Meet the hospitality expert: Helenka Fletcher of The Standard, London

As the executive director of food and beverage at The Standard, London, the British outpost of the global hotel brand that’s made a name for itself for being at the forefront of modern trends and culture, Helenka Fletcher knew she had her work cut out for her when she decided to take on the role. Her day-to-day responsibilities include owning the food and beverage strategy and operations for all of the hotel’s restaurants, the rooftop, Library Lounge, Sweeties Bar, and in-room dining services.

“My day could be spent doing anything from lending a hand during a busy breakfast shift, reviewing a sales mix for minibar products to ensure we’re keeping our offering fresh and relevant, managing an HR issue, attending a menu tasting for a new dish, as they all need my approval before they make it on the menu, or attending a budget review meeting,” explains Fletcher. “It’s a diverse role with lots of moving parts. All, of course, whilst ensuring our guests are happy and the business is delivering commercial success from both revenue and costs perspectives!” she adds.

Though chefs, with their creative minds and strong visions, are not always the easiest people to work with when it comes to menu development, Fletcher’s years of experience launching restaurants for the Gordon Ramsay Group and then as a director of operations for the Hakkasan group make her a well-respected powerhouse. “When we’re working on new menu ideas, depending on the area of the hotel, I’ll either set a brief for the team to work with and we’ll both understand the objective, or a new dish might just arise from the chef’s imagination because he’s been inspired by something he’s seen or tasted—both are very different but equally important,” she shares.

standard hotel london exterior — The Standard is centrally located in London’s Kings Cross area. Image credit: David Cleveland

At The Standard London, the main dining areas cater to a diverse set of guests and embody that punchy, vibrant ethos that the group is all about: there’s Isla, the seasonal restaurant on the ground floor, which highlights ingredients from the British Isles; Double Standard, with its outdoor terrace and more laidback bar fare; and, of course, the hotel’s restaurant-with-a-view, Decimo, perched on the 10^th floor and serving a menu of Spanish/Mexican favourites.

Fletcher is hands-on with every single one of the restaurants and enjoys working with their respective chefs to ensure everything meets her expectations. “Peter (Sanchez-Iglesias, executive chef at Decimo) will be genuinely excited for me to taste something just because he would have been working on it tirelessly to make it perfect. Decimo definitely comes from the heart which is why it’s such a fantastic place to eat, everything that’s on the menu is considered and engineered until it’s perfect. Isla and Double Standard are probably more collaborative because I created the concepts for those restaurants, so I always want to ensure that their menus stay true to that original vision,” she explains.

When asked what attracted her to The Standard in the first place, the answer is simple: “It’s such an exciting brand that really is like no other I’ve ever worked for. It’s fun, diverse, sexy, and exciting, but has integrity. The Standard has rewritten the rule book on lifestyle hotels and its values and culture are unique in comparison to the rest, it’s such a special brand.”

LLM – Luxury Lifestyle Magazine writer Ina Yulo Stuve speaks with Fletcher to find out more about the post-pandemic shift in customer preferences and why it’s important for her to create a working environment that keeps her staff connected to the brand for years to come.

If we asked your younger self what career you’d be in right now, what would she have said?

Hospitality, there’s never really been anything else.

standard hotel london food — Decimo is situated on the 10th floor, accessed from the exterior lift. Image credit: Tim Charles

The hospitality industry has to evolve along with its clients. What are some of the characteristics in a hotel experience your guests look for that are different from five years ago?

I think certainly post-pandemic there’s a higher expectation from guests about service delivery. I think that’s for a combination of reasons: people not being able to experience anything outside their homes for a long period of time, which is unprecedented; the cost of living crisis; and a generational shift. All these things paired with the challenges we face with staffing and a mentality change amongst young people working in hospitality mean that we have to work smarter and with a real focus on the services we are delivering.

Making sure that guests feel well looked after and are satisfied enough to return is no longer enough. Now, there is an expectation for serious value for money, so add-ons, new guest experiences, and innovative food and beverage concepts are really important.

What does your role involve?

I’m responsible for all food and beverage at The Standard, London, which means that anywhere you can have something to eat or drink within the hotel falls under me, as well as the support teams that keep those operations running. For instance, the operations we have are: two restaurants – Decimo and Isla, two bars – Double Standard and Sweeties, two gardens, a rooftop, the Library Lounge, minibars, in-room dining, and events. But in addition to that, there’s just as much under the surface in non-guest-facing teams: two levels of kitchens, teams for purchasing, reservations, music, culture and nightlife, and back-of-house all fall under food and beverage.

I also work closely with other internal teams such as design, marketing and security where we cross over in the operations. It’s a big job which keeps me very busy and I rely heavily on a brilliant team of heads of department (HODs) who work tirelessly to ensure we deliver a wonderful product. My time is mainly spent supporting the HODs, ensuring service standards are maintained and quality control checks are in place so we’re delivering to expectations.

With your partner also being in the hospitality industry, what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned from him that you’ve been able to implement?

I’d like to think that we’re both learning from each other all the time. We talk about food and work a lot at home and I’m always blown away by his enthusiasm and passion for his next dish, something he’s seen, or a new ingredient he’s found – he’s just genuinely excited about food!

Daniel has taught me that great food takes work, it’s about finding the best ingredients you can source, taking the time to prepare them properly, or it’s about that one extra detail or process that’s going to make all the difference to even the simplest of dishes. As a busy operator, I’m often trying to make things happen quickly or on short deadlines so I can move on to the next thing, but Daniel’s approach reminds me that the devil really is in the detail and sometimes you just have to slow down to make something really work, sometimes there are no efficiencies to be found in the pursuit of perfection!

standard hotel london room — Rooms and suites offer amazing views of London, including St. Pancras station. Image credit: David Cleveland

For The Standard London, how did you incorporate the local market in the food and beverage offering?

When we opened The Standard, London, we had five other properties in the US, all with different food and beverage offerings and some of which were incredibly successful you could even call them iconic – The Standard Grill at The Standard Highline NYC, for example – so the easiest thing in the world would have been to transpose those concepts to our new hotel opening in London.

But as a global brand, we always create food and beverage identities relevant to the local market; guests should be able to stay in one of our hotels and see a glimpse of what 24 hours in London, New York, Miami, or Bangkok would be like, all without having to leave the hotel. We do that by creating concepts unique to our location and showcasing local talent in our chefs and with our suppliers.

A guest wants to spend the whole day wining and dining at the hotel. What are the standout dishes and drinks they should have at the different restaurants for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

The coconut chia bircher for breakfast is truly amazing. Lunch in Isla for the mussels ‘nduja or the chicken supreme and dinner in Decimo for a pork belly taco followed by quail with molé glaze and a lettuce and herb salad – by far, the best salad in London! Finally, a ‘Pick Me Up’ cocktail in Sweeties to round off a great day!

standard hotel london food2 — Decimo serves a selection of Spanish/Mexican favourites. Image credit: Charlie McKay

As an experienced hiring manager, what is your strategy for hiring and retaining talent, taking into consideration the current struggles in staffing?

As clichéd as it sounds, it’s about hiring the right cultural fit for our brand and our guests. The brief I give to the team is that we should aim to hire people who, if they did not work for us, would be guests themselves, people with a common interest in what we do, what we stand for, and most importantly, offer a safe space for people to be themselves and not a cardboard cut-out of what we think we want.

In our industry people will always come and go, that’s what often keeps things fresh and exciting too, but by offering them something they won’t find anywhere else, they often return. I always say that if you solve your retention challenges then you’ve solved your hiring challenges, so we do a lot to try and make our teams happy.

What are your favourite cities for: food, history, shopping?

Food: Basically anywhere in Italy, but my favourite memories are probably in Florence or Sienna. Sitting in a piazza in the sun with a bowl of mind-blowingly good pasta and a glass of cold white wine in the middle of the day is my idea of heaven.

History: Rome. The magic of being able to walk around a corner and see The Trevi Fountain, The Pantheon or The Colosseum is always so special to me, I never get bored of it there.

Shopping: It has to be New York. Rummaging through a sale rack in Macy’s looking for bargains never gets old, then a trot down the road to The Standard Highline for a drink at Top of The Standard overlooking the Hudson.

When not at the hotel, where can we find you having a meal with friends?

I’m a big fan of Blacklock, they do simple food very well. Lina Stores is always fun too and my absolute favourite is La Poule au Pot on Ebury Street which someone recommended to me and my husband more than 10 years ago and we’ve been going ever since. It’s a real gem, relaxed, convivial yet romantic and always noisy and vibrant, the perfect place for a boozy Sunday lunch with friends.