When you were at school what was your dream job?
Apprentice to Eric Morley had a lot of appeal. It was the bingo I think … (for those readers too young to remember, Morley was the impresario who founded the Miss World beauty contest.)
What did you end up doing?
I went to Thomas Danby Catering College in Leeds where I passed my City and Guilds 147, 151 and 152. After the course I spent three months (pre-internet) in the library researching contacts in the cruise ship business and applying for jobs while working for the company my father worked for (ARA as it then was) as a temporary unit chef manager in all sorts of locations.
Did you get a job on the cruise ships?
Article number 1613 Assistant Cook – Roast and Grill Bench. I received a letter from Shaw, Saville & Albion one day asking me if I could fly out to Hong Kong and join the SS Ocean Monarch. I thought long and hard for 1.7 seconds and rang to say yes. My first job was to fry 1,000 eggs for breakfast every day. I stayed in the merchant navy from ‘73 to ‘76 and had an amazing time – 19 years old, being paid a (relative) fortune and visiting magical places in the South Pacific Islands and southern hemisphere. The ship was a floating hotel for the Commonwealth Games in New Zealand in 1974 and I was at the race when Dave Bedford won his gold.
How did you get into hospitality?
My father was a caterer so it’s all down to him really. My birth certificate has him as a baker and coffee grinder, but he was an event caterer at heart. He used to ice cakes for people and the kitchen at home always seemed to be full of bread trays and piping bags. I think it was inevitable I would don the white jacket and checked trousers.
You’ve worked for small and large organisations. What is the difference?
Resource levels, not surprisingly. In a smaller company if you promise someone something, you get involved in the delivery, you can’t simply delegate to the level below. In larger companies you can, and sometimes the intent distorts as others interpret the need. I believe individuals in smaller organisations care more for their customers. The bigger companies see much more personnel churn, with internal changes moving people about a lot more. There is a balance needed and while you want to avoid ‘staleness’, clients who see change every couple of months soon get fed up.
What did you gain from running Marriott Management Services?
Huge enjoyment and friends for life. It was a hard, but brilliant, job. There were three cultures to take on. MMS, as it was known in the US, had acquired two UK businesses to create its UK subsidiary. Suddenly it was much more than catering. We had a contract with the EEC in Brussels to manage a catering staff bureau. We had a business travel agency, we washed telephone boxes and windows in airports, installed playgrounds and mowed motorway verges. You rapidly come to understand that the only way to succeed is to hire the appropriate expertise. General management skills only covered you so far in that you needed to know how the lawn tractor worked.
What lessons did you take from this?
To keep a sense of humour. It was tough but the team we assembled was first rate and a pleasure to work with. The one element it truly brought home was the power of an international brand. In our sector, Sodexo, Aramark and Compass are brand names you recognise. The trouble is they don’t mean anything to the guy in the street, such as the consumers they are looking to feed and those making the hiring decisions. Walk in with a name like Marriott and the difference is immense. I often wonder why the Hiltons and DeVeres of this world have shied away from food services. I recall having to convince potential clients that we really were the Marriott and yes, we really did want to feed their students, patients or workforce and watching them switch on instantly.
What made you start up on your own in 2000?
I made lots of friends in my 18 months at Gardner Merchant but I was in the foster child position, having arrived via the acquisition of Marriott by Sodexo in the US, and never really settled. Their internal politics gauge was in the red and they were going through lots of change in the UK at the time. In the end, I chose to concentrate on building something. It is what I do best and something that gives me a lot of pleasure. It is sink or swim every day at the start, which can be both awesome and awful.
What are the key issues facing UK contract catering today?
The sector is a very mature one and the wheel continues to be reinvented. The concept of fixed-time dining is finished, so those who can adapt and create better use of their client’s social space, while maintaining an appropriate level of service, will have the edge. The balance between resource levels that deliver to the customer and making sure the business is running efficiently needs to be set right. Matters can, and will, go wrong quickly if they are not. If anyone other than diehard back office personnel are spending more than 20% of their time out of their client’s premises, then the balance is wrong. That includes senior management too. If they aren’t constantly making it their business to understand how their commercial world is evolving, it is likely it won’t be their world for long.
Got any solutions?
It is a long time since I was involved at the operating end of the sector. It is clear, though, that the old art of earning your money at the point of ordering goods is being replaced by a greater reliance on doing so at the point of sale. The skill of retailing and merchandising, whether you’re selling food or providing it to a captive audience, is imperative. There is plenty of innovation in the sector now and much to be admired – operators that focus on this will prosper.
How could the contract/tender process work better?
It is still not unusual to find someone who wants to make a buying decision on the basis of a 20-minute presentation and half a dozen questions. It doesn’t seem to matter that the decision might carry a few million pounds’ value and involve all sorts of issues that might impact the business. Whether it’s buying a service or a range of goods, it has to make sense to invest the proper amount of time in making the decision and, if you don’t have the specific buying knowledge, hire someone to help you.
What benefits does a procurement specialist like Acquire offer a client?
Most businesses have someone doing their buying who is a specialist in one commodity and knows a bit about all the rest, what you might consider a ‘jack of all trades’. Unless you are a huge conglomerate, you simply cannot accommodate specialists in every commodity. By working with Acquire, you have the luxury of being able to ‘time-share’ the skills of specialists. Another key benefit is that our customers avoid having highly skilled, costly buying resources being used for clerical and supplier-monitoring purposes. Once a category has been reviewed and established, it needs to be left to run for a period. The in-house buyer then stops buying and starts being an administrator. This can often lead to the essential task of monitoring being performed poorly or the commodity being constantly reviewed as the buyer hunts for the opportunity to go back to their comfort zone. At Acquire, our only focus is to buy and monitor supply chain performance. We are not distracted by deciding what happens to what has been purchased.
How will technology help in the future?
It’s crazy to think businesses trading millions are still using the telephone, and relying on the spoken word and paper invoicing. How many of those ordering right now know how much they are spending? They find out when the invoice arrives two days later, then rely on someone else in the paper processing chain to check if it all adds up and the prices charged are those that were agreed. While at college in the early ‘70s, I recall having a microwave demonstrated. It was suggested it would have limited appeal and never catch on domestically. I guess inevitability only seems obvious once you’ve got used to something and it is those who see the potential early that achieve the most.
Do contractors benefit from what you do?
Yes, considerably. One-size-fits-all fits absolutely no one. We all know this to be true, but some still persist in working on the basis of getting something right and then making everyone follow suit. Specialist contractors’ focusing on just one sector need a flexible approach to procurement. Take those looking to provide food services in the broad world of education. All schools buy the same food. Do they? Of course not. Everyone’s purchasing DNA is different. If you try and select a range of goods to suit everyone, it will be so large it won’t be competitive; or, to get it competitive it will be too narrow to be of any use. For example your 1,000-pupil day school doesn’t have much use for the range of breakfast cereals that the boarding school does. They are in the same sector but have very different purchasing profiles. If you are still unconvinced, check the profile of a girls’ school against a boys’ school or a collegiate university and a redbrick. The same applies in every sector – long-term healthcare and acute healthcare, tourist hotel and business hotel and so on. Most contractor SMEs attempt to get into a number of sectors, which further dilutes the arrangements they can negotiate with their supply chain. The result is uncompetitive pricing, or poorer quality commodities and yield, in order to get the price down. Joining up with a purchasing specialist like Acquire brings them in to a much bigger family. You need to be buying over £100m to truly compete. It is therefore only the really massive contractors who have this sort of scale, and one of the reasons why they are so successful.
Can public sector caterers also benefit from using purchasing specialists?
Yes, there is no difference. We work with a lot of public service organisations. The e-procurement factor is really kicking in here too. When pressure is placed on recruitment and manning levels, it is essential that automated tasks are introduced quickly to free up resources for customer-facing roles. The same arguments on product range apply. The difference in the public service side is that, in the main, they have opted to control range and variety to drive down cost. It is a shame the approach hasn’t always looked at yield, taste and shelf-life. Cost is just one of many components to take into account and the list is growing as CSR and sustainability take on more importance.
The economy has been depressed for a while now, how can we get best value from tight budgets?
The focus has to be on becoming better food sellers rather than always looking at becoming better food producers. For captive audiences and consumption accounts, the focus has to be on eradicating waste. There is the effort wasted on pointless actions and processes, then the waste from doing exactly the same as we did yesterday without seeing if things could be done differently.
Food prices have risen sharply. How much of an issue is that for caterers?
It is an issue for everyone. Commodity price rises will inevitably affect the bottom line unless caterers can pass on the increased cost – or at least some of it – to their customers either through their tariffs or by increasing client subsidies. Taking apart their buying practices and rebuilding them effectively can mitigate the impact of rising commodity costs.
What’s your forecast for the UK economy for the rest of 2012?
I am the eternal optimist. It has something to do with being a Leeds fan. I think things are improving. Not everywhere, obviously, and I feel very sorry for those still badly affected. In some areas, though, I can definitely see things picking up, and if we as a country can generate some momentum, I think we can start looking forward with confidence.
Do you see the London Olympics as a distraction to ‘business as usual’ or a business opportunity?
I would hate to try and run any business in London during the Olympics, especially one that isn’t going to directly benefit from them. A friend of mine with a restaurant is arranging for his critical fresh supplies to be delivered to his home in West London and then he is going to drive them to Soho at 4.30am every morning. It is clear that those who have some direct involvement in the venues and their administration, or looking after the public will benefit, and good luck to them. I think it will have a positive impact on the country if everything works well -– and I am sure it will.
Looking specifically at public sector catering, what are the major issues?
Investment, to be frank. Most of our public services have seen their consumer needs change dramatically in the last 10–15 years, yet the infrastructure is ancient and impractical. There is still evidence of legacy thinking – a need to provide the ‘meat and two veg’ option, but we all agree no one wants this every day. We have clients in healthcare that still have the equipment to make 40 gallons of custard but have no space to promote their low-fat fruit desserts.
Are budget cuts used as an excuse for doing nothing?
Yes. They needn’t be, but I think some take the easy option. The irony is that the continued ineffective practices and the waste generated is often greater than the figure to be cut. Just because we have done something a particular way for a time shouldn’t vindicate continuing in that fashion.
The Government wants caterers to promote good health and nutrition. Is that a role for the industry?
Yes. We make the motor industry make our cars safer so what is the difference? I like the simple things. Compass has recently reduced the amount of salt within its salt sachets; in one fell swoop, tons of salt have left the UK diet. Easy really, isn’t it?
Are you optimistic about the future?
Yes I am. I always will be until something proves otherwise. Life has thrown some grit my way in the past but I must have been fortunate in that generally I think things are better now than they have been in the past.
On a personal level, what’s your dream three-course meal?
The hardest question yet. I have been so lucky to have been to many places and to have been brought up where food was the day job. For simplicity, I would have to go for scallops, lamb and cheese.
Anything to wash it down with?
This one is slightly easier! New Zealand sauvignon blanc, Rioja and nacionale port from Noval.
Where is your favourite place to eat Outside of London?
It has to be Verviene in Milford on Sea. Food to worship.
If you hadn’t had your career, what would you have liked to do?
Be an author – writing books like Stuart Maconie, who writes wonderfully about his travels, or John Man, who makes history books exciting.
Got any tickets for the Olympics?
Yes, we have some hockey tickets for the quarter finals, I think. Like everyone I guess we bid for a number and prayed we wouldn’t get them all. I am glad we are going to at least one event, as the children will be able to say they went – like I did back in 1974 – and didn’t just watch it on the telly.