I was fascinated by Bloomberg’s story about Hampton Inn. A centerpiece of the story is the free waffles available at breakfast.
The key constant is the tub of Hampton’s malted vanilla waffle batter. In a now-familiar ritual, guests push a plastic tab to extrude the mix into a paper cup, drizzle it over a waffle iron, then flip the handle and watch the seconds tick down on a digital timer. As with almost everything at Hampton, the process has been rigorously engineered. Those little paper cups of batter are what peak hotel performance looks like.
Last year, Hampton Inns around the world cooked up more than 2 million gallons of batter, or about 30 million waffles. With all due respect, they’re not great. Nor is the coffee or the orange juice, the bananas or the convection-oven eggs. What all these things are, crucially, is free to lodgers. It costs a US Hampton franchisee less than $5 per occupied room to furnish this cornucopia, but to a family of four, the perceived value is closer to $50, or roughly one-third of the average cost of a nightly stay. That math has helped power Hampton Inn’s unlikely rise to become the world’s largest lodging brand, with almost 350,000 rooms spread across 43 countries. Hampton sold almost 90 million room nights last year, according to Bloomberg estimates, a few million more than its closest competitor, Holiday Inn Express. That helped it generate nearly $12 billion in room revenue, dwarfing that of the industry’s luxury leaders.
Those are impressive numbers. There’s more about the waffles though.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, waffles are just for kids,’” s“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, waffles are just for kids,’” says Buckley. “It’s surprising how many men in suits will pretend nobody’s looking and grab their little waffle.” The self-serve aspect of the experience is also a plus: Hilton toyed with the idea of using machines that dispensed waffles with the press of a button before deciding that pour-and-flip made for a homier experience.
I enjoyed reading this because we’ve stayed Hampton Inn for a few nights over the years. And I can attest to both the popularity of these waffles and how much we enjoyed them.
I now have more appreciation for the rigorously engineered processes that make such experiences possible.
