The Caterer Blog

It emerged this weekend that Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans splashed out £1.5m to double the size of his Surrey pub empire (to two pubs) as he joined the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Sir Alex Ferguson as a celebrity landlord (although Ramsay's credentials are somewhat better than Fergie's when it comes to serving food).

Evans has picked up the currently closed Red Lion in Milford, and has outlined plans to revive its fortunes by expanding the restaurant and building B&B chalets to add to its eight guest rooms. But Evans is stuck in red-tape limbo in his attempts to create a hospitality hot-spot as he awaits Council approval. Apparently the pub is connected to a 14th century "listed monastic building" by way of a tunnel of 'historic importance'.

Those of you who listen to Evans' Radio 2 show will know he is a self-confessed foodie, so there is every chance that this is less of a place for the once notorious drinker to indulge in his hobby and more of a serious hospitality business. But can celebrities run a pub? I'd like to know your thoughts.

It was with interest if not complete surprise that the news FishWorks co-founder Mitchell Tonks was being moved from his chief executive role , and effectively sideways within the business he created, reached me here on Caterer today.

It's been a painful year for a bright company that seemed to be soaring away only to come crashing down back to earth in a rather painful and ungainly manner.

It's a competitive market place out there and in their efforts to keep pace with their restaurant rivals the previous management team took their eyes off how their existing stores were performing and it all got ugly from there with a bail out from new backers required in February.

As with all drama - human or business - it's been fascinating watching it unravel but horrible also, as having met Tonks who is a thoroughly nice guy and passionate about seafood, the troubles of the company have taken on the morbid attraction/revulsion dynamic of a bad accident where you don't want to look but know you will.

Still, with a new team and structure in place and Tonks still involved here's hoping FishWorks now works, finding better fortune in 2008.

The latest Buy It! announced the launch of The Young's Lexicon of Fish last month, which is designed to serve as a reference tool for chefs and diners and give them the confidence to experiment with different types of fish.

Like many British children, when it came to fish, I grew up on a diet of cod or plaice with chips. Captain Bird's Eye was a dear friend to me.
As an adult I've been accustomed to tasting a fair few more breeds but flicking through the guide I was astounded by the sheer number of fish available to try - many of which I had never even heard of. Have you ever heard of...

Research published by Caterersearch's sister website Caterer.com has revealed the level of threats and actual violence suffered by hospitality employees now they have to ask customers to stop smoking.

A survey of over 5,000 hospitality workers revealed that over 40% of workers have had to ask customers to stop smoking since the smoking ban came into effect in England on 1 July.

Over 10% of workers have suffered threats or actual violence after asking customers to stop smoking.

More disturbing are the personal testimonies given to Caterer.com about customers idiosyncratic behaviour when asked to stop smoking.

“When I told him to put his cigarette out, he pulled down his pants and started masturbating in front of me.”

The smoking ban has seen the majority of pub groups reviewing their business strategy to attract a new type of customer.

One pub company, who shall remain nameless for reasons which become apparent later, has a strategy based on the three Fs – families, females and friendly.

It outlines a desire of what it wishes its pubs to be: friendly, open locations attracting female and family customers because, as common wisdom states, these are the customers most likely to increase their spending in pubs post the ban on lighting up.

Staff at the pub group have sought to subvert this strategy though. Being an innovative lot they don’t want to restrict themselves to just three Fs, they want to bring in two more: fogies and fairies. Enterprising? Probably. Politically correct? Not quite.

So if your local boozer introduces weekly games of dominoes and offers on Babycham you will know why.

When the editor first told me that we’d be having a Green Month on Caterer I got awfully excited and thought ‘at last a homage to those pizza loving Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles of my youth’.

Alas, there was to be no Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo or even Leonardo but instead a month devoted to helping hospitality businesses to build a sustainable and profitable future.

Gutted as I was I got over my initial disappointment and started to scour the catering world for useful information.

This lead me last night to the autumn BIFM event, hosted by Tricon Foodservice Consultants, at the swanky headquarters of international law firm Allen & Overy (some top nosh was also supplied by in-house caterer Searcy).

If we were in any other country except for the UK, the very notion of this argument would be astonishing.

You serve drink in a bar or cafe and you serve food. Imagine going for a drink in Spain without tapas or in a beer in Germany without a vast array of hot sausages. It is unimaginable.

For years the conventional wisdom has been food equals sales increases and profits. We all know the arguments - the drop in beer sales due to the smoking ban can be mitigated by attracting families, couples and single women who desire a more sophisticated offering.

But the British pub has always been a spiritual home to fine food. From Bettie's Hot Pot in the Rover's Return to a fine Sunday roast in a country pub. Not serving food in a British pub or bar is just the same as not having a pint of Newton and Ridley's and just as harmful to your bottom line.

However this week a debate hosted by the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR) gained majority backing from pub and bar operators for the motion that if they want to make a profit they need to forget food.

I received an interesting comment on one of my earlier blogs about non-paying restaurant customers last night.

Jayne, a restaurant operator, wrote:

"We have had a few runners particularly now with the smoking ban as sometimes you cannot differentiate in a busy place when someone has actually gone out for a cigarette or is actually running off without paying. I wanted to know what the legal stance is on taking their credit card and keeping it behind the bar. Is there anyone else who has had a good idea? Please let me know"

Any thoughts? Let us know

Barry McGuigan may have impressed MPW on Hell’s Kitchen with his mashed potato but Harrison's has long known homemade mash is simply smashing.

The caterer, founded in 1994, made fresh food a cornerstone of its growth long before Jamie Oliver pointed out the state of school meals.

Harrison’s recently picked up the borough wide deal for London’s Bexley Heath taking its tally of schools catered for to 380, so it knows its erm potatoes.

But one does wonder if the Government truly appreciates the state that state catering is actually in and how risible £460m for England over six years (that’s roughly £20,000 per school over the period) is funding-wise if they want to transform it. Training is not cheap.

Accents, plenty of those in the hospitality sector especially in London, but I’m referring to a meeting I had yesterday with Maidenhead’s Accent Catering.

The small but perfectly formed caterer is growing steadily and has 30 or so contracts in B&I and the school market.

It recently signed on-the-line to cater at Seven Kings High School in Ilford, Essex, a secondary school and six form combined with more than 1,500 pupils run by Sir Alan Steer.

Steer’s approach to food at school encapsulates the oft referred to “whole school approach”, in that he’s found £400,000 to invest in kitchen and dining facilities to deliver the best food possible to pupils.

Alas, according to Accent’s managing director Gordon Haggarty Seven Kings is a rare beast in attaching so much importance to catering.

We all love a list don't we? Well, for those perhaps not in London, but who like popping in and out of the capital, the Evening Standard has come up with a guide to the city's most influential people.

No prizes for guessing that bessie mates Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White are in there along with Berkshire-based Heston Blumenthal (is the Fat Duck now in Greater London) and Jamie Oliver. But there were one or two lesser profiled individuals such as Ramsay's father-in-law Chris Hutcheson, restaurant PR Maureen Mills and Michelin guide editor Derek Bulmer.

Have a look at the list and let me know what you think. A right riveting read or some glaring omissions?

Evening Standard article in full>>

Being a Yorkshireman exiled in Surrey can be tough and nothing more so than when it comes to paying for a hard earned pint of beer.

There are many cultural differences between Yorkshire and Surrey. Down South it is common not to talk to strangers on public transport rather than engage them in pleasant conversation; there is a distinct absence of old people wearing flat caps and nobody points to the sky and shouts "oh look, a plane!" whenever one flies past.

But most of all there are the differences in the price of beer. It may be a common stereotype to look nostalgically on the North as a haven of cheap goods while the South is ready to fleece a punter at any given turn but it is a relief to report that the stereotype is absolutely true.

Prue Leith, head of the School Food Trust (SFT), was yesterday advocating the locking-in of school children at lunch to force them to eat healthy grub.

With a report from the Liberal Democrats last month claiming more than 400,000 fewer meals are now being served a day in schools since junk food was restricted last year, anything to arrest the potentially fatal decline is surely welcome.

Leith was talking at the launch of the Government’s new school meals campaign, Million Meals, which is attempting to get head teachers, parents and, of course, pupils, on board with the new healthy eating regime and boost uptake by the aforementioned figure.

It sounds like a sensible cost effective measure to deal with a serious failing, but a lot of caterers have already said to me the fact school meals children are surrounded with packed lunch mates laden down with cans of coke and Mars bars (unless the school has a voluntary packed-lunch policy) is self defeating.

Losing the rugby to the 'Boks still getting you down? Still miffed about that dodgy penalty in Moscow? Worry not, here comes the Best of British BBQ team to restore some national pride.

The chaps are now flying out to the 19th Jack Daniels World Championships in Lynchburg, Tennessee, USA, which kicks of at 3am y'all on the 24th October. Come on the lads!

But why the ungodly start-time? The al fresco Olympics are a marathon, not a sprint, with over sixty teams from across the globe preparing a range of meats during the 16 hours of competition including pork ribs, a whole beef brisket and a 'mystery meat'.

The team is captained by chef Mathew Shropshall (left), who is accompanied by Ben Bartlett, catering development manager of Marston's Pub Company (centre) and meat industry ambassador Viv Harvey (right).

This blogger has eaten the fine BBQ of our British team and it is succulent, sweet and spicy. For those of you who think that a barbeque is for dodgy sausages and supermarket burgers this is outdoor dining at another level. For me the lads have every chance at beating Dixie's finest in their backyard and Caterer will be backing them all the way.

Let's hope they don't follow in the wake of so many of our other sporting 'heroes' by just missing out on the final prize.

The creator of an interesting new website that launched last week has been in touch to publicise his idea - a blacklist for badly behaved guests.

The happyguests site features a database for small hotels and B&Bs to add the name of problem guests.

The password protected site will keep the names of blacklisted guests on the system for three years. Participating accommodation providers will have to include the fact they are a member on their terms & conditions.

The on-off relationship between Britain and France has always been a prickly one, as any chef who has done his training on the other side of the Channel will know.

They call us Les Roast Boeufs, we call them frogs, yet we all seem to love spending time in each others countries. However, it appears that detente is finally here.

The English might still be down after losing the Rugby World Cup final but at least England can claim one title: the world’s best fans. And that is according to the French. One hospitality mogul managed to blag tickets (well, pay through the nose) for the final for him and 17 of his closest mates. So off they went on the Eurostar dressed as Knights of the Roundtable, resplendent in St George’s flags and chain mail.

However being a man with class as well as cash, he booked a table for 17 at one of Paris’ most respected restaurants. You know the type, full of well-healed French families all discussing Satre and eating some seriously unethical fois gras. Their musings were broken by the arrival of 17 drunken English knights, all ready to chow down before the final. But instead of shocked indignation and mutterings of discontent all the French diners stood up to applaud the supporters of the finalists. A nice gesture by the French, as they do what they always do: roll over and surrender.

Singapore Airlines yesterday launched the world’s largest carrier, the A380 super-jumbo, into the commercial sector, with its first flight from Singapore to Sydney.

Passengers on the virgin flight were treated to a special Champagne brunch, featuring culinary creations from chefs Sam Leong, from Singapore’s Tung Lok Group, and Matthew Moran of Sydney’s Aria Restaurant.

From next year Singapore Airlines will be offering flights on the A380 to and from London Heathrow and the big question is, of course, what will be on the menu?

Conscious as I am that much of the news about school meals at the moment is unappetising, I thought I’d share a success story.

Harrison Catering Services has been in touch to trumpet the fact that they’ve actually increased school meal uptake in the London borough of Ealing, despite the backdrop of national decline (see crisis in school kitchens?).

In fact in the academic year 2006/07 they managed to boost meal uptake at the 59 primary schools they cater at by a whopping 7% year-on-year, taking the uptake average across the borough from 37.9% to 40.5% - an improvement that the caterer says has continued since the new term this September.

Now is time for the news you have all been waiting to hear. Just how did the British BBQ team do in last week's British BBQ Olympics?

Well congratulations to Mathew Shropshall, Ben Bartlett and Viv Harvey who won Best International Team grilling in Lynchburg, Tennessee last week. They beat of competition from 20 countries including Switzerland, Mexico and Austria.

They also won the “I know Jack…about Grilling” in the Jack Daniel’s sauce catagory and gained a third place rosette in the Home Cookin’ from the Homeland” category.