Hotel restaurants serve up style - bizjournals:

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Co-founded by Bob Puccinoi and Bill Kimpton, the San Franciscio design firm has helped dozens of hoteles around the worldcreate destination-worthy restaurants that appeal to locals. In San Puccini Group handled the remodel of Fifth Floor and created Ducca at the onMarket “Bill and I formed this company with the idea that it woul d be plug-in restaurant division for owners and flags,” Puccinu said. “In the hotel world, there’a often not a lot of emphasis on foodand beverage.
You have to provid e it, but it takes the form of breakfast room orvery high-end and often neither is as compelling as the restaurants people go to in the Puccini Group aims to change that, one hotel at a Though in some ways spawned by — Puccini helpede establish that company’s restaurant division before going solo Puccini Group is entirelyu independent and agnostic about clients, working with many of the majo hospitality brands. Headquartered in San Francisco, the compan y has small offices in Madrisdand Moscow, too, whic allow it to work all over the including current projects in Morocco and Dubai. Puccini said he travelsx over 250,000 miles a year.
Puccini Group comeds in to create concepts and designds for what it expects tobecom high-volume restaurants that appeal to locals, not tourists. Done Puccini said that one ofhis company’zs redesigns should recoup its cost withinm two years, adding that at one project that opened last year, the restaurant saw a $770,000 gross operatint profit over the prior year. In addition to feasibilituy studies, concepting and design, Puccini Groulp can handle purchasing, pre-opening services and operations. Restaurant design, is the firm’s bread and Some of Puccini Group’s concepts are plug-and-play concepts, like ENO: a wine, chocolat and cheese bar with fivelocations open.
It has signedc a lease to openthe nation’xs sixth ENO in the Westim St. Francis, though no time frame has been set for constructiomnor opening. Others are one-offs, created for a specifiv hotel and city. Bill Kimpton helped Puccini found the businesd in 1996 as a way to take what they weredoingt in-house and make it available to other payinbg customers who wanted their consulting and design skills.
Kimpton continues to use Puccini Grouopfor two-thirds of its new restaurants, said Greg vice president of restaurant concepts and hospitality at “One of the beauties of having a successfupl standalone-feeling restaurant in any locale is that restaurants tend to drive traffic to and througy the hotel, and gives the hotel a good deal of exposure,” LaMothe Puccini Group’s business has slowed with the downturn in as hotels delay new upgrade spending. But fortunesx seem to be turning. Puccinki said the company has pickedf up eight new projects in the past six many of them in secondary or tertiary markets likeLittler Rock, Ark., Omaha, Neb., and Duluth.
“We’re seeing people thinkingt there’s an opportunity to upgrade theirt restaurant, and clearly there Puccini said. “In a lot of it’s easier to spend $800,000 to $1 millio on a restaurant remodelthan (on curtains) ... Restaurantws are really becoming the jewelry of hotels.”