Fast food: Hotel room service speeds up

ome hotels are starting to deliver room service like Domino's delivers pizza: fast, and sometimes free if it isn't.

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•The Four Seasons is rolling out "15-minute room service" at all its hotels. At resorts with long distances between the kitchen and rooms, the wait can be 20 minutes.

•At the new Public Chicago Hotel, guests order by number, and food from celebrity chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten arrives in to-go bags outside the room in 10 minutes.

•At the Buttes Resort in Tempe, Ariz., a $10.95 "Market Basket Lunch" in a bamboo basket is guaranteed to arrive in 20 minutes — or it's free.

The new world of fast-food room service is being driven by the fast-paced lifestyles of travelers and demands for convenience and instant gratification.

"One of the greatest luxuries in the world is time," says Guy Rigby, a vice president at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts. "Gone are the days when room service is for people who want to sit with their little candle and flower and beautiful appetizer."

Some of the hotels offer packaged food to go for travelers racing to the airport or determined to drive to their destination without stopping.

If some of it has the feel of pizza delivery or drive-in, it's because it's designed that way.

"We thought room service should be treated like a special delivery," says Ian Schrager, co-owner of Public Chicago. "We thought we should dispense with a bunch of things people don't care about anymore."

Which means your meal won't come from a bellhop on roller skates. "Sounds cute, but no," Rigby says.

Don't count on even seeing the delivery man or woman. At Public Chicago, there's no perfunctory greeting of the server in your bathrobe. The food is dropped off outside the door.

But beware: A blown deadline doesn't always mean a free meal. Some critics also wonder about the quality of the food.

This isn't your typical fast food, the hoteliers say. Think a tequila-lime chicken wrap at the Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North or a beef brisket and crispy onion panini at Public Chicago.

But it is fast. Bill Singer, a Chicago lawyer, got his Four Seasons breakfast before he could finish a phone conversation. "They were there, and they were efficient."