Bureaucracy is killing effective training
Once again the topic of NVQs features both in your letters page and in the magazine itself. The comments of Mrs SJ Kelly (Caterer, 27 October, page 21) and David Nicholls (Caterer, 3 October, page 42) resonate with despair.
As someone with a long experience of NVQs as assessor, internal verifier, external verifier, principal verifier and even a stint as a Training Standards Council (now the Adult Learning Inspectorate) associate inspector for catering and hospitality, I feel I can shed some light on where it all went wrong. The previous sentence provides a useful clue: it's the bureaucracy that sucks the lifeblood out of effective training.
NVQs were introduced with one aim in mind: to make vocational education in the UK as cheap as possible. That was the clear intention of the last Conservative government and the policy was continued after the 1997 election. In order to make vocational education cheap, it was deemed necessary to drastically cut the costs of running further education colleges.
This strategy was based on stripping out the costs of paying skilled and qualified chef and food service lecturers with much cheaper workplace assessors. In addition, the overheads associated with operating a rigorous examination system (706/1, 706/2 and the late, lamented 706/3) were removed by taking out the system itself and replacing it with the collection of portfolio evidence. The lesson to be learnt from the disaster that NVQs have turned into is, quite simply, you get what you pay for.
The fact that FE colleges are still turning out students with a semblance of skills and understanding of cookery and service is testimony simply to the dedication of the teams who are still working in the centres that managed to survive the 1990s.
Mike Turner, senior lecturer, hospitality management, University of Plymouth
Breakfast is often a missed opportunity
It is good to see an article on food that shows it doesn't have to be the most expensive to be the best. I stay in hotels around Europe, and the biggest disappointment in most is breakfast. In most, the buffet breakfast, unless fresh and served on hot plates, is a disgrace.
I always believed that breakfast was a marketing tool for the establishment's evening restaurant trade, yet it seems that many miss that golden opportunity. Often, staff seem to be totally ignorant of the customers' needs, just at the time when those on a one-night stay will be making up their minds about the next time.
The major city hotels need to really look at motivation of both their kitchen and front-of-house staff for the most important meal of the day.
Dudley R Seale, Minehead, Somerset
Easy steps towards DDA compliance
I have a visually impaired son (registered blind) and I can understand why he becomes more and more frustrated when we visit restaurants and he is unable to read the menu.
I am sure that, to most operators, the Disability Discrimination Act means "Can I get a wheelchair in and can the person in the wheelchair access the toilet?"
However, the DDA goes much further than that. The act says: Service providers have to make "reasonable adjustments" (such as providing information in alternative formats), if a failure to do so would make it impossible or unreasonably difficult for the disabled person to access the service.
The word "reasonable" is not yet defined, as cases may vary, but to me it seems fair to expect restaurants to provide menus in large print and Braille for visually impaired customers to read. Not only will registered-blind and partially sighted customers welcome this, many older folk will as well.
Some places have tried to help: Nando's, Pizza Hut and Harry Ramsden's provide large-print and Braille menus, although most of the staff aren't aware of this, and you have to argue with them until they find them. Our local burger bar has a sign in Braille. A good attempt, but how a blind person would find it high up on the wall beats me.
Large-print menus are fairly straightforward: if you prepared the draft wording yourself, just print it off in a 28-point or similar sized font. Make it as plain as possible, as lots of squiggles and pictures make it more difficult for visually impaired readers to sort out the facts from the gloss. Alternatively, ask your printer to run off a large-print copy.
Braille versions of menus can be provided by the RNIB Business Link (01733 375370 or e-mail businesslink@rnib.org.uk). There is a fee for this. Alternatively, you could approach your local blind society or school, which may be able to help with advice and Braille. You may even get a mention in their newsletter, thereby attracting more customers.
Tony Anderson, Harrow, Middlesex
New gradings will confuse consumers
At last, following months of letters, e-mails and telephone conversations with various organisations, the new harmonised grading standards have been sent to those who really count: the hoteliers.
The main impression we have is that the new standards will do nothing to help consumers with their choice of accommodation. How many can tell the difference between a hotel, country house hotel, small hotel, town house hotel and a metro hotel? Add in up to five stars per category and the opportunity for confusion is endless.
It is also interesting that VisitBritain seems to have changed its approach to individual hotels. Our first letter from VisitBritain regarding the new standards (dated 7 September 2005) makes no mention of "flexibility". It was very much "take it or leave it". Now, flexibility is the key, with promises of assessing individual issues on a case-by-case basis. While this will satisfy individual hoteliers, might it not actually have the effect of causing more confusion for the customer?
We can't help but think it would have made more sense for VisitBritain to have kept the scheme with stars and diamonds and spent the past three years of time, effort, stress and money to encourage those outside the scheme to join, rather than antagonise those already taking part. This surely would have benefited everyone. Can VisitBritain also guarantee that this is the final tinkering with common standards? In our experience, we very much doubt it.
Steve Boorman and Andrea Londors, proprietors, Boswell House hotel, Chelmsford
Rewarding job challenges at hotel spas
Your excellent introduction to career opportunities in hotel spas (Caterer, 27 October, page 72) highlighted the importance of customer-care skills. Our research emphasises this point in revealing that 36% of guests in luxury properties spend more on spa therapies than they do on fine dining and wines.
Consequently, we should recognise that the full spectrum of marketing expertise can be applied to a spa. Included, for instance, can be research (to identify growth sectors such as older clients and male users), relationship management (to encourage loyalty and frequent visits) and product innovation (devising new therapies, for example, for brides, stressed executives or bored married couples).
Well-managed spas can be stand-alone profit centres as well as a contributory source of overnight demand and extra F&B business. The job challenges they create are, therefore, highly rewarding to those with ambition.
Brian Mills, managing director, Luxury Hotel Partners, Leatherhead
Our back pages: stories from the Caterer vaults
The Caterer and Hotel-keepers' Gazette
15 June 1905
Mrs Hunt's Agency for Servants, 86 High Street, Manchester Square, West. Telephone: 788 Paddington, Telegrams: "Servants, London." Estd. 50 years. Hours 9 to 9, Saturdays till 2.
200,000 characters filed: come and see them. Particulars filed of 16,000 unsatisfactory servants: beware of these. 60,000 servants entered every year: come and see them, or some of them.
All men and boys, and almost all women, are supplied to hotels, clubs, hydros, etc., entirely free of charge.
100 clerks engaged in the work of the agency: come and see them at the offices. Ground floor accommodation for fifty interviews to go on at the same time, or servants can be sent to any address in London to be interviewed. Where an interview is impossible Mrs Hunt is prepared to select, engage, and send off immediately to any address servants of satisfactory character.