Ski Resort F&B: Service Above The Snowline

Mountain food and beverage is one of the most compressed operations in hospitality. A base lodge that's quiet at 9am does its entire day's covers between 11:30 and 1:30, then the whole property pivots to après at 3.

It's also physically the hardest environment on the tabletop in US hospitality, and for reasons that don't apply anywhere else.

What makes mountain service different

Start with the water. Guests arrive in melting snow, and gloves, jackets and boots shed it continuously onto tables, trays and bar tops. A lodge table at peak is never dry, and nothing in the building gets a chance to dry out between turns.

Then there's what the guest is wearing. Bulky jacket, helmet, gloves, goggles. Dexterity is compromised, peripheral vision is compromised, and the person reaching for a drink is doing it in a snow glove.

The bigger difference is who carries the tray. Base lodge service is mostly self-serve tray lines, which means the carrier is a guest in ski boots rather than a trained server. Ski boots have no ankle articulation and a hard, slippery sole, and the floor underneath is wet from a thousand pairs of the same boots.

Timing compounds all of it. Lunch at a base lodge is a two-hour surge: tables turn fast, surfaces don't get dried between parties, and staff are moving at pace. Condensation behaves oddly too, with a cold drink sweating hard in a warm lodge and a warm drink carried onto a deck at 9,000 feet behaving differently again. And the decks stay in use all season, so slopeside terraces and fire pits are running through winter on tables that are snow-cleared rather than dry.

Where it goes wrong

The cafeteria tray line. A guest in ski boots carries a loaded tray across a wet floor to a crowded table. This is the single most common incident on a mountain, and the carrier has no training, limited balance, and both hands full.

The après bar. Peak drink volume, packed standing room, wet bar tops, guests in gloves. Glasses set on a film of water on polished wood or stone go sideways easily.

The mid-mountain restaurant. Table service at altitude with servers crossing wet, high-traffic floors, often with limited back-of-house space to stage trays.

The deck. Cold, windy, wet tables, and anything light on the table leaves.

What holds on a mountain

Tray liners on cafeteria trays. This is the highest-impact application in a ski operation, and most resorts don't do it. A liner on a self-serve tray holds a guest's food and drink in place while they cross a wet lodge floor in ski boots. It costs pennies per tray and it removes the failure mode that produces the most incidents on the property. Rectangular liners run 10" × 14", 14" × 14" and 16" × 22", 2,000 per case.

Coasters at the après bar. Wet bar tops are the defining condition of après service. Three sizes, 3-1/2", 4" and 5" diameter, cover the beer, cocktail and mulled-drink mix. Case packs of 8,000, 6,000 and 5,000.

Full-coverage liners for table service. Mid-mountain and lodge restaurant trays, edge to edge, no trimmed edges.

Non-porous matters more here than anywhere. Everything on a mountain is wet. A porous mat or cloth liner absorbs meltwater continuously through a peak service and never dries out between turns. A non-porous liner doesn't absorb anything, water sits on the surface and the liner is discarded after service.

Single-use suits a compressed operation. There is no window in a mountain day to run a wash cycle on reusable service ware. A fresh liner goes down, the used one is discarded.

The US mountain markets

Colorado: Vail, Aspen, Breckenridge, Steamboat. Utah: Park City, Deer Valley, Snowbird. California and Nevada: the Lake Tahoe resorts, Mammoth. Wyoming and Montana: Jackson Hole, Big Sky. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine: Stowe, Killington, Sugarloaf. New York: Lake Placid, Hunter, Gore.

Most of these properties run a base lodge, one or more mid-mountain outlets, an après bar, a hotel or lodge F&B operation, and a banquet business for weddings and corporate retreats. That's four or five distinct service styles under one management team, which is why a rationalised SKU list matters more here than in a single-outlet venue.

Resorts in the US are supplied out of Toronto and Buffalo, NY, with regional distribution running through New York, Chicago, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Service areas here.

Order before the season, not into it

Mountain operations have a hard season start and no ability to resupply quickly at altitude mid-peak. Delivery to a mountain property in January is not the same as delivery to a city hotel.

Two things worth doing in October:

Count your outlets and match a line to each. Cafeteria trays, après bar, table service, banquet. Four counts, four ratios.

Stock the whole season. Products ship by the case with a one-case minimum, so carrying extra is cheap relative to running out during a holiday week. Which is when running out actually happens.

Test it before opening day

Request free samples sized to your cafeteria and service trays, and put them on a wet table in your own lodge. That's the test.

If your trays are non-standard, common in purpose-built mountain cafeteria lines, send us the dimensions and we'll confirm the fit before quoting a custom die.

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FAQ

What's the biggest cause of spills in a ski lodge? Self-serve cafeteria trays carried by guests in ski boots across wet floors. The carrier is untrained, balance is compromised by the boots, and the floor is wet from melting snow. A tray liner holds the load in place during that walk.

Do non-slip liners work on wet surfaces? They're non-porous, so they don't absorb the meltwater and condensation that soak into cloth and rubber alternatives. Water sits on the surface and the liner is discarded after service rather than staying wet through the next turn.

What should an après-ski bar use? Coasters, in the size that suits the glassware. Après bar tops are continuously wet, and a coaster makes the landing surface consistent regardless of what the bar is finished in.

Are the liners reusable at the end of a service? No. They are single-use and paper-thin. Each one is used for one service and replaced, which suits a mountain operation with no downtime for washing.

When should a resort order for the season? Before opening. Resupply to a mountain property mid-season is slow, and shortages tend to hit during holiday weeks when volume peaks.