Brunch blends breakfast and lunch: a meal served between breakfast and lunch.
👉 A single service that can generate more revenue per square metre than breakfast and lunch sold separately.
📘 What is Brunch from a Revenue perspective?
Brunch is an F&B service that combines breakfast and lunch into a single time slot (typically between 11am and 4pm), usually served buffet-style or via an extensive menu that includes both sweet and savoury options. From a Revenue Management standpoint, brunch isn’t just a food offering: it’s an F&B product with its own inventory, limited capacity, and real revenue-optimisation potential.
Key features:
- Typically sold at weekends or on public holidays, concentrating demand into very specific, high-turnover windows.
- Helps maximise the use of dining spaces (function rooms, terraces) during time slots that would otherwise see lower activity.
- Usually commands a higher average ticket than a standard breakfast, thanks to the buffet format, the inclusion of drinks (cava, cocktails), or its “social event” appeal.
- An attractive product for both in-house guests and external customers (the nearby market), widening the demand base beyond the hotel’s own room inventory.
- Managing it requires capacity control (number of covers, sittings, reservations) and food cost control, since the buffet format carries a higher waste risk if demand forecasting isn’t dimensioned correctly.
For Revenue Management, brunch is analysed like any other limited-inventory product: it requires demand forecasting, price management by time slot or customer type, and profitability control per cover (RevPASH, or revenue per available seat hour).
✅ Why does Brunch matter in Revenue Management?
- It generates a revenue stream not tied to accommodation, contributing directly to the hotel’s TRevPAR (total revenue per available room).
- It captures demand from the nearby market (external customers), diversifying the revenue base beyond in-house guests.
- It helps optimise the use of dining spaces during time slots that would normally see low activity (Sunday morning, for example).
- It offers a higher average ticket than a standard breakfast or lunch service, improving profitability per cover when capacity and food cost are managed well.
- It’s a product with strong advance-booking potential, making it easier to forecast and apply dynamic pricing based on expected demand.
- It strengthens the hotel’s online reputation and brand perception, driving repeat visits and word-of-mouth recommendation among the local audience.
💡 Practical example
A 4-star city hotel notices its restaurant sees little activity on Sunday mornings, while local demand for brunch in the area is growing. The Revenue Management team, working with F&B, designs a €35 per person Sunday brunch with buffet, cava included, and compulsory booking by time slot (12pm-2pm and 2pm-4pm) to control capacity.
Analysing historical dining-room occupancy, the team applies differentiated pricing: €32 for early bookings (more than 5 days ahead) and €38 for last-minute reservations, mirroring the same yield management logic used for rooms. The result: both sittings fill up well in advance, product waste falls thanks to a more accurate forecast, and the hotel improves its TRevPAR by generating extra revenue without using any room inventory.
🔄 Disambiguation
- Brunch vs Breakfast included: Breakfast included is part of the room package and its cost is already factored into ADR; brunch is a standalone service with its own price, sellable to both guests and external customers.
In summary: viewed through a Revenue Management lens, brunch stops being just a dining service and becomes a limited-inventory product with real potential for price, capacity and profitability optimisation — capable of generating extra revenue and capturing demand beyond the hotel’s own guests.
