Feeding a destination that receives a ship at a time is not running a restaurant bigger.
Celebration Key is Carnival's first exclusive destination, on Grand Bahama. When Carnival looked for someone to run its food and beverage, it did not look for a caterer. It looked for an operator, and it handed the group the island's kitchens whole.
A ship does not arrive a little at a time
A restaurant fills up across an evening. A destination like this fills up when the ship docks, and thousands of people are hungry within the same hour. Everything changes: menus built for speed without looking fast, kitchens designed around the peak and not the average, and a team that can hold the standard on the busiest day the same as on the quietest.
Volume is not a bigger version of a restaurant. It is another trade.
What we took away
That consistency is a matter of design before it is a matter of effort. That purchasing, stock and staff have to be sized for the ship and not for the week. And that a guest on a beach judges the lunch exactly the same way a guest in a dining room judges the dinner.
It is the case the group puts on the table first when a partner asks what it can do, because it answers the question with numbers and not with a presentation.
