The Editor's Hospitality Blog

The June issue of Chain Leader USA landed on my desk today. I'm no baby bird when it comes to portion sizes, but each month I turn through its pages with a mix of shock and awe, marvelling at the gut busting portions of beans, ribs and rice its ad pages carry. No wonder the USA faces such a spiralling obesity problem.

This month, one article caught my eye in particular. If you are currently struggling with the challenge of rethinking your food offering and marketing to take account of the growing trend towards healthy eating, spare a thought for the Fatburger restaurant chain. The canny execs at Fatburger HQ have cottoned on to the fact that their brand name might not strike quite the right chord in these health-conscious times. The result is a brand campaign to emphasise the fact that the name refers to the size of the burger, not its fat content.

Tastefully, the chain chose to launch the campaign straight after Easter, no doubt mindful that those abstemious souls that have observed the 40 days of Lent are in need of a Fatburger Triple King or three. The accompanying TV ad features Fat-fans waxing lyrical about Fatburger's "fantasy, bring-it-on, blow-your-mind" burger. Tellingly, the customer who describes a Fatburger as what a burger would look like "if Godzilla and King Kong were to make a burger" was apparently consigned to the cutting room floor.

On its web site, Fatburger advertises its Fatwear range of clothing, available in all sizes from small to extra large. You can't help guessing there's not much call for smalls.

I've just met Group Managing Director of Compass Group UK & Ireland, Ian El-Mokadem at Compass HQ in Uxbridge. Over lunch, Ian (known affectionately as Elmo around the industry) shared his views on People 1st, school meals reform and his vision for the future of the UK's largest foodservice operator.

On People 1st
Elmo said he was supportive of any attempt to simplify the training landscape, but said "I just don't understand what the Dickens [People 1st] are doing. In a year of doing this job, I haven't spoken to them, and haven't seen their agenda very clearly" - this, from a man whose office is a mile down the road from People 1st's offices.

So, can the Skills Passport work?

"If we and other big players say 'yes', it's going to get critical mass - but I wouldn't put money on it working."

On Strengthening Compass UK's client offering
If clients ask, 'why do business with Compass?', Elmo answers that, as well as being empowered to offer their own sector expertise, his various divisions can draw on the strength and depth of the organisation as a whole. To back up this claim, work is going on to strengthen support functions such as IT, training, health and safety and product development. He calls this approach "freedom in a framework". His vision is of a truly joined-up business, proud of its diversity but with all self-imposed barriers knocked down. To achieve this, he needs to create a sense of teamwork and shared focus. Elmo oversees around 7000 sites, employing some 70,000 employees, so the ongoing task of applying and communicating a core set of company values is a complex but crucial one.

Elmo holds up the recent rationalising of the group's fine dining divisions into a single division, Restaurant Associates, as an example of the sort of rethinking planned for other parts of the business. In B&I division Eurest, this will mean realigning the offering and organisational structure to address the challenge of being more retail-savvy and more informed by the increasingly "grab and go" nature of high street dining.

Ongoing restructuring extends to the group's supply chain, which currently encompasses around 9000 products, plus other produce sourced at the local level. Plans are afoot to rationalise the chain and create procurement efficiencies across the group. And chefs are being encouraged to get more involved in the procurement process.

"They should have an involvement at the beginning and the end of every procurement decision", said Elmo.

On School meals standards
Elmo's message to the government mandarins responsible for school food guidelines was: "job done, guys!" In other words, nutritional standards have successfully opened a national debate on the standard of school meals, but the time has come to stop regulating. In particular, he feels the forthcoming ban on cakes and other confectionery at breaktime could have the opposite effect to the one desired, as more children bring snacks in to school with them, and more catering companies cut their losses and withdraw from schools.

There's a quiet revolution going on in the world of baked beans, in case you didn't know. Heinz, the market leader in tinned baked beans, have introduced Bloke's beans, Hidden Veg beans and even snap-pots - single portions of beans in yogurt-style disposable plastic containers.

I owe my expanded knowledge of baked-bean R&D to an enlightening interview with Heinz UK & Ireland President, Dave Woodward, in the latest edition of Management Today.

The article illustrates the importance of understanding your customers' concerns and requirements when trying to innovate. Take the Snap Pot, a pack of four microwaveable single portions of beans aimed at the consumer market. Woodward explains that the idea came from market feedback that at-home bean-eaters couldn't be bothered washing up a pan after heating up beans, and that they were tired of finding half-full cans of mouldy beans in their fridges.

As a baked-bean fan myself, I'm particularly interested in the beans-with-cohones Bloke's Beans range, which offers beans with bangers or spicy meatballs in tins with suitably ribald branding. Schools caterers will be more interested in the Hidden Veg range, which boosts kids' vegetable intake by adding pureed veggies to the tomato sauce in tins of beans.

As far as I can tell from their website, neither the Bloke's Beans nor the Hidden Veg range are available through Hotel Cateys sponsors, Heinz Foodservice. Shame - they sound like really good ideas.