The Caterer Blog

Hello. I'm the editor of Caterer and Hotelkeeper. It's my job to plan things, go out and meet people around the industry, speak at events like next week's Hospitality Show in Birmingham ... oh, and I do the occasional bit of writing. This is the first time I've contributed to a blog, so bear with me. Here's a link to my favourite local restaurant in south London, Numidie - what Serge doesn't know about cooking meat isn't worth knowing.

If you' re involved in school meals provision, you'll want to check out a new website, www.yougo4it.co.uk, which aims to promote healthy eating and school meals to secondary school students by making food fun. You could do far worse than alert the headmaster and teacher in your school to the site.

Anyone know any similar sites worth shouting about?

In time honoured tradition, the School Food Trust has turned to a raft of celebrities to spearhead its new campaign urging schoolkids to eat more healthily.

Which is, of course, entirely laudable but eyebrows have been raised in some quarters over a couple of the choices.

A strong performance - that was the general verdict from the 300 diners at London's Dorchester Hotel who watched Compass Group UK managing director Ian El-Mokadem grappling with Alastair Stewart's questions at today's Arena lunch.

Elmo, as he's known in business circles, had a few factors against him - not least the fact that most of the audience owned up to having worked for Compass at some time, so of course knew exactly how they would run the catering giant.

But despite that, El-Mokadem put in a confident performance after almost a year in the job.

It's suggested every now and then, usually by people wearing berets and living in bedsits, that as a nation we've forgotten how to protest. Not like the French, they say; they know how to kick up a fuss.

They're right: we don't storm the Champs Elysee or set fire to our own hair because someone's trying to make us work of an afternoon. No; what we do well is to hold very British protests. Protests that involve corduroy slacks, maybe, or queuing.

And no one has proved this better than the lovely dinner ladies of Walthamstow.

Slightly miffed at some working conditions, a 200 strong force decided to drum up publicity for their plight with a protest outside the London Fifteen restaurant. Not that it was Fifteen's fault of course, but everything-Jamie Oliver is now inextricably tarred with the school dinner's brush. Plus it would be a good PR stunt, they thought as they stirred their Smash.

Radio Five Live presenters discussing yesterday's Wimbledon climax this morning hit a brick wall when they tried to recall who partnered Jo Durie to success in the mixed doubles twenty years ago. A deafening silence ensued, as Nicky Campbell and colleagues racked their brains for the elusive name. Finally, a voice piped "Jeremy Bates" from the back of the studio, to much relief. The mystery tennis specialist? Judy Hargadon, Chief Executive of the School Food Trust. Game, set and match Judy ...

Are school caterers on the march to war? Will dinner ladies across the land cast down their ladles and storm the barricades?

We’re use to strikes from nurses, teachers, posties and the French but school caterers?

Certainly the frustration and anger of many delegates at the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) conference in Birmingham last week was palpable and led to some tasty debate.

Irene Carroll, LACA national chairman, set the scene in her opening address by imploring the Government to put its money where its political mouth is. Carroll said ministers must fund the transformation of the school meals service, which they had so eagerly launched into when campaigner Jamie Oliver was still on the scene making plenty of noise, properly.

"The only people to have benefited from the Jamie Oliver effect on school meals have been local shops and businesses," said school caterer Bill Campbell in a semi-serious response to my questions about the state of the school meals service in England.

I’d met the business operations manager for Shire Services - the catering arm for Shropshire County Council - at the Local Authority Caterers Association (LACA) annual conference in Birmingham last week (see tomorrow’s write up in Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 19 July - for more).

Now before we get outraged parents attacking us for ignoring the laudable goals of the current school meals project, which is seeing the frankly scandalous standard of grub previously served improved, I should provide some context.

Bill and I had been chatting about the announcement at the LACA conference that the £240m of extra funding from 2008 would not be ring fenced.

It seems ministers really can’t do any thing right when it comes to school meals.

A scathing article in today’s Telegraph entitled “Ministers’ glossy nonsense on school meals”, is certainly worth a read and illustrates the current mood amongst school caterers and teachers perfectly (in a word, not terribly generous).

To be fair to Ed Balls and team at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (catchy, isn’t it?), improved environments to eat the new healthy grub in and more time to do so to make it a more socially enjoyable experience, have been at the top of school caterers’ wish lists for some time.

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.

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.

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.

Apparently around the world sailing soloist Dame Ellen MacArthur saved up the money for her first boat by hoarding her dinner money.

Although this may explain why she’s so small, Ellen’s struggle against adversity to make history and her well documented topsy turvey challenges at sea lend themselves to a useful metaphor - namely the battle school dinner providers have faced ever since Jamie Oliver questioned the nutritional merits of the Turkey Twizzler.

On a personal level, it made me regret that I saved my school meal cash only towards Sega Mega Drive games.

Still, at a Caterer round table debate on primary school dinners supported by Apetito last month (see next week’s Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 8 May – for report in full) it was heartening to see all-round optimism from our eclectic mix of participants.

Ah school meals, the battleground for hearts and minds (both children and parents). Jamie Oliver, Turkey Twizzlers, you know the drill.

While there seems genuine optimism about the fate of the primary school meals service, providers and politicians are waiting eagerly to see the findings of next month's LACA/SFT school meals survey.

Surely national uptake at secondary level will have risen, having bottomed out at its lowest point since just after the Second World War last year. Surely?

But how about this to garner envious glances from all? John Betts Primary School in London's Hammersmith - demonstrating a laudable whole school approach - opted out of Local Authority control last year for school meals.

This was well meaning, as the school wanted to deliver a made on site, fresh-food lunch service, but not at all straightforward as John Betts didn't even have a school kitchen. Bugger.

The Olympic Games, that most venerable institution, is almost here again.

Soon we'll be drinking in the spirit and ideals of ancient Greece reborn anew in China.

Yes, there'll be much revelling at this showcase of the pursuit of excellence and the chance it provides for individuals to reserve their place in history, and no doubt the odd dropped baton or two.

And of course, we'll all be cheering on our plucky, poorly-resourced team GB, maybe even Dwain Chambers.

There'll be the drug scandals, naff mechandising and of course Tibet. Yes, it's all there in the mix and inevitably with the handing over of the torch at the closing ceremony thoughts of London 2012.

But before we get there, we'll have a chance to watch 14-year old diver Tom Daley compete in China as the second youngest-ever male Olympian to represent GB, and that, in part, will be thanks to Sodexo.

Having had time to draw breath after the LACA school dinners conference earlier this month I thought I'd share the results of the delegate voting with you.

Given the disappointing news that school meal uptake in secondaries has slipped futher, it's hardly surprising that there's a fair bit or worry and consternation amongst school dinner caterers.

While no one has an issue with Jamie Oliver's ultimate vision for healthy, better school meals, there is a growing difference of opinion about how best to move the service on without threatening it's future.

The poll results of the electronic voting at the LACA conference by its 500-plus delegates were as follows:

Do you believe we have halted the decline in secondary school meal take up?

Yes: 10% No: 68% Maybe: 22%

Please rank these barriers to raising the take-up of school meals, starting with your biggest barrier

Price: 11%

Food on offer: 12%

Environment: 18%

Length of lunch break: 20%

Rebellious attitude: 7%

Teachers: 8%

Parents: 5%

On-site opportunties: 19%