The Mews breakfast list: products, the Product Checklist and the door

At a quarter past seven the printed list from Mews already has two rooms missing and a family of four written in pen at the bottom.

Mews hotels know the scene. The Mews Community calls it “the infamous breakfast list” (Mews Community). This guide explains how breakfast is set up in Mews, what Mews itself offers for the morning, and what to think about if you want guests to check themselves in at the door.

Breakfast in Mews is a product

In Mews, breakfast is a product, something the hotel sells, with a price, that can be attached to a stay. It reaches a guest in one of two ways:

• Included in the rate. A rate such as “Bed and breakfast” has the breakfast product included, so every reservation on that rate gets it. Mews’ help centre covers this as creating a rate with a product included.
• Sold separately. A guest on a room-only rate adds breakfast when they book, at check-in, or at the restaurant.

Some hotels also use Mews’ allowances, where the rate includes a value to spend rather than a specific product. If yours does, check with whoever set up your rates what exactly a guest is entitled to, because that is what the restaurant has to know at the door.

Where the breakfast product lives matters

A breakfast product belongs to a service in Mews. Hotels usually put it on the stay (accommodation) service, or on a separate restaurant or F&B service. Both are common, but they put breakfast in different places on the guest’s bill:

This is worth knowing before you change anything at the restaurant, because any system that posts breakfast has to post it to the same place your reports read from.

The printed list, and Mews’ own Product Checklist

Many Mews hotels still print a breakfast report each morning, and Mews’ help centre covers breakfast reports. The printed version has the same weaknesses as anywhere else: it is out of date the moment it is printed, and the ticks have to be dealt with afterwards.

Mews has its own answer to this: the Digital Product Checklist in Mews Operations, announced in February 2024. According to Mews, it lets staff track the products guests use each day in real time, add products to reservations from the checklist, and work from a computer, tablet or phone instead of paper (Mews Community, product video).

Mews describes the checklist as a way for staff to track and record what guests use. If you would rather guests checked themselves in, the next section is for you.

Room shares and families

In Mews, people sharing a room are usually listed together on one reservation, as companions, rather than as separate reservations. For the restaurant, that is helpful: room 312 is one reservation with a person count, and the question is “how many from 312 have had breakfast?” rather than “which booking is this?”.

Children are worth a second look: check whether your child breakfast is a separate product or price.

When guests check themselves in at the door

Some hotels would rather the guest did the checking in: a tablet at the restaurant entrance where the guest types their room number, or taps their room key where the lock system is connected, and the host doesn’t have to look anything up. That is what Kløvr does.

With Mews, it works like this:

• The tablet finds the guest’s reservation from the room.
• It reads whether breakfast is included in the guest’s rate.
• If breakfast isn’t included, it posts the hotel’s own breakfast product to the guest’s bill.
• Whether that lands on the reservation or as a separate order on the guest’s account follows where your breakfast product lives, and is decided with each hotel at setup.

Questions to settle before you change

1. Is our breakfast product on the stay service or on an F&B service?
2. Which rates include breakfast, and do any use allowances instead of the product?
3. Is the child breakfast a separate product or price?
4. Who handles a guest who isn’t entitled and doesn’t want to pay?
5. Which report does the restaurant manager use afterwards, and will the new way show up in it?

For how the same questions look in OPERA Cloud, see the OPERA Cloud breakfast report and package posting. For the methods side by side, see hotel breakfast lists compared.