Fashion houses have been jumping into the hotel business with their designer chic concepts for some 20 years now. So why has it taken so long for a food-driven hospitality business to get into hotels – even more so a French company known for 130 years as a purveyor of fine foods, patisserie and other French delicacies? Enter Fauchon Hospitality, a new Parisian hotel company with roots in retail gastronomy and a goal of developing 20 Fauchon-branded hotel properties in the next 10 years, according to President and CEO Jacques-Olivier Chauvin.
Not only does Fauchon differentiate itself with what its food-forward concept that includes an in-room, all-you-can-eat custom-designed Bar Gourmet where its cost is baked into the rate that is expected to average €550, but it has developed a scheme where its property owners agree to work with regional third-party management companies required to follow very specific Fauchon L’Hôtel standards and work with three top property managers hand-picked by the brand leaders.
“Hospitality has been Fauchon’s very reason for being from the very beginning because we’ve always had a coffee shop and a restaurant, and we’ve always done cuisine,” Chauvin told HOTELS in middle September just after opening the first 54-room hotel in Paris. “Even though we have not had rooms, that’s the only component that we have actually added. But we’ve always welcomed guests for what we do till now. So it’s quite natural to expand this way.”
But Fauchon Hospitality has written its own unique script and business plan. It operates the flagship hotel in Paris, which will serve as a benchmark, an academy, and a lab for future developments. Fauchon Hospitality licenses the “Fauchon L’Hotel” brand, provides the concept, design, standards of procedure and location expectations. Fauchon Hospitality also assists the local operator in the daily running of its hotel.
Fauchon Hospitality will provide the local operator with guidelines regarding the site using its GLAM acronym: Gourmet (the most creative Parisian patisserie adhering to the French culinary tradition); Location (at the heart of the urban life of the city); Attention (attention and experiences which are bespoke, far beyond the usual exclusive hospitality services; and Mesdames (a hotel always in tune with women featuring sophisticated lighting, upscale hairdryers, properly sized bathrobes, specific upscale amenities, and more).
Fauchon Hospitality will also provide strategy on social media marketing, events, service standards, recommended suppliers and very importantly assistance in staff selection. It will approve the first Fauchon hotel manager, the F&B manager and the rooms division manager, as well as their relevant replacements. It will also prepare the job organizational chart and job descriptions for those positions. Staff training for managers and key local operator’s employees also will be provided by Fauchon Hospitality in Paris at a mutually agreed time in Paris.
While it sounds like a hybrid franchise model, Chauvin says every hotel is developed and managed individually. “But we have established a golden list, so to speak, of 30 key features that we’d like to find in any of the future hotels,” he added.
Chauvin said the group is in advanced discussions for hotel developments in Doha, Qatar, and Kyoto, Japan, as well Budapest. He said an American developer is looking at developing three Fauchon hotels.
To reach 20 hotels in 10 years, Chauvin said, “It’s a signature every six months. We have eight in the pipeline now,” he said. “It’s achievable if we keep up with the right delivery schedule. We are not an ultra-luxury. It’s a high-end boutique hotel with strong F&B and I think that there are lots of places in the world where investors want the Fauchon brand. There’s an element of ownership for this brand. There’s an element of pride as well coming with it.”
Despite the checklist of requirements, Chauvin said there is flexibility, especially in capacity. “We’d like to be between 70 and 150 keys,” he said, adding the 54 rooms in Paris is unique due to its location close to where the food business was born.
Back to the concept and Fauchon’s new take on the in-room mini-bar, guests can pre-order the types of food they prefer for the custom-designed piece – and all products will be Fauchon branded, as will be the case in the public restaurant. “And what you don’t want (in the mini-bar), we pack it for you and you bring it back home. And because this is also what we want – to convey the message that Fauchon can be shared with your family or your friends. Everyone needs a gift when they go back home, right?”
This all goes back to the group’s desire to bring innovation to the hotel world. “What the investors like in us is that we bring an element of experience in-room, which is different,” Chauvin said.