Guests could pose for photos in front of a Shepard Fairey-designed backdrop, with a machine that rained confetti for an added effect.
Graton Resort & Casino in Sonoma County's Rohnert Park will debut its new six-story hotel tower in November. The $175 million, 342,000-square-foot expansion will boast 200 guest rooms and more than 20,000 square feet of flexible meeting space. A divisible ballroom can host as many as 1,600 guests for receptions. Three other meeting rooms can host as many as 40 guests for receptions, and Graton Meeting Room 1 & 2 can be combined to host as many as 90 guests reception-style. The hotel’s decor is based on a theme of “California casual elegance” inspiration, with natural elements and vivid accent colors. The hotel also offers three restaurants with private dining options. The Daily Grill’s private dining room can host 40 seated guests or 60 for standing receptions, and is equipped with a flat-screen television with A/V input and an attached patio. The Daily Grill’s chef table seats as many as 24 guests, while the restaurant’s semiprivate balcony can host 25 seated guests or 40 for receptions and the patio can seat 75 guests or host 100 guests for receptions, with heaters available. For private dining rooms, Graton’s 630 Park Steakhouse seats 14, and Tony’s of North Beach seats 12.
Covo, a co-working space that includes a public cafe, opened in San Francisco’s Mid-Market neighborhood in August. The 8,000-square-foot main space is available for booking for holiday parties via Peerspace. For a full space rental, Covo can host 500 standing guests. Groups can also rent Covo’s private room, which can host 35 standing guests.
Chef Kim Alter’s restaurant Nightbird in San Francisco's Hayes Valley opened in August, offering a $125-per-person tasting menu of Californian cuisine with local produce. The intimate 38-seat, 1,400 square-foot restaurant is decorated with accents like blue velvet chairs, a mural by Caroline Lizarraga, and a carved owl—the restaurant’s namesake. Nightbird is available for full buyouts, and can host 38 seated guests or as many as 60 standing guests.
Nightbird isn’t Kim Alter’s only new venue in Hayes Valley. The chef also opened Linden Room in August, a 1930s-themed cocktail lounge adjacent to her restaurant Nightbird. Decorated in the style of a Depression-era New York City bar, Linden Room’s interior includes ceiling murals, thick carpet, vintage glassware, and a record player. Linden Room can accommodate six seated guests and around 20 standing guests.
Italian restaurant Fiorella in the Richmond district opened up its heated patio for buyouts in September. The 40-seat restaurant, which opened in January, is offering up the patio for private parties. It will host 30 seated guests or 40 standing guests.
Barebottle Brew Co. hosts full buyouts of its expansive brewery for parties and events. The brewery, which opened in June in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, can accommodate as many as 250 standing guests or 120 seated guests. The brewery also has a warehouse space that can accommodate as many as 150. Barebottle Brew Co. can easily host mid-day events during the week, but evenings can also be available depending on the size of the party and budget.
In October, Claremont Club & Spa’s restaurant Limewood will become available for private events. The Berkeley hotel introduced Limewood in August. Led by chef Joseph Humphrey, Limewood offers California cuisine with local, seasonal ingredients. The restaurant has two private dining rooms. The first room is separated from the main dining room by a floor-length curtain, and can seat as many as 12 guests at one table and 14 guests at separate tables. The second room features a longer conference table that can accommodate as many as 14 guests. These rooms combined can hold 26 guests at one long table.
Buffalo Theory, a new restaurant and craft beer bar located on Polk Street in San Francisco, opened in August. Chef Tim Luym’s bar fare is tapas-inspired with a global focus. Ted Kim is helming the beer program, which features 30 craft beers on tap. Buffalo Theory’s private room is set to open later this fall and will accommodate as many as 15 seated guests. The restaurant is available for full buyouts with a seated capacity of approximately 80 guest and standing capacity of 110 guests.
Black Cat. a retro supper club and lounge, opened in the Tenderloin District in July. The two-level Black Cat serves modern American cuisine, and jazz and cabaret acts perform on a small stage. The downstairs level can hold 64 seated or 130 standing guests. The full venue can accommodate 88 seated guests or 200 standing guests.
Loma Brewing Company, which opened in Los Gatos in August, serves pub fare and craft beer, including a handful of their own house-brewed beers with more to come in the near future. A private room will open in mid-to-late October and will hold 40 seated guests and 50 standing guests. The private room with have its own full bar. For buyouts, the restaurant holds 150 seated guests and 200 standing guests.
In August, Aloft Santa Clara became one of the first two Aloft hotels in the United States to offer the new Aloft Voice-Activated Hotel Room. Each room comes equipped with an iPad running a custom Aloft app that controls the room’s temperature, lighting, and iTunes, and offers a virtual concierge—all via Siri. A personalized welcome screen will advise guests on how to set up their room and use their own voice with “Hey, Siri.” Aloft guests can also use the SPG Keyless app to open their room doors via a mobile device. The hotel offers 2,715 square feet of space for meeting and events, spanning four rooms. A boardroom can seat 12, the 1,348-square-foot Tactic 1 can hold 90 for receptions, the 722-square-foot Tactic 2 can seat 60 guests theater-style, and the 355-square-foot Tactic 3 can hold 12 for receptions. Tactic 2 and Tactic 3 can be combined.
In a partnership with Hello Scout's concierge service, Hotel Zeppelin in San Francisco's Union Square neighborhood allows guests to contact the concierge team from anywhere at any time via a downloadable app or via SMS text. In addition, the hotel’s 196 rooms are equipped with a Jambox speaker. Hotel Zeppelin has over 3,000 square feet available for meetings and events, including the 1,300-square-foot Peace room for games such as skeeball, shuffleboard, and quick shot basketball. The Peace room opens to the adjoining Love and Soul Rooms, which are known as the Den when combined. The Peace, Love, and Soul rooms can each hold 300 for receptions. The 1,094-square-foot Zeppelin Cafe is also available as a private event space. Dawson Design imagined the hotel’s decor as playfully psychedelic, drawing on San Francisco's counterculture history. Hotel Zeppelin opened in March, and a new 100-seat American-Italian restaurant called Rambler opened at the hotel in October.
A seven-story, 210-room Marriott-brand AC Hotel is slated to open in November in downtown San Jose. AC Hotel San Jose Downtown will have three fully equipped meeting rooms: the 570-square-foot AC Meeting Room, which can hold 40 guests for receptions; and 168-square-foot AC Salon 1 and the 128-square-foot AC Salon 2, which can each accommodate six guests for receptions. The hotel's meeting rooms, bar, and lounge will include AC Kallpods, which provide on-demand customer service with the push of a button. The hotel is part of the Marriott Mobile App program, which allows guests to check in and out on their mobile devices.
Specializing in salads and grain bowls, the Sweetgreen chain opened in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood in October. Diners can place and pay for food and drink orders online via Sweetgreen’s online ordering system or mobile app. Sweetgreen prioritizes sourcing ingredients locally. The 2,478-square-foot, fast-casual restaurant includes a mural by local artist Jenny Sharaf and bleacher seating for guests. The restaurant’s seating capacity is 64.
Electric car drivers can recharge at the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay’s two universal chargers and two Tesla chargers. The hotel's Tesla Wall Connector, installed in March, includes a recently upgraded charger, supplies power at 20 kilowatts, with the ability to charge a Tesla from empty to full in less than four hours. The 261-room destination spa and golf coastal resort has 17,000-square-foot of indoor function space, including nine individually designed meeting rooms. The largest indoor space is the 7,100-square-foot Ritz-Carlton ballroom, which has 17-foot vaulted ceilings and can hold 700 for receptions or seat 420 banquet-style, 320 classroom-style, or 120 boardroom-style. The hotel also offers five outdoor function areas; the largest is the 7,500-square-foot Mar Vista Lawn, which can hold 300 for receptions.
The 132-room boutique Hotel Via is slated to open in March 2017 in San Francisco’s South Beach neighborhood. In addition to having a 750-square foot meeting space that can accommodate 40 people for receptions, the hotel has a 3,000-square-foot rooftop bar/lounge that can hold 200 for receptions and has views of the downtown skyline, the Bay Bridge, Oakland, and the AT&T Ballpark. The Hotel Via is building a GPON network throughout the hotel for fast internet, and is looking at implementing tools in its meeting space, such as the Kapp IQ digital whiteboard, which allows meeting users to connect with colleagues all over the world and collaborate in real time.
There are no cashiers at Eatsa because customers place orders for customized quinoa bowls via an in-store iPad or mobile app. In August, the San Francisco-based fast-casual chain added a Berkeley location, an 800-square-foot venue with standing capacity of 12 guests.
Set to open in November, Courtyard by Marriott Redwood City is located off the Bayshore Freeway between South San Francisco and Palo Alto. The 177-room hotel has six electric car charging stations and is part of the Marriott Mobile App program, which allows check in and check out via app. This Courtyard hotel has a 1,226-square-foot space for meetings and events that can hold 100 guests for receptions.
In November, Oakland International Airport is opening Escape, its first high-end lounge, with separate zones for dining, relaxing, and work. For an entry fee (which is discounted if booked online), Escape will offer unlimited food and drinks from Oakland chef Chris Pastena. The 55-seat lounge will offer complimentary tablet computers, free Wi-Fi (separate from the airport), and several charging points for mobile devices. The public area is 1,900 square feet.
By the end of this year, all 1,000 of Parc 55 San Francisco’s hotel rooms will be equipped with an HCN Navigator Tablet that acts as a virtual concierge. With the tablet, guests can contact room service or order an extra pillow from the front desk, or explore sights in San Francisco or connect to their email. Event planners can also use the tablet to broadcast vital information or frequently asked questions about meetings and events at the hotel, as well as upload branding for the event or the event’s sponsors. Parc 55 San Francisco, located in the Union Square neighborhood, offers 30,000 square feet of meetings and event space, including the 5,670-square-foot Cyril Magnin Ballroom, which can hold as many as 800 for receptions. Hilton HHonors guests can check in and check out of the hotel via the Hilton HHonors app.
In August, the Carneros Inn expanded its group activity options with the Vino and Bocce experience. It’s ideal for groups of 24 or fewer, with a total of 16 people playing on two bocce courts, but larger groups can be accommodated in a tournament-style competition. For those not playing, the on-site restaurant Farm provides wine service via a tasting or satellite bar. Each court rents for $500 for two hours, plus the cost of wine.
Specializing in last-minute restaurant reservations and access to unique culinary experiences, the Table8 mobile app unveiled an updated search function and filtering capabilities in July. The new features allow users to quickly access and search more than 1,000 restaurants in San Francisco by cuisine type, restaurant name, neighborhood, location, ratings, and more.
Doze's Energypods are a way for people to relax and recharge with a timed nap during meetings and conferences and in offices. The pods measure 84 inches long by 48 inches wide and stand 58 inches tall, and are designed to recline to an optimal zero gravity position to allow for relaxation without falling into a deep sleep. They are equipped with built-in speakers and a timed-awakening system; the pods require a standard 110v outlet. Rentals start at $199 a day per pod for events.
