In The House: How Palace Resorts Ensures Consistent Excellence

In the pleasant company of Juan Carlos Calderon, Director of Sales at Moon Palace & The Grand at Moon Palace, we began our tour at CEDIS, the sprawling facility where top-quality ingredients are received and prepared to be transformed into meals that any top-class restaurant would be proud to serve.

The kitchens of all seven of the Palace Resorts properties in Cancun and the Riviera Maya are served by CEDIS, a central distribution centre near the Moon Palace complex.

Hygiene is all-important. Workers change into fresh uniforms daily, complete with boots and hair coverings. Before entering food prep areas staff scrub like surgeons entering the operating theatre.

'Central distribution centre' is a very dry term that does no justice to CEDIS, which is a bakery, butcher shop, artisanal chocolate factory, juice-maker and sauce producer all rolled into one.

Producing food on this scale demands major equipment, but many of the processes at CEDIS, from hand-rolling burritos to assembling French macarons, rely on skilled hands.

The huge ovens never stop at CEDIS. Palace Resorts guests consume up to 120,000 baked goods per day, including a wide range of loaves, rolls, croissants, pastries and cakes. Fresh pasta is another important product.

Different meats, poulty and seafood are prepared in individual rooms to prevent any chance of cross-contamination. There's even a special room where Palace burgers are ground, seasoned and formed. The burgers are a guest favourite -- to the tune of about 250,000 a month -- and making them all at CEDIS ensures they taste just as delicious at Beach Palace as they do at Le Blanc Spa Resort.

Palace Resorts guests love their sugary treats. There's a 'Sweet & Coffee' location in each property, serving coffee drinks and snacks, but the star attractions in the glass cases are the handcrafted chocolates, French macarons (a dozen varieties), pastries and sumptuous cakes. During a recent Palace Resorts fam trip, the carrot cake earned rave reviews.

As bizarre as it seems to those of us who've watched the culinary standards of Mexican all-inclusive resorts soar over the past couple of decades, some people still worry about the quality of food served. The fact that Palace Resorts was happy to welcome TravelPulse Canada into their food processing facility says a lot about the company's confidence in its protocols.

The food prepared at CEDIS heads for dozens of restaurants at Palace Resorts properties, where it is served in a thousands ways, including focused expressions at French, Italian, Asian, Middle Eastern, Indian and other specialty restaurants.

Palace-owned Evoke Events Decor has a warehouse filled with furniture and soft goods in a wide range of designs and colours. About a thousand weddings are performed annually at Palace properties, and just about everything -- from the flowers to the cake, the tables to the A/V system -- is supplied by in-house companies.

For wedding couples or MICE events, the team at Evoke Events Decor says the only limit is imagination and budget. Whether guests want a Harley-Davidson-themed wedding or a Cinderella approach with a horse-drawn carriage, they'll get it done.

Quantum Events Technology makes it easy for weddings and meeting and incentive groups, with all the audio-visual equipment, sound systems, cables and rigging in one location. Based on an event's need, packages are assembled and sent out to all the nearby Palace properties.

Delight Cake Studio offers delicious desserts made by Palace Resorts' own executive pastry chef. Guests can choose from custom cakes and sweets tables featuring customizable delights.

The skilled flower designers and arrangers at Amada Flower Design assemble their creations onsite, ensuring absolute freshness. A wide variety of styles are offered, and custom creations encouraged.