Afternoon to the members of TableTalk,
Some of you might be aware of The Chef Hermes Blog and some of the interviews we've done since we started back in Feb.
We work on the premise 'If you dont ask, you dont get', so with that in mind and the amount of bitchin & whining from certain quarters about what is in (or not as the case may be) The Caterer, why not use their own forum to tell them what you the consumer want.
Makes sense to us.
So to get the ball rolling, we'll start.
A few readers may remember this, Steven Saunders used to do a whole page about produce. would like to see that return, from the point of view of a chef.
Would also like something on where the highend restaurants get their crockery/ancillaries.
Interesting thread.
Before the days of internet, email, blogs and RSS feeds, The Caterer mag provided 'the' one stop shop for everything in our industry. However, as more efficient broadcast channels have emerged, jobs have gone on line, forums have gone to 'tabletalk' and the cateresearch.com website has evolved to become the no.1 information portal for keeping us up to date with everything.
I think people compare the Caterer today to what it was 20 years ago which isn't a fair comparison at all. If you look at what the the Caterer provides across all social media. web sites etc, it offers massively more info than it ever did and I think it leads the market hands down. There is a also another subtle shift in the Caterers agenda. I think 20 years ago The Caterer was essentially a 'Hotel and Restaurant' Industry publication, today, it's an 'International Hospitality' Industry mag which means it has a much broader and more interesting market base. I think this shows how the mag has responsibly matured and grown over the years, especially under it's current team. I think people still look for it to be simple a hotel and restaurant mag which is something it outgrew a decade ago.
Where the mag offered everything once, it's now just the tip of the ice berg, with so much more below the surface provided online. Therefore the mag should be used in conjuntion with the caterersearch.com website. Which is the same for Which, Sky, Stuff, What Car and a whole host of other mags I use in the same way. With the emergence of so many information channels the mag can't be judged anymore in isolation.
I use the whole package and based on that usage, I think they cover off everything. For those that just read the magazine and go no further, it's time to wake up and join the 21st centurty party.
The future of the mag is the same for all printed media. Printed media is grossly inefficient and costly. However it will maintain a holding position until we've all jumped to the internet and then it's likely to fade away naturally. By this time we'll have the Caterer on our Ipads (or equivelent) and it will be 10,000 pages deep and will again provide everything you could imagine in one place.
I personally think that The Caterer days as a paper mag are counted. There is little room for anything other than online content these days.
Maybe this is the reason why the magazine is now full of ads for Table Talk, as they try to divert customers to online content instead.
I personally give it 12 months of life before they switch to a fully online version.
Sorry, this is going a little off topic.
The idea of the original thread was to ask/tell CS staff/editors (Hello Mr Lewis) what you the consumers would like to see in the mag. Not to predict it's demise.
Our idea comes from talking to & reading what chefs think of The Caterer, & yes there are things I'm sure everyone at the Caterer would do different, but if everybody says nothing how will CS know what you want to see?
Having spoken to a member of the CS team about 'Caterer Bashing', the bottom line is if Mark Lewis, Amanda Afiya or Kerstin Kuhn (or any other member of the CS team) were to phone any chef in the UK 99.9% would take the call. This we feel is because of the honour/prestige (call it what you like) of being in The Caterer.
So tell them what you want, I'm sure they'll draw the line somewhere (probably a center page spread of the Tibard lady )
my suggestion would be a section each week highlighting up and comming talent (head chefs g.m restaurant managers etc), i think there is a section of the food and beverage sector that dont get the press they deserve because they are not in the limelight as it were, so to give there people exposure could really help. telling these peoples back story, possibly a photo or 2 and where they are wanting to go or what they are hoping to accieve.
magazines like the caterer can really help launce/enhance carreers of people by giving them exposure
just a suggestion
It isn't just chefs who read Caterer & Hotelkeeper, I've been a subscriber for decades and can't stuff a mushroom.
Thanks for starting this blog, Chef Hermes - and well done on securing the excellent interviews you've run on your blog in the past few months. I'll be really interested to read any constructive criticism posted by Table Talk members.
Gordon Cartwright has already done an excellent job of describing the multimedia nature of the Caterer Group's content offering in the twenty-first century. For those in the industry wishing to read a print product, the Caterer still hits the shops every week - and long may that continue ... Meanwhile, for those who prefer to consume their information online, we provide Caterersearch, Table Talk and a range of email products. It's all about consumer choice.
For the record, I'm more than happy to respond to any sensible requests or suggestions about the magazine; but I shall decline to respond to any posts about the magazine's shelf-life - comments which, as Chef Hermes points out, are rather missing the point of this thread.