“Food & beverage is an essential part of the overall day out. If you provide genuine hospitality and quality at the right moments, it directly contributes to how visitors experience Blijdorp.”
— Edwin Allen, Head of Food & Beverage, Diergaarde Blijdorp
A visit to Diergaarde Blijdorp is, first and foremost, about animals, nature and conservation. But throughout a day out, many more moments determine how visitors experience their visit. From the welcome at the entrance to a coffee, lunch or ice cream along the way.
Together with Diergaarde Blijdorp, Conceptional is therefore working on the further development of its F&B strategy. We spoke with Edwin Allen, Head of Food & Beverage at Diergaarde Blijdorp, about the role of hospitality within leisure, changing guest expectations and finding the right balance between experience and commercial performance.
For me, hospitality goes far beyond food and beverage. It starts in the car park and at the entrance. How are you welcomed? How are you helped? And how do all the different touchpoints throughout the day make you feel?
F&B is an essential part of that. If you welcome guests properly, provide good service and serve quality products at the right moments, it directly contributes to the overall Blijdorp experience.
In the past, F&B at Blijdorp was mainly seen as a supporting facility. Understandably, the focus was strongly on animal welfare, conservation and sustainability. Today, we are increasingly looking at F&B as an integral part of the overall day out, as well as recognising its commercial value.
Absolutely. In the past, a day out was mainly about having something easy and enjoyable to eat. Today, visitors are more critical. They pay more attention to quality, healthier choices and what they receive for the price they pay.
That last point is becoming increasingly important. Hospitality prices have increased in recent years. When a visitor has already paid for admission and then pays a certain amount for food or drinks, they also expect the quality to match.
The offer therefore needs to respond much more closely to different needs. Not every visitor wants the same thing, and the time of day also plays an important role.
That is something we are now looking at very specifically together with Conceptional. What sells where? At what point in the day is there demand for coffee, something sweet, lunch or a snack? And does the offer at a particular location actually match the visitors using that area?
An F&B location next to a children's playground, for example, requires something very different from a restaurant where guests deliberately choose to spend more time.
By giving each location a clearer position and aligning the assortment accordingly, visitors know better what to expect and where to find it. That reduces disappointment while also creating a stronger commercial proposition.
Ultimately, it is about finding the right balance between price, quality, volume and average spend.
We want to avoid simply increasing prices further and further. Price sensitivity is particularly relevant in our region. If visitors feel that a drink or meal has become too expensive, the decision to bring their own food and drinks is quickly made.
That is why we are not only looking at the price of individual products, but increasingly at the overall value we offer visitors. Combination deals are a good example. Instead of simply lowering a price, we combine products in an attractive offer and test whether this can increase both volume and average spend.
We are actively testing this at the moment. The first indications are that these offers can help increase volumes. The next step is to analyse whether that also translates into higher total revenue and stronger margins.
Quality is equally important. Soft serve ice cream is a good example. By deliberately choosing a better-quality product, we saw sales volumes increase significantly. It shows that visitors are willing to buy when they feel that price, quality and value are in balance.
This is particularly relevant with a large number of annual pass holders who return several times a year. If they know they can get something genuinely good at a fair price within Blijdorp, every visit creates another potential purchasing moment.
It is a constant balancing act. A concept has to be attractive to the guest, but capacity, speed, labour costs and opening hours also have to work.
You can create a fantastic hospitality concept, but if it does not work operationally, it will not be sustainable in the long term.
That is why we are increasingly working with data and different operating scenarios. Based on visitor numbers, weather forecasts and other information, we determine which locations should open and what staffing levels are required.
That requires collaboration between F&B, finance, marketing and visitor experience. You want to deliver the best possible guest experience, but within an operating model that is both operationally and financially healthy.
F&B is increasingly being recognised within Blijdorp as an important part of the overall day out. That creates a need to look beyond individual locations or products and consider the entire F&B landscape.
Together with Conceptional, we initially started with a Quick Wins Scan: what could we change in the short term to improve performance ahead of the peak season?
From there, we continued working together on the longer-term strategic direction.
What I find important is that Conceptional does not simply write a plan and then tell us what to do. We have genuinely developed it together. We bring our knowledge of Diergaarde Blijdorp and its visitors, while Conceptional brings knowledge and experience from other leisure and hospitality projects.
That combination helps us create a strategy that is not only ambitious, but also works in the day-to-day reality of Blijdorp.
Part of the strategy still needs to prove itself over the coming period, but we are already seeing results on an operational level.
For example, we have introduced much more control into workforce planning. As a result, we now have significantly better control over labour costs than before.
That is exactly where strategy and operations need to meet. It is not only about creating a vision for five years from now, but also about asking: which levers can we already pull today?
Above all, F&B should become a more natural part of their day.
Visitors should clearly understand what is available where and be able to trust that the quality will be good. Less disappointment, greater recognition and products that people actively choose to buy.
I also want us to continue prioritising quality. You could say that people come for the animals, so how important can a portion of fries really be? But for someone who visits Blijdorp four, five or six times a year, those moments make a real difference.
If the product is good, the price feels right and the experience is positive, F&B stops being a necessary pit stop. It becomes part of the memory of a great day at Blijdorp.
And ultimately, that is what hospitality within leisure is all about.
