Challenge

Celebrity Cruises, the world’s first cruise line to be invited to cook at the prestigious James Beard House, has long cultivated a reputation as an innovator in inspired onboard dining. The modern luxury brand has been a leader in offering its guests a high quality dining experience, and was looking to offer yet another culinary innovation to complement its roster of healthy dining options.  Celebrity therefore called upon SPE Certified to offer our unique expertise.  

Specific challenges:

• Maintain level of quality of Main Restaurant dishes while serving thousands nightly
• Consistency in ingredients and meals across all ships and markets
• Thousands of Celebrity staff, both culinary and non-culinary, needed to be trained in all things SPE Certified over one cruise
• Marketing and communications to guests re: what is SPE Certified and how can it make my Celebrity vacation more enjoyable?

Solution

SPE Certified chefs and culinary nutritionists collaborated with Celebrity Cruises’ chefs to create over 100 nutritionally balanced, healthy and delicious dishes, to be served in the Main Restaurant and Aqua Spa Café (fleet-wide restaurant options).

• Created SPE-certified options for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the Main Restaurant
• Revamped Aqua Spa Café breakfast and lunch menus with plated dishes, smoothies, juices and desserts
• Supported a 10-day rollout for SPE dishes and program via comprehensive training for front- and back-of-house restaurant staff
• Implemented a ship-wide training strategy to ensure education about SPE across all levels of ship personnel.

Result

Following the launch of SPE Certified’s program onboard the Celebrity Reflection in early April 2013, SPE-certified dishes garnered some of Celebrity’s highest guest scores ever. By Day 4 of the SPE rollout, Celebrity shared one staff member’s glowing report:

“We had a night of amazing feedback! The Branzino was 2nd best seller of the entire menu. Guests loved the duck terrine. A few guests thought that the beet salad could use a bit of a kick, so John might adjust the vinaigrette, we will follow-up if there are changes. The clafoutis went exceptionally. XXXXX, the hotel director dined last night to taste SPE and he was left speechless! YYYYY the restaurant manager said it couldn't have been better. Breakfast in the MDR has been going strong for the past few days. The chicken apple sausage, apple pancakes, frittata, and cider oatmeal are doing very well with very positive feedback. It has become the favorite of many of the staff.”

As of August 2013, SPE Certified has rolled out fleet-wide, bringing culinary innovation to each of ten state-of-the-art Celebrity Cruises ships.

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