How Hotels Can Make Provenance Part of the Guest Experience

Choose what’s local and seasonal

For both food and beverage menus, sourcing locally gives your guests a real taste of their destination, while working with ingredients indigenous to your area can provide a unique experience that will be memorable and worth talking about. 

Choose local foods when they’re in season; source directly from small-scale producers, farmers and fishers, and credit them on your menu or on your website; prioritise transparency in your supply chain; explore a wider range of local plant foods and experiment with heritage breeds, ancient grains and invasive species; and make sure your communications channels – from your website and social media to your front-of-house team – help to connect your guests with these stories. You can find more advice for how to get started here.

At THE PIG Hotel Group in the UK, provenance is king: every location is committed to serving a 25-mile menu, offering English wine and locally sourced ingredients. The team even grows produce in the hotel Kitchen Gardens, rears their own livestock and keeps bees to make their own honey – all valuable parts of the story they share with their customers.

“We focus on produce and heritage animals that are native to a 300-mile radius with farmers and butchers that are ethical and suitable,” says Tyler Naumann, Director of Restaurants at The Loren hotel in Austin, Texas. “We know we’re contributing to an important dialogue through our dedication to sourcing local and high-quality ingredients – but even if no one knew, we would still do it. We are happy making guests happy with very tasty food.” 

Marc Lorés Panadés, Vice President of F&B at Aethos hotels, explains how they approach this at their newest location in Sardinia. “Firstly, we ensure that as much as possible, our ingredients are sourced from local farmers and producers. This means that our menus change with the seasons, always highlighting the freshest local produce available. We are proud to use heritage varieties of animals and crops, preserving Sardinia's rich agricultural heritage. Additionally, we incorporate foraged ingredients from our surroundings into our dishes, adding unique flavours and a sense of place to our cuisine.”

This goes for drinks lists, too. “For our cocktails, we use things like fennel and mirto [Sardinia's classic digestivo, made from an infusion of myrtle berries]. Just as with the food menus, our cocktail list also changes with the seasons,” Marc adds.

Morning meals matter

Don’t forget breakfast! While this can be overlooked by many hotels, your breakfast offering is the last opportunity your hotel has to connect with – and impress – guests before they check out. There’s no reason your breakfast offering shouldn’t showcase local ingredients to the same degree that your dinner menus do. What are the traditional breakfast foods in your locality, and can you offer these in the mornings? Another option is to provide more standardised fare, but using local ingredients: think the classic continental breakfast, but with local yoghurt, juice, fruit, honey and preserves, unique pastries made in your local bakery, or bread made from heritage grains.

Make sure to call this out on your morning menu or in signage at the buffet. “The one most effective thing we did in Sardinia was researching across the island and highlighting our findings at the breakfast buffet display with more than 85% local produce,” says Marc. “With this, we ensure our guests understand the company's philosophy – the destination starts with a locally produced breakfast.”

Connect with producers

It’s not just about dishing up local ingredients – provenance should also include sourcing directly from small-scale producers and cultivating long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. “When hoteliers begin to emphasise provenance, it's important to establish strong relationships with local producers and understand their practices. Supporting each other means organising regular meetings and developing step-by-step roadmaps to understand each other's needs and challenges,” Marc explains.

At Desa Potato Head hotel in Bali, Indonesia, the culinary team at Kaum restaurant has travelled around the islands to develop robust relationships with many of Indonesia’s ethnic tribes and responsible small-scale producers. Kaum menus recognise the quality of their distinctive local produce and celebrate their heritage skills.

Building your procurement policy with these priorities in place means greater control over your supply chain and increased transparency for your kitchen team and your guests. As Marc says, “Our teams are well aware of the sourcing of our produce from breakfast to dinner, and they are the voices highlighting the origins of our food. This transparency allows our guests to appreciate the journey from farm to table and the cultural significance of what they are eating. Transparency about sourcing and sustainability efforts builds trust with guests, making them more likely to support and advocate for the hotel.” 

Highlight your producers on your menus and/or through your other communications. You can read more advice on how to do this in meaningful ways here. As Tyler says, “Listing a local farms and purveyor section is a helpful way of telling the story and sharing your mission, and staff can explain further.” He shares one suggestion for incorporating provenance into your menu. “Instead of saying ‘beef filet’, you could list the farm first and include the region, like you would on a wine list: ‘Ranger Cattle beef filet, Austin’.” 

Regional cuisine as well as ingredients

Embedding provenance into your menu can extend to regional cuisine as well as ingredients themselves: exploring traditional cooking methods or heritage recipes can help your offering rank among their best memories from the trip. 

At Desa Potato Head, the team at Kaum restaurant believes that cultural sustainability is just as important as environmental. Following extensive research into heritage values and cooking methods, these have been built into the foundations of their offering. The menu uses traditional Indonesian cooking techniques and recipes passed down through generations, including bamboo grilling, fermentation, slow cooking to caramelise, pit roasting and manual grinding. This allows guests to explore local heritage through their food and to learn about the geographic origins of the dishes, including those from lesser-known regions of Indonesia.

Meanwhile at Aethos, a focus on local cuisine lies at the core of their offering. “Traditional Sardinian recipes and cooking methods are a cornerstone of our menu, and we are passionate about sharing the stories behind these dishes with our guests,” says Marc. 

Go beyond food.

Provenance can extend beyond your menus: look for local craftsmanship when sourcing furniture, decorate your spaces with local art and sculpture, use indigenous plants in your gardens and hire local musicians or comedy acts as entertainment.

At The Bull Inn in Totnes, UK, the interiors of the pub and rooms are decorated with antique and vintage furniture, and their flooring is done using old tiles from a local quarry. Their lighting is by local artisan makers and their bathrooms are finished with locally made tiles. Even the mattresses on their beds are made using Dartmoor wool!

You can also connect with local tourist and heritage sites, encouraging your guests to experience more of the area’s culture while bringing more money into the area.

Become part of the community

Hospitality businesses play a valuable role within communities, providing space for social interaction and shaping local culture – so operators have a responsibility to have a positive impact. For bigger hotel brands that span across multiple locations, it’s important to avoid a broad-strokes approach. Being conscious and respectful of local cultures is crucial. 

“Often, hotels are perceived as a place for folks from out-of-town rather than being a contributor to the local community. A sense of place is important in building community trust,” says Tyler. “Numbers cannot always dictate decision-making versus impact and value – value can be measured in community impact and sustainability.” 

Find ways to get involved at a local level everywhere your brand has a presence, taking the time to understand what matters in each place and how your brand can have a positive impact. At The Bull Inn, they work hard to be a valuable part of the community in Totnes. All of the team members are local hires, including management, and they provide free use of the kitchen and venue for community groups and events.

Telling the story

The final part of the provenance puzzle is to bring these stories to life for your guests. Getting the team on board is an essential first step.

“Everything starts with the staff and keeping them engaged, informed, and educated.  It’s very important for everyone to know that we are not making menu decisions without understanding the impact and importance of those decisions. Everything is intentional,” says Tyler.

Shouting about their sustainability work comes naturally to the team at The Bull Inn, Totnes. “We are very loud about what we do,” says Phillipa Hughes, Managing Director. Their No-Bull Rules are proudly displayed in-house, on boards and on their website, and they are eager to share what they do with their guests. “Our customers love it. They know they are spending their money in an ethical business that spends its own money solely on other ethical businesses and services. They find it inspiring and hopeful.”

“The most effective way to embrace sustainability is to have well-trained teams that lead the change,” says Marc. “Enabling conversations and storytelling with our guests is a priority for us, so continuous education about the importance of provenance is crucial. We ensure our teams have the voices to highlight anything related to the island. All of our team members experience all of our meals and visit our suppliers – this means they are able to share these experiences with our guests. For us, this is the best way to promote our culture.” 

Interested in learning more about how sustainability can help your hotel brand? Drop us a line at hello@thesra.org or check out our Food Made Good Standard here – it's the only global sustainability accreditation tailored to the hospitality industry.