I recently consulted for a beautiful luxury 5-star safari lodge in Greater Kruger. Their aim is to be one of the leading lodges offering a vegan safari experience, so they opted to have me train their entire staff complement.
This included the chefs, field guides, housekeepers, butlers, spa therapists & camp managers!
A lot of my work involved remote preparation before I came to do onsite training, it was so exciting to be creating all of the training materials for them, knowing what valuable information it was going to be.
It was decided that I would split the staff training over two on-site visits, this was mostly to fit around the lodges logistics of when staff would be available as they are still fully operational when I’m onsite, but it also enabled me to try more of their delicious vegan food so I could provide as much feedback as possible.
Wine list
I reviewed their existing list & researched which of the wines were vegan friendly & then labelled the list. I gave advice on what additional wines they may want to consider, for example they had all of the red grape varieties covered except one, so I suggested an excellent vegan one. They also only had vegan white wines on their house list, so I recommended they increase their offering of reds.
I decided it would be best for them not to have a separate vegan wine list, this was due to them not having a massive list so there is a bigger selection if you keep everything together as long as it is clearly labelled. By having all wines together on the same list this will also act as a form of marketing as other guests will take note of this & tell their vegan friends & family as it’s so rare to see vegan wines labelled.
I complied a detailed training document on why wine isn’t always vegan so that the staff can refer back to this information.
I conducted training on wines as part of my ” Vegan Hospitality for Front of House” which I did with the camp managers, receptionists & butlers.
Menu Review
I reviewed the existing menus prior to arrival & as my services are tailored to the clients’ requirements, I decided initially I would consult with the chef in person but at this stage recipe development may not be needed & that I would reassess this after experiencing their chefs’ vegan options & provide a summary of suggestions afterwards.
They have a couple of skilled & passionate senior chefs who were very excited to learn about all things Vegan & they did my ”Vegan Hospitality for Chefs” training. In fact, Head Chef Lance even made some potato milk after told them that this is one of the next trends in plant-based milks, it was really good! (Picture below)
I also provided a list of typical vegan food items & where to source them locally. I always love telling chefs about which products are ”accidentally vegan” as they are often surprised.
Vegan-Friendly Rooms and Housekeeping
After an initial onsite room review, I consulted on animal-free room design, recommendations of sustainable and cruelty-free room products and amenities ranging from furniture to toiletries.
The housekeepers attended my ”Vegan Hospitality for Housekeepers training” & we walked around a room to show them which aspects they would need to consider when they have vegan guests staying.
Vegan friendly Spa treatments
I reviewed the spa products to check if they are vegan friendly, & provided
suggestions of products as well as a detailed document about why guests would want vegan products used.
Field Guides
I also conducted my ”Vegan Hospitality for Field Guides” training with their guiding team, they had some excellent questions & are excited to put their newfound knowledge into practice when guiding vegan guests in the future.
Training Summaries for all departments were provided along with a file titled ”all things vegan” which they will look over each time they have vegan guests come to stay, which brings me on to talk about the next part of my services which is often overlooked but just as important as the training & consulting…
Vegan Concept & Marketing
After completing a trends report related to their clientele, I assisted the marketing/social media team with market research and crafting messaging to reach the vegan, plant-based, and plant curious markets in target regions, including but not limited to reviewing marketing materials for vegan-friendly language, hashtags, marking websites & social media to promote on, vegan travel agents, recommending press releases, influencer partnerships, & social media promotions.
I am excited to hear how their vegan guests react to this amazing safari experience that they are providing, I know they will be blown away by the attention to detail & it makes me so happy to know that vegan guests will have the same experience as their traditional guests.
