When we opened Bethnal & Bec Luxury Stays 4 years ago, we knew we wanted to be more than standard self catering, but we didn’t want to be on a guest’s schedule for breakfast, dinners, bookings or itineraries. As a solution, we developed a model where we ‘curate’ add-ons for our guests.
This covers:
- Upgrading the standard breakfast boxes
- Adding on ‘Dine-In’ boxes such as pizza, burgers, steak, and afternoon tea. These are locally sourced meal packs that will be ready and waiting in the retreats for the guests to cook themselves.
- Fun items such as popcorn and hot chocolate
- Curating experiences with local businesses, allowing our guests to benefit from preferential rates and ideas of great things to do in the local area
- Working with local business to so guests can pre-order cakes, gifts, alcohol, chefs, etc.
What started as a small idea, has become a very large and successful part of our business.
We also love the fact that we get to work and promote some fantastic local business, that they get business from us, and the guest is happy as we’ve done all the legwork – all they need to do is connect and organise times.
Our most successful concept has been what we call our Honesty Larder.
A large haberdashery unit filled with lots of snacks, drinks, gifts, bath products, dog treats and more.
We use an ipad for guests to fill in what they have enjoyed from the fully stocked larder, and on leaving they pay by BACS or leave cash.
In over 1000 transactions, we’ve had maybe a handful of people not being honest about what they use…
But that’s fine, because that is what the security deposit is for!
It’s something that our guests rave about, and many do simply arrive without anything, and enjoy the delicious frozen handmade meals, the delicious locally sourced snacks – and the doggie larder is very popular indeed!
We run our paid larder alongside our large ‘free’ larder containing lots of cooking condiments, teas, coffees, rice, pasta, milk etc.
It’s one less thing for guests to think about when packing – and 1 more easy brownie point for us!