Hotel Del Coronado chooses Capton's Beverage Tracker

Capton announced that the Hotel Del Coronado has chosen Capton’s Beverage Tracker business solution for monitoring and improving bar operations.

Located in San Diego, California, the Hotel Del Coronado has long been heralded as one of America’s most beautiful beach resorts. More affectionately known as “The Del”, it has been called “one of the top ten resorts in the world” by USA Today. It is part of the Strategic Hotels & Resorts portfolio, an industry-leading owner and asset manager of high-end hotels and resorts.

“We followed the recommendation of another Strategic property using Capton which had gotten impressive results,” stated Steve Schackne, Food and Beverage Director for Hotel Del Coronado. “Our high volume bar, Babcock & Story, was running a respectable 18.8% beverage cost. We had implemented an inventory solution that was highlighting a significant liquor shrinkage problem. The challenge, however, was that even with weekly inventories conducted by the solution vendor, we could not go to bartenders with sufficiently detailed data to change behavior. In contrast, Capton’s generated data is behavior-changing in character. We know exactly who is over pouring what drinks, and when. We know every time staff gives away a drink, or if they fail to apply an up charge. After 5 months our beverage cost is down 3.6 points. That’s a three month payback on the system in that one bar. ”

Known as the best bar in San Diego, Babcock & Story was designed to take advantage of the spectacular seaside setting and features the original 46-foot handcrafted mahogany bar, which was brought by ship from Philadelphia around Cape Horn in 1888. It’s a popular, high volume, high-end operation. One of the key objectives for Capton in this project was not only to produce savings, but also to prove the system did not negatively impact customer service or guest experience.

“The problem with a lot of liquor control systems is that they look ‘clunky’ to customers, impose operational practice change, and require a lot of management babysitting to keep them running. The Capton system had none of these issues – and it produced the savings result,” added Schackne.

The Capton project involved an installation of Capton’s patented RFID-based liquor monitoring spouts at the Babcock & Story Bar operation, Capton’s software on a manager’s desktop, and a POS integration application linked to the property’s Micros POS solution.

“The thing we like about this solution,” said David Hogin, VP Asset Management for Strategic Hotels, “is that it does not become a management burden. It’s a technology investment we can make into a property with a fast ROI, that does not require major operational changes or management priority shifts. And Capton’s ongoing business services approach puts them in position to be an independent advisor to the local team on ways to reduce costs and increase revenues in their bar operation.”