels and serviced apartments to offer their guests a range of high-quality cuisine through the night until 5 am.
Since then 250 properties have signed up to Night Room Service, many of them using it after their main F&B offering winds down at night.
“For 99% of hotels running a 24-hour room service operation internally doesn’t make sense. Keeping a chef in through the night isn’t profitable and sandwiches don’t cut it with today’s expectations”, Pusey says.
It comes as brands such as Z Hotels and Nadler hotels, which largely ignore the traditional demands of F&B, are expanding rapidly. Pusey believes this is partly down to outsourcing.
“Margins in restaurant food are small enough as it is, but to make it work well with all the added pressures hotels have is near impossible. Take away those pressures and it’s clearly much easier to focus on being a hotel”.
Night Room Service has partnered with hotels from both the luxury and budget ends of the market. Brands using the app include Sarova, Club Quarters, Holiday Inn and smaller boutique hotels like the Exhibitionist and the Eccleston Square hotel.
F&B is still central to the operations of the majority of London’s most famous properties. The question is will the hotel sector jump on the growing trend of food delivery, or stick to more traditional methods of room service.