The Westberry Newsletter, Issue 1, December 2016
Hello, and welcome to the first e-newsletter from the Westberry Hotel & Restaurant.
It has been a busy summer for our hotel, and our restaurant has seen many of the locals returning which is great. Our Oriental buffet on Sunday lunch time has proved very popular and we have been told by many guests that we should keep to the buffet rather than switch back to the Carvery. We ran the buffet every Sunday until last week, but we have now stopped for this year as we move into the Christmas period. We will start the buffet again early next year, so watch this space!
After taking over the business now for over 6 months, we feel that we have finally more-or-less got the hang of things and we now have a much better understanding of our guests' preferences and needs. We introduced a new evening menu at the beginning of November, which featured many new dishes and added Vietnamese cuisine to our repertoire. The new menu has received excellent feedback from our guests, who tell us that they enjoyed the good food and the friendly atmosphere. Thank you very much to all of you who filled in our questionnaires and gave honest feedback to help us improve. Overall, the taste and presentation have received excellent ratings, most guests also think the size is just about right, but a couple of guests found the portion size a little small and some others found the dishes too large! This is a difficult one to balance, so for now we will keep the dishes at the same size but invite guests to ask for more rice or noodles if needed, as we are keen to avoid food waste. We have received two specific suggestions for our menu: (1) include offer additional vegetable side dishes, and (2) offer Chinese tea. We are very grateful for these suggestions, and will introduce both of these in our menu shortly.
We have just finished putting up the Christmas decorations in our restaurant and function rooms, and we are about to start offering our Christmas menu so that locals, visitors and residents alike can come here to celebrate. The restaurant is filling up nicely, so we are in for a busy December! We are offering two Christmas parties this year: (1) a traditional Christmas party on 10th December, and an Oriental Christmas party on 17th December, both followed by a disco. The party on the 10th is already full but we can still fit in a couple more tables for the 17th. The Oriental Christmas party is an innovative idea, intended to give people a chance to enjoy traditional Christmas poultry, meat and fish cooked in several different oriental styles. Parties of around eight people will be seated at a large round table with a rotating top, and will be able to share a 4-course meal where everyone can try all of the dishes on the menu (rather than just a single dish of their choice). We hope that if you have not already done so, you will book to join us at one of these parties or perhaps just dine with some good friends in our restaurant and sample our Christmas menu.
This week we started on the hotel refurbishment programme, and our contractors (all local) have started to dismantle some of the older rooms in order to update them. The new rooms will all have a modern en-suite shower room when they are finished. The hotel and restaurant will be closed between 23rd December and 15th January, and during this period the public areas of the hotel will also be redecorated. In addition, our reception area will be getting a facelift, so you should see a noticeable improvement when you come back next year.
When we took over the Westberry in April 2016, we tried to retain as many of the existing staff as possible, knowing full well that their knowledge and experience would be absolutely vital if we were to make a success of the venture. Although a few have left since then, the vast majority have stayed on, and we would like to say a special “thank you” to all of them, as well as those who have joined since we took over and those who have left, for supporting us so magnificently. Their hard work, their willingness to do whatever is asked of them, and especially their friendliness and helpfulness both to us and to all of our guests is without doubt by far the most important factor in making the Westberry a success. They are regularly singled out for special praise in guest reviews on Trip Advisor, and rightly so, for they are truly a first-class team. A very sincere “thank you” to each and every one of them.
All of the news regarding the Westberry is very positive, and to end on an especially happy note we would like to announce the winners of November’s prize draw (there are two winners, for reasons that are too complex to go into here!). Guests who filled in our restaurant questionnaires in November were entered into a prize draw. We asked Tim, one of our most regular hotel residents, to pull a questionnaire out at random in order to find the winner. The first two questionnaires that were pulled out sadly did not contain any contact details, but finally we found the winners. We are pleased to announce that Tina Nottle and Stuart Kirk were the guests who completed the winning questionnaires, and they will be receiving a free 3-course meal with our compliments and our thanks. Many congratulations to Ms Nottle and Mr Kirk, and we look forward to seeing them both soon. For the months of December and January we will be running a combined draw to give the winner a free St Valentine's Day meal for two in our restaurant, so do please remember to fill in your name and contact details on the questionnaire each time you visit.
Once again, many thanks for your support in 2016, and we hope very much to see you all again soon. We also like to take this opportunity to wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and an equally Happy New Year.
With very best wishes,
Lệ Khanh & Simon