Cooper Hotels converted two sports bar restaurants located in their DoubleTree hotels into a new burger focused concept called Burger Bar. The sports bars called Fanatics were struggling with declining food sales and attracting a drinking crowd that did not please hotel guests. The new Burger Bar concept focuses entirely on burgers and customization. This simplified the menu and operations. The restaurants were remodeled smaller to free up space for meetings. The burger concept has been very popular with customers and increased revenues by 23% while decreasing food and labor costs.

1. FOR HOTEL, RESORT, AND CASINO FOOD & BEVERAGE OPERATIONS
Work, Watch, or Unwind
Cooper’s homegrown Burger Bar strikes a nerve
with juicy, guest-satisfying results, p. 27
BANQUET DIPLOMACY:
Smoothing chef-client relations, p. 13
Big brunch buffet
vs. à la carte, p. 37
Modern Fine Dining:
Cocktail trends, p. A1
HotelF&B
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HOTELFANDB.COM SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2015

2. 27September October 2015 | Hotel F&B
BusinessBetween the Buns
Cooper Hotels beefs up
restaurant and events
business in one fell swoop.
BY TAD WILKES
Local Burger Bar

3. 28 Hotel F&B | September October 2015
What owner Cooper Hotels did next
changed its game entirely, not only in
the concept and draw of the restau-
rant but in event dividends as well.
“The Fanatics idea ran its course,”
says Andy Laubscher, corporate di-
rector of F&B with Cooper Hotels. It
was a straightforward sports bar, in
place for several years, with “TVs ev-
erywhere and fried chicken fingers,”
says Hana Colvin, executive chef at
the Murfreesboro DoubleTree. Colvin
was brought in about two years ago
to get the property moving, along-
side Laubscher as he studied burger
concepts in Nashville, Las Vegas, and
beyond, on the way to creating the
Burger Bar concept to replace Fanat-
ics in both locations.
Fading Fanaticism
“We considered Fanatics a sports café,
putting as much or more emphasis on
the food than on the beverage alco-
hol,” explains Cooper VP of Opera-
tions Brian Carney. “Our food sales
were falling off, so our strategy wasn’t
working. Additionally, the sports
cafés, now seemingly sports bars,
were attracting a drinking crowd
not appreciated by our hotel guests.
Also, the combination sports and bar
ambience that had developed was
not conducive at all to a breakfast
atmosphere—again not appreciated
by our hotel guests. We did not be-
lieve that the Fanatics concept, even
if revised, reflected the upper-up-
scale positioning of our DoubleTree
by Hilton hotels.”
“We were missing our targeted
demographic, not pleasing our hotel
guests, and, not insignificantly, pro-
ducing a negative bottom line at both
locations,” Carney says.
Building the
Burger Boom
The team exploited the freedom
they had to switch gears. “Our
company has great creative freedom,
since we manage and own our ho-
tels, but we are working closely with
Hilton Worldwide to review and ap-
prove all new restaurant concepts,”
Laubscher says. Colvin says the
Burger Bar concept germinated from
the simple realization that the two
hotels were selling a lot of burgers.
Call it a meat hook.
“There’s always going to be some-
thing that’s your hook that people
come back again and again for,” she
observes. “Here, we went to the ex-
treme of tailoring our entire concept
around that one thing. That can be
translated many ways in your res-
taurant, whether it’s upselling your
wine program or focusing on fantastic
homemade desserts. Everyone has a
hook they can work off of.”
While going to an extreme, Cooper
simultaneously made everything
Guests at Fanatics Sports Bar & Grill
locations in DoubleTree by Hilton
in Murfreesboro and Johnson City,
Tennessee, were, well, less than fanatical.
Local Burger Bar
continued on page 30

4. 29September October 2015 | Hotel F&B
“It’s a good atmosphere
to get some work done
Burger Bar feels
more like a
sophisticated,
modern coffee
house than a sports
bar, featuring a long,
raised community
table in the middle
of the restaurant,
equipped with
electric plug-ins,
where guests may
have a drink and a
burger, meet, and
interact.
Local Burger Bar
”
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5. easier. “The Burger bar is a very sim-
ple menu, slightly smaller than what
we had in Fanatics,” Laubscher says.
“We have appetizers and some entrées
and salads, and the big section of the
menu is obviously the burgers that
you can customize.”
Once Cooper settled on the con-
cept, they workshopped ideas for
about five months, Laubscher recalls.
He tripped around the country to
burger havens, taking notes.
“Twelve to 14 months out, the
space was designed by AKA Design
in Memphis, and we’ve been working
with them on several other projects in
the company,” he says. “They designed
our space and picked all of the décor
and everything else. The construction
didn’t take long— maybe four and a
half months from the time we started
demolition to the time we opened.”
Murfreesboro, just outside Nash-
ville, was the first location of Burger
Bar [opened June 2014], with Johnson
City following about a month later.
Compared to Fanatics, Burger Bar is
significantly smaller at both hotels,
an intentional design to free up the
rest as meeting space [see sidebar].
The two Tennessee Burger Bars hold
80 or 85 restaurant seats, Laubscher
says, “which is plenty.”
“With Middle Tennessee State
University here [in Murfreesboro], it’s
a really fast growing area, just boom-
ing,” Colvin says. “And Nashville’s
becoming such a food destination,
it’s really important to keep up with
trends in the area. Looking at per-
formance at various hotels across the
company, burgers are one of the best
selling things across the board. So it
made sense to do something people
love and do it well, with a different
spin on it, in a classy way. You don’t
have to dress up in a sportcoat, but
it is upscale and modern. Bringing
something like that to the area was
important, and it has succeeded.”
Gone is Fanatics’ outsized, rowdy
atmosphere, replaced with a millen-
nial-friendly space where you can still
catch the game. Burger Bar includes
a long, raised community table in the
middle of the restaurant, equipped
with electric plug-ins, where guests
may have a drink and a burger, meet,
and interact. “To a certain degree,
continued from page 28
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6. we modeled ourselves a little bit after
Starbucks,” Laubscher says. “It’s the
kind of the crowd we want to attract.”
“It’s a good atmosphere to get
some work done, for a business trav-
eler, while enjoying the experience,”
Colvin says. “We still have a couple
of televisions, and people still come
watch the game, but there are a
lot more business travelers using
the space. We also have some quiet
seating for people to relax. Wedding
parties will come in before or after
a rehearsal.”
For breakfast, Burger Bar includes
a “built-in, very sleek, nice-looking
buffet that caters to the DoubleTree
brand, because DoubleTree has a
spec’ed-out branded F&B product
for breakfast, so we accommodated
that,” Laubscher says.
“Our breakfast bar experience
in Burger Bar versus our previous
breakfast setup has created a more
customer-friendly process for the most
important meal of the day,” says John-
son City Executive Chef Becky Mon-
toya. “From the frost-top where you
can grab fresh fruit and yogurt to our
built-in induction chafers where you
can get scrambled eggs, biscuits, or
pancakes, your overall breakfast expe-
rience is updated, fresh, and modern.
Our display for breakfast breads and
sleek juice dispensers save on space
and provide a personalized breakfast
service. [The previous breakfast ser-
vice at Fanatics] was the same style of
breakfast service, but now displayed
more open, with a lot more style.”
Montoya feels her leadership abili-
ties have benefited from the freedom
Cooper had in the revamp of Fanatics
into a real, Cooper-owned destina-
tion restaurant in Johnson City.
“My role during the concept
change was one that allowed us to
create a unique menu for our area
and perfect the presentation de-
tails for the new menu items,” she
says. “During the transition, I had
the opportunity to train the staff,
explore marketing ideas, and test
continued on page 33
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7. 32 Hotel F&B | September October 2015
While the full-service Burger Bars
grill up juicy results in Tennessee,
Cooper has crafted a quick-
service version for the Embassy
Suites Detroit Metro Airport
and the recently opened Hilton
Orlando. The Detroit property
has a restaurant as well as a
Starbucks. “What we’ve expe-
rienced was that the Starbucks
outlet would do very well in
the morning where everybody
gets their espresso,” says Andy
Laubscher, corporate director
of F&B, Cooper Hotels. “But
then during the day, the traffic
would slow down, and in the
afternoon, we wouldn’t really
see that much difference. But
we tried different concepts, such
as soup, sandwiches, and so on.
Since we’re dealing with a lot of
sports teams over the weekend,
we decided to put in kind of a
soup and sandwich component
and put the Burger Bar express
in there. Sales have increased
really nicely in that outlet and
made the space much more
profitable.”
One menu board presents
the Starbucks offerings while
another lists Burger Bar items,
Laubscher explains.
The Burger Bar Express in
Hilton Orlando is in a similar situ-
ation; the hotel has a full-service
restaurant with a Starbucks next
to it. “We just put a Burger Bar
Express in there,” says Laub-
scher. “It’s only been in there for
a short while, but first numbers
show us that we’ve been able to
increase revenues nicely so far.”
—TW
Burger
Bar
Express
Local Burger Bar
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8. 33September October 2015 | Hotel F&B
out the food quality and preparation
methods. Overall, the process, while
difficult, was both a learning and
growing experience. I feel confident
that I am a more rounded executive
chef due to my involvement in this
unique and modern concept change.”
Here’s the Beef
For the meat of the matter, Cooper
went with 100% certified Hereford
beef. “It’s all locally sourced—only
natural ingredients, all from farms
that provide the beast our rancher
owned,” Laubscher says. Even better,
they get it easily.
“Sysco was able to get us into their
test kitchen in Nashville where we
tasted several different burgers, but
the Hereford beef product was by far
the best product we had tasted, and
Sysco is able to ship a fresh and non-
frozen product for both full-service
locations,” Laubscher says. “The beef
is farmed in northern Tennessee and
southern Kentucky.”
At price points of $10 to $11 per
burger, “we are priced higher than
some of the chain restaurants like an
Outback or O’Charley’s or something
like that,” Laubscher says, “but it’s
locally sourced. It’s the best burger
product in the market, and we felt
we will be able to get a dollar or two
or three more than a competitor just
because we felt we had a much better
product out there.”
It’s not just burgers, though. Col-
vin points to a current menu favor-
ite, deviled eggs, as an example. In
any case, sides and options stretch
a finite number of items a long way.
“[Guests] may not come in and have
just a cheeseburger and fries; they
may have a portobello mushroom
burger with homemade pimento
cheese and sweet potato or onion
fries,” she says. “People love cus-
tomization, and it’s something they
rave about.”
continued from page 31
continued on page 34
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Labor cost has decreased by as much
as 9%, and food cost has decreased
by 2%, Carney says, with revenues
across the two full-service Burger
Bars up 23% year over year.
“You can customize the burger
1,000 different ways,” Colvin notes.
“It’s a great product. It comes in
fresh, and we hand-patty it. With
all the different toppings and
sauces, the client is never going to
be bored. Plus, we have entrées and
appetizers and great desserts and
milkshakes. It’s easy to control la-
bor for this, because you don’t have
a huge spectrum menu. You have
something focused. And you don’t
have to keep as many ingredients
if you’re focusing on one specific
thing. I came to this property four
months before we started construc-
tion. Numbers were tricky at first,
but utilizing this concept has made
it easier to control.”
Reaction
Cooper uses a Belly frequent-dining
program to sign up customers via
iPads in the restaurant, which al-
lows them to track metrics on age,
gender, and more about customers.
“We get a nice slice out of every
demographic—teenagers, college-
age kids, young professionals, older
couples, and so on,” Colvin says.
“But we are bringing in more of the
young professionals for this concept.
“I’m a big part of our social
media, being a younger profes-
sional myself,” Colvin continues.
“I do some of the Facebook posting
we utilize. We have a burger of the
month that we post pictures of, and
we talk about the sourcing of local
produce. The feedback from people,
they love that they’re able to create
something that’s their own. You’ve
got a lot of places now like Chipotle,
Moe’s, and even Subway, where you
go in and pick and choose what you
want, and you get something you’ve
contributed to. By giving people
not necessarily a blank canvas but a
paint-by-numbers concept for them
to work off, they love that.”
continued from page 33
continued on page 36
Local Burger Bar

10. In converting from Fanatics Sports Bar & Grill, the Murfreesboro
and Johnson City, Tennessee, locations of DoubleTree by Hilton
reduced the restaurant’s vast square footage and were able to
seize the surplus as meeting space. “This
was a space that was about 3,200 to 3,400
square feet, depending on the location,”
says Cooper Hotels Corporate Director of
F&B Andy Laubscher.
“Fanatics was a huge, sprawling restau-
rant, with pool tables, poker tables, and a big
bar shaped like a baseball bat and glove. It
was over the top,” says Hana Colvin, execu-
tive chef at the Murfreesboro property. “By
going to the sleeker, more modern aesthetic,
we were able to keep a 100-plus-seat restau-
rant with a large bar, but we were also able
to add meeting space for the hotel.”
The two hotels were built with ballrooms and boardrooms,
but not break-out rooms, Cooper VP of Operations Brian Carney
says. “The meeting space that was created by dividing Fanatics
has allowed us to be more available for small meetings,” he says,
“but also bigger meetings that need to divide into groups as part
of their programs.”
Carney says banquet and catering rev-
enues have increased approximately 33%
percent year over year since the changes,
which gave each of the two hotels around
1,700 feet of additional meeting space.
“In many cases, we were right on that
threshold where we had outgrown certain
groups or where we could only book one
group into the ballroom,” Laubscher says.
“We were really able to show our ap-
preciation to some of our regular groups,”
Colvin says. “We have the Disabled American
Veterans in here several times a year, and we
do weeklong events with them. We named the new meeting space
the Veterans’ Room to show appreciation.”
Repeat business has shown that the appreciation is mutual.
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11. 36 Hotel F&B | September October 2015
Take, for example, a recent burger
of the month, the Umami Burger:
Salmon, sriracha mayo, Asian kimchi
slaw, and a fried egg, on a toasted
brioche bun. When Colvin posted
an image of the burger on Facebook,
announcing it as the burger of the
month, one customer commented,
“I’ve had this. I loved it. I begged for
it to come back as the burger of the
month! How am I supposed to diet
with the Burger Bar within walking
distance from my office!”
Laubscher says guests they’ve
chatted with have said some version
of the following: “‘I sat down in your
restaurant and looked at the pric-
ing, and it was a little more than my
usual $8.95 or $9.95,’ but when they
got the product they were like, ‘This
is so worth it—an excellent product
and presentation and also the flavor
of the different ingredients.’ We’ve
never had anybody say, ‘This is too
expensive, and I’m going to walk out
of here.’ They’re really pleased.” 
Tad Wilkes is managing editor of Hotel F&B.
continued from page 34
One burger of the month
at the Murfreesboro
DoubleTree was this
Salmon Umami burger:
salmon, sriracha
mayo, Asian
kimchi slaw,
and a fried
egg, on a
toasted
brioche
bun.
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