Iftar is sold to offices

The buffet flyer is finished weeks before the month begins. Ramadan is expected to begin around the start of March, which means a hotel's Ramadan is being sold now, in January, and most of what is being sold is not a mood.

It is two products sharing one room.

The first is iftar, and a large share of it is bought in bulk. An office manager, or whoever holds the events line, books a room for a department. One price per head, a number of covers, a date in the first or second week, an invoice finance will accept without a conversation. What that booking is hired to do is not dinner. It is a thank you the company can be seen to give, in a room big enough that nobody is left out, at an hour everyone can reach after work.

The second starts at about eleven at night. The tent, the late tables, groups of friends who decide on the day, no covers agreed in advance, a bill split on a phone. Opposite daypart, opposite customer, same floor plan, same kitchen.

Very little of either is a feed problem. The corporate iftar is sold on a call, a site visit and a set menu sent as a document, to a person whose job is to not be embarrassed in front of forty colleagues. The late one is sold on how the room looks at midnight and who is in it.

The plans I have seen treat the month as a tone. Warmer copy, a softer palette, a greeting scheduled for the first evening. In hospitality the month is a corporate season followed by a late-night one, and both are bought before it begins.

By the time the warm copy runs, the room is either full or it is not.