Infrequent inspections make guidebook views outdated
After reading Simon Wright's article "A problem the AA team still hasn't solved" (Caterer, 22 September, page 27) I felt compelled to write.
We have sent a letter to the AA guide regarding the 2006 entry for our restaurant, the Dining Room, because, although we were very happy with the comments made about the food, we were rather miffed that some of the other information was out of date by some time.
We appreciate that in the run-up to printing it is not possible to make every entry completely up-to-date, but we were annoyed that the menu guide suggestions list dishes that were 16-20 months old.
We have also enquired numerous times about when an inspector might dine with us again. We feel that we have much improved since our last inspection, in June 2004, and often wonder whether we might be worthy of a third rosette. In the past when we have requested another inspection regarding a third rosette we have been met with the same response: "When a restaurant is getting close to a third rosette we will visit it several times during the course of the year and make our judgements on numerous visits." How can it be judged whether we are approaching a third rosette when no one has inspected the restaurant since June 2004?
Lastly, despite what the guide describes, our restaurant has not been pastel green inside for about 18 months.
I wish, as a reader and a restaurateur, that a closer eye was kept on all restaurants. We use the guide ourselves when we eat out, and in my eating experience there are exceptional one-rosette meals punching above their weight and some especially poor three-rosette meals which could pass for one-rosette efforts. Perhaps inspectors are spending too much time in hotels, giving hotels an advantage, whereas independent restaurants like ours don't get inspected enough.
We are only a small operation with six tables, so we cook for the guests and not the guides, but when it is our primary source of advertising (we pay for a photo to be included), being misrepresented is very disappointing for us. We put so much effort into every aspect of our business, and although we have already received an apology from the AA, it doesn't change the fact that the guide will still be in circulation for a year.
Peter and Laura Dale, the Dining Room, Ashbourne, Derbyshire
Give us funds to improve school meals
In response to your article "Turning the tables" (Caterer, 6 October, page 35), which reported on the school meals contract in the London Borough of Wandsworth, we would like to make it clear that when Scolarest ran the contract in the borough the funding situation was very different.
We applaud Harrisons for delivering real improvements to the borough's primary school dinners, but having benefited from a hefty 25p increase in the cost of each meal, we would not expect anything less. Having put forward our own proposals for increased funding in Wandsworth to make the school meals service viable, we felt unable to proceed any further after the council indicated clearly to us that there was no additional money available. We reluctantly withdrew from the contract, but are pleased to see pupils in the borough are now benefiting from additional money.
In many of our contracts, where extra money has been found for school dinners, we are able to transform the offering. The response from pupils, staff and clients has been very positive. The Government's proposed new standards will present a real challenge to local education authorities - how to improve school meals without breaking the bank. This is a challenge that we are happy, able and ready to meet.
Tony Sanders, managing director, Scolarest State Primary
Age barrier still exists
I have to tell Mark Leach (Caterer Letters, 6 October) that the sad fact is our industry is one of the worst for ageism. I have over the last 10 years carried out a number of exercises to establish if this was the case.
Ten years ago some colleagues and I wrote to 100 firms with our CVs. We did the same exercise five years ago. The response to all of us, 40-50 years old at the start, was poor, with the classic response - "You're too experienced" - common.
How can anyone be too experienced for a job? I was 20 years old once and in a senior management role, so I know age is not a barrier for the young. What a waste that all the experience that people gain is not then required once you get over 40.
We talk of service and standards, yet older workers brought up with the necessary experience for a certain type of operation are overlooked for younger people who will put in the hours for as little pay as possible. The HR managers in their 20s and 30s have to remember it isn't long until they, too, are 40 or 50 years old. Do they think they will be less able to do their job then than now?
The law will change, so I hope our industry will as well.
Dudley R Seale, managing director, McKenzie Richardson Associates, Minehead, Somerset
Big mark-ups confine wines to the cellar
I refer to the article "Time Out says London wine mark-ups are a rip-off" (Caterer, 29 September, page 7). I am surprised that this issue is still seen as news. It has been well recognised for years that most restaurants throughout the country, not just in London, have excessively high selling prices for wines, based on the outmoded philosophy of marking cost prices up by a fixed - and high - percentage.
All that happens, of course, is that the better wines remain in the cellar gathering dust. As a result there is no point marking up prices, as diners go for a lower-priced wine, and the hoped-for profit is not achieved.
I learnt the nonsense of such a policy years ago and since then have priced the wine lists in my business on a cash mark-up basis. I simply decide what cash profit I want to make on the wines with the highest volume of sales - ie, house wine - and then increase that level of cash profit by reasonable amounts on a scale basis, with a maximum cash profit on very fine wines of, say, double that levied on the house wine.
The result is that guests can enjoy better-quality, reasonably priced wines - which, in turn, encourages repeat business.
Ron Zanre, partner, the PR Partnership
Why should I put up with these hours?
I want to know who falls into the category of working the 48-hour week. I am a general manager who has worked for a major bar and restaurant operator for 10 years. I have to work between 65 hours and 80 hours per week. I work seven days a week, and not only have I not had any holidays for well over a year, I very rarely get a full day off in a week.
The company seems to care not about managers' time off but about employment costs. I do not have an assistant manager as the company policy is that you have to find your own - and on the wages they are offering I find it impossible to get the right person for the outlet I am running.
Can I call foul play on their policies or do I have to grin and bear it?
Name withheld, by e-mail
Our back pages: stories from the Caterer vaults
Caterer & Hotelkeeper, 14 October 1982
In your September 23 issue, Eric Marsh wrote he welcomed the female companion of a male guest to his Derbyshire hotel by smiling at her and saying hello. I believe his behaviour was absolutely correct - a man does not, as a social gesture, greet a woman with a handshake.
To follow the logic one needs to go back in history. The origin of a handshake, and the salute in military organisations, stems from the days of armed combat between individuals when head masks were customary. The extended hand by one man demonstrated that he was coming in friendship and was carrying no weapon. In social terms this practice has been carried through the years but should not have been extended to women.
A woman, on first meeting a man, has the privilege of extending her right hand which the man, in continental custom, would normally hold and kiss symbolically on the back. It is more than customary in Britain to reciprocate with a handshake.