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Except for hot dogs and other processed meats, much of which comes from Holiday Inns' Chicago commissary, the motels buy most food locally, but according to strict specifications. T-bone steaks must be either choice or prime, weigh between 12 oz. and 16 oz., and be an inch thick. To keep the meals uniform, company manuals urge local managers to buy certain preferred brands, including Dole pineapple juice, Campbell's soups and General Mills pancake mix (under the company formula, a 5-lb. box should make 100 pancakes). All food portions are carefully measured. The manuals even give the standards for a grilled cheese sandwich:
INGREDIENT PRICE
4½ oz. American cheese 4½¢ 2 slices bread 3 1 oz. cooking oleo 1 potato chips, pickle 5 TOTAL COST: 13½¢ SELLING PRICE: low 45¢ high 75¢
Liquor sales are highly profitable. To squeeze the most from each bottle, Holiday Inn bartenders are enjoined from giving freebies to customers, no matter how much they spend. Another taboo: pouring liquor directly into a mixed drink without using a 1¼-oz. shot glass. Thus the bartender must be able to show in his receipts the equivalent of the price of 20.5 drinks for each fifth bottle of liquor sold. Most distillers offer cut-rate prices to get their brands into hotels and motels, but Holiday Inns goes one better: it buys bourbon and Scotch in bulk from Schenley at substantial savings and sells it under the Holiday Inns brand. Last year the company saved another bundle with volume buying by issuing a single order for 40,000 Motorola television sets. Cutting costs extends to the smallest things, like using nonwrinkle sheets to save on pressing. Instead of buying expensive rugs, Holiday Inns' chiefs save money by ordering cheaper rugs and chucking them out after three or four years. At many inns the soap bars that guests rarely use up are ground down and used in floor-cleaning liquid.
Holiday Inns has a products division that makes and markets a myriad of goods: furniture, bologna, kitchen equipment—everything that is needed to start a motel from scratch. The division even manufactures prefabricated bars. One popular item is a $25,000 Club Escadrille bar, complete with World War I flying decor, wing emblems, portraits of Rickenbacker and Von Richthofen, and a muted sound track of planes landing and taking off. Though franchisees are free to get their equipment anywhere, most choose to avoid the bother of shopping around and buy from the parent company. Last year the products division sold $133 million worth of goods to its own inns and those of rival motel chains, as well as to hotels. Competitors seek expert advice from the division; Billionaire O.K. Ludwig paid it a $250,000 consulting fee for help in planning his Princess Hotel in Acapulco. "We saved him millions," boasts Wilson.