Saint Valentine

Friends of Branded!

Happy Saturday and I hope you had a great week.

On February 14^th, 1995, I was the most junior person on the emerging markets sales & trading desk at UBS Securities. While I may have been junior, I had something many of the senior folks on the desk didn’t have, a reservation for dinner on Valentine’s Day.

At this time, I was also still bartending on the weekends and that afforded me some access and connectivity to the restaurant industry. The day before V-Day, as well as the day of Valentine’s Day, were surprisingly busy for me as word spread on the trading floor that I was the guy that could help gentlemen in need of securing a last-minute reservation.

I helped where I could and most certainly wasn’t able to meet the demand that came my way. I joked with some friends that I should have booked many reservations ahead of Valentine’s Day and that I could have sold them for a nice return on my time as opposed to my banging phones to help get reservations for others on the trading floor.

For avoidance of any doubt, I was no Chuck Templeton who conceived of the idea for EasyEats.com, widely considered the first successful online reservation platform. Mr. Templeton created this platform a result of watching his wife struggle for over 3-hours to make a series of restaurant reservations over the phone. He incorporated EasyEats.com on July 2^nd, 1998, and the company was later rebranded as OpenTable after discovering that upscale restaurants preferred a more refined name for this reservation service.

So, there you go.

Yes, today is Valentine’s Day and for those celebrating, I wish you a wonderful holiday. But let’s not kid ourselves, for the restaurant industry, Valentine’s Day isn’t about romance, it’s about financial engineering.

Let’s get real and let’s get into it.

For the industry, this day is NOT about roses, candlelight, or love. It’s about seat economics. For operators (and investors in restaurants), February 14th is one of the purest case studies in how well you understand your business b/c V-Day isn’t just busy, it’s concentrated demand. And concentrated demand is where great operators separate themselves from the average ones.

Too many restaurants treat Valentine’s Day like it’s just one big night and some kind of chaotic sprint. A packed dining room, a prix-fixe menu, and then hope for the best.

“Hope is not a strategy,” is a phrase popularized by US Army General Gordon R. Sullivan and a guiding principle emphasizing that success requires proactive planning, deliberate actions, and calculated risks rather than passive optimism or wishing for outcomes. (Who had General Sullivan on their H^2 Bingo Card this week? Anyone?) 😊

The best operators treat this day like a yield-management event, a beverage-margin accelerator, and most importantly, a lifetime-value acquisition strategy. So romantic, right?

To be crystal clear, Mother’s Day wins the gold (that’s my small contribution to the Winter Olympics taking place in Italy) when it comes to restaurant volume. But Valentine’s Day wins on check average and profitability per seat.

Valentine’s Day represents one of those rare nights where guests expect to spend more. For emphasis, let me state that again, guests EXPECT to spend more.

Friends, operators, this is your permission slip and the playbook is clear: Menu Engineering is more important than Mood Lighting. 😊

You need to embrace both pre-fixe menus and tiered pricing. Let’s go with 3 tiers since School House Rock taught all of us Gen Xers and Boomers that “3 is a magic number!” Let’s swap some high-margin proteins, offer some truffle & caviar supplements, and upsell some wine pairings. This playbook helps you control the kitchen, protect food costs, and simplify execution.

Romance is emotional (that’s nice), but margin is mathematical (and that’s how winning is done!).

I know I’ve just lost more than a few folks that are getting a glimpse behind the curtain here of the restaurant industry and the importance of maximizing the big days of the year. But V-Day is more than a day as it represents the potential to win the guest. Not just for a night, but for a lifetime!

Here’s what too many operators miss, Valentine’s Daty isn’t a one-night revenue spike. It’s a data acquisition moment. First dates become anniversaries, anniversaries become proposals, and proposals become rehearsal dinners. I’ve written often (too often?) about the importance of guest data and V-Day affords operators the opportunity to capture the guest’s e-mail, cell phone, birthday, and preferences. Valentine’s Day should feed your CRM and if you don’t capture guest data, you’re leaving future revenues on the table (pun intended of course).

If you want to know whether an operator truly understands Valentine’s Day, just look at the bar program. V-Day isn’t a food holiday; it’s a wine holiday. Welcome guests with Champagne pours, have pre-set pairings, and offer specialty cocktails (or mocktails) with premium pricing. This represents your margin booster for the night!

And here’s a most important goal, Valentine’s Day isn’t about filling your restaurant. It’s about filling it twice or even three times. You need defined seating windows, deposits to eliminate no-shows and text confirmations. You also need menu pacing. This is airline-level thinking applied to hospitality. And the irony? The smoother the system, the more romantic it feels. Yes, chaos kills mood, but structure creates magic.

The sharpest operators also don’t stop at February 14^th, they stretch the holiday. They create Valentine’s weekends, Galentine’s Day events (yes, that’s a thing, it’s celebrated annually on February 13^th, and represents the unofficial holiday dedicated to honoring female friendships), take-home wine bundles and dessert add-ons. The objective here is to extend the demand by not letting it spike and disappear.

And here’s the key takeaway, Valentine’s Day is a reminder of something bigger about the restaurant industry. Many think it’s about creativity (and of course creativity is important), but it’s actually about math: (i) seat yield, (ii) beverage mix, (iii) menu engineering, and (iv) guest retention.

Romance is the wrapper, but unit economics is the product. Operators who understand that that the goal isn’t to just survive Valentine’s Day; but to optimize and win it!

If you’re an operator, are you designing the night or just reacting to it?

If you’re an investor, can your portfolio brands turn peak demand into peak margin?

B/c in hospitality, just like in capital markets, you don’t get paid for being busy, you get paid for being efficient.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, a Happy Valentine’s Day, and a reminder to tip your servers!

It takes a village.

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This week it was announced in the US News & World Report Best Hotels Awards 2026 recognized The Ritz-Carlton New York NoMad as #4 in Best in New York City Hotels, #4 in Best New York Hotels, and #32 in Best USA Hotels – Gold Badge.

Now this seems like something that belongs in the Shoutout section, right?

Not so fast young grasshopper. Not so fast.

This is most definitely deserving of being in The Deal Room b/c when F&B stops being an amenity and starts being an asset, recognition from the likes of US News & World is what you get.

The “deal” I’m highlighting this week is about the collaboration between the José Andrés Group and The Ritz-Carlton. And this isn’t just about hotel and a chef collaboration; it’s about a balance-sheet strategy.

Luxury hotels used to treat restaurants as necessary components and something to service guests and fill space.

Today, for hotels, the right culinary partner can lift average daily rates, drive local traffic, strengthen event revenue, and modernize brand perception.

And for the restaurant group, the right hotel partner can deliver global distribution, lower lease risk, offer an affluent built-in audience, and signal prestige.

This is NOT a vendor relationship, it’s aligned IP.

The lesson for operators and investors, if your restaurant inside a hotel is just covering labor and food costs, you’re thinking too small.

The real question, is your F&B driving room revenue? Is it strengthening brand equity? Is it increasing asset value?

B/c in luxury hospitality, the restaurant isn’t the side show, it’s the rate card!

Bringing this back to Branded, as I often like to do (😊), our friends and partners at LDV Hospitality are creating a similar strategic value proposition for hotel partners as the José Andrés Group model by turning food and beverage from a commodity into a destination experience, forging culinary identity that boosts the hotel brand, guest engagement, and long-term profitability.

The José Andrés Group trades on global chef prestige, while LDV Hospitality trades on curated concept creation and boutique lifestyle appeal that aligns with each hotel’s vision.

Both generate value, they just use different IP levers. Respect!

LDV doesn’t just open a hotel restaurant, it works with hotels to design tailor-made F&B ecosystems that align with the property’s ethos and destination positioning. This isn’t merely leasing a kitchen; it’s co-creating a bespoke F&B identity for the property.

To learn more about LDV Hospitality or to discuss opportunities with their Hospitality Studio, please click here.

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