The Social Hub.
Location.
Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Services.
The Social Hub is not a traditional hotel brand.
It brings together student accommodation, hotel rooms, extended stay, co-working, meetings, events, restaurants, bars and gyms under one roof. That makes the ground floor more than a place to eat and drink. It is the social heart of the building. The challenge was making food and beverage work across that complexity. Not just for one site.
For a growing pipeline.
The Brief
The Social Hub needed external F&B support that could connect experience, operations and real estate.
As the brand continued to develop new properties and refurbish existing ones, the team needed practical toolkits that could help them roll out food and beverage more consistently across different buildings, markets and operational needs.
Auden worked closely with The Social Hub’s F&B Experience and Real Estate teams to create clearer systems, stronger operational standards and better design guidance for future projects.
The aim was simple.
Make F&B easier to plan, easier to build and easier to operate.
The Opportunity
The opportunity was to stop F&B being solved too late.
In hybrid hospitality, food and beverage cannot be an afterthought. It affects guest experience, student life, co-working energy, meetings, retail sales, team flow, storage, waste, services and long-term commercial performance.
If the design is wrong, the operation pays for it every day.
The Social Hub needed a more joined-up way of thinking about F&B. One that could sit between concept, design, back-of-house planning, sustainability, procurement and daily delivery.
This is where Auden could add value.
Not by creating a one-off restaurant idea, but by building the practical frameworks behind a scalable F&B model.
The work needed to help project teams make better decisions earlier. It needed to protect ground-floor space, simplify workflows and give operating teams clearer tools once the buildings opened.
Our toolkits were first implemented for the openings in Porto and Rome (below)
The Moments That Matter
Auden collaborated with The Social Hub Experience team to enhance their breakfast offering. Working alongside renowned chef Mark Greenaway, we developed a range of specialty breakfast items from which hotel Head Chefs could choose.
Building toolkits around adaptability
The Social Hub needed F&B spaces that could scale, flex and repeat across different buildings. One fixed answer would not work.
Auden built the toolkits around flexible modular sections for new pipeline properties and refurbishments. This removed ambiguity and created a clearer framework for consistent F&B spaces, without forcing every site to behave the same way.
Making back-of-house stronger
Too often, F&B problems appear when the design is already locked.
Auden worked with the Real Estate team to bring F&B service design into projects earlier, so workflows, services, storage, equipment and team movement were considered before build decisions were fixed.
That meant fewer late changes, less retrofitting and better decisions earlier.
Making procurement easier to control
Auden produced tender packs that gave project teams clearer detail for pricing, procurement and supplier diligence.
This helped create better cost control, stronger specifications and fewer surprises during delivery.
Designing sustainability into the system
Sustainability could not sit outside the operation. It had to be built into the way the spaces worked.
The toolkits supported The Social Hub’s Net Zero ambitions through AI food waste monitoring, all-electric services, five waste streams and a de-waterer system to reduce waste volume and support biofuel repurposing.
Turning Grab & Go into a clearer offer
Grab & Go needed to work for hotel guests, students, co-workers and the wider community. Quick did not mean thoughtless.
Auden developed the offer, brand standards, menu items and speciality products so the concept had more clarity, consistency and appeal across different dayparts.
Making breakfast feel local, useful and better quality
Breakfast needed more than a wider buffet.
The local hero became the anchor. A dish rooted in local tradition, giving guests a stronger sense of place.
Around that, Auden worked with The Social Hub Experience team and chef Mark Greenaway to create quality-led breakfast items across five core sections, with a core range and dietary alternatives. Better choice, better quality and a breakfast offer built around real guest needs.
The Result
The Social Hub gained a clearer, more scalable approach to food and beverage.
The work gave project teams better tools for planning, designing and procuring F&B spaces. It gave operational teams clearer standards for daily delivery. It helped connect sustainability, workflow, design and guest experience in a more practical way.
Most importantly, it brought F&B into the conversation earlier.
That meant better design decisions, fewer late-stage compromises and stronger foundations for future openings and refurbishments.
For a hybrid hospitality brand, that matters.
Because when a building has to serve students, hotel guests, co-workers, event users and the local community, F&B cannot be a bolt-on.
It has to be built into the system.
“I had the pleasure of working with Auden Hospitality on several important F&B projects and I am happy to recommend them with complete confidence. From the outset, it was clear that we were dealing with a highly professional organisation with expert industry knowledge and insights. The Auden team are super easy to work with and made us feel very comfortable knowing that our projects are in good hands.”
Sten Von Kühn, Senior Experience Manager, F&B, The Social Hub
See our work.
