A bite at the opera
It's 1.30pm, it's Glyndebourne and it's hot. The scene in the gardens at the country-house home of opera is almost a parody of Englishness. Chaps in black tie and women in floaty dresses are liberating Champagne corks and tucking into elaborate picnics before the start of this afternoon's performance. Actor Ralph Fiennes saunters past. From where I'm standing, it looks like Sarah Miller, operations director at Letheby & Christopher, has one of the best jobs in contract catering.
Challenging
"Definitely," she says. "I love the location. It's a great team and we want to be good." Miller was previously with Le Bistro in Scotland and before that with Eurest, which, like L&C, is a subsidiary of Compass.
It's her third season, and counting, but her predecessor liked it so much that he stayed for 18. Opera lovers would probably kill for her job, as she gets rehearsal tickets for each performance, but for Miller it's an acquired taste. "I still find some opera quite challenging," she admits. "But I try to go so I can discuss them with customers."
Before tonight's performance - Mozart's Idomeneo - Miller shows us around her catering empire. There's the open-air Long Bar just outside the opera house, and three restaurants - the 160-seat Mildmay, which also has 40 seats alfresco and is reached via a leafy path, and, on the other side of the auditorium, the 150-seat Nether Wallop and the 270-seat Middle and Over Wallop.
She's so calm that it's hard to believe that, in little more than two hours, she'll be caught up in the business of serving three-course dinners to 600 guests in just 75 minutes - the time allotted for the interval. She can relax a bit, of course - L&C has spent the past 20 years running the contract (see panel) so it's fairly well-oiled. All the guests choose their menus at least 48 hours in advance, so everything can be prepped and ready. The food is freshly cooked, but the starters are put on the table as the audience arrives and service, by necessity, is smooth and swift.
While the audience dines, Miller will spend her time checking on each restaurant. A regular problem is that, despite confirmations being sent out, people sometimes book a table for the wrong night. "We always accommodate them, but not always in the restaurant they want," Miller says.
This is rarely a problem at Nether Wallop because it's a self-service carvery. Here, there are two queues to speed up service, and 12 waiting staff. Each looks after as many as nine tables and is ready to whisk the plates away before bringing puddings and cheese to the table.
Nightmare
By 5.30pm, we're in the main interval, so it's time to see the restaurants in action. We're dining at Mildmay, the most contemporary restaurant of the three, and Amy, our waitress, keeps things going as we dawdle over our main courses of warm marinated lamb with tabbouleh, mint and chilli pesto, and corn-fed chicken breast with tarragon and sun-dried tomato.
Miller checks in briefly. One of her waiting staff has fainted in the heat so she's had to rejig a few people's duties. Another party didn't appear to have a reservation so she squeezed them in elsewhere only to discover that they'd booked under another name - the starters will go to waste.
By now, Miller's been working since 9am. Glyndebourne's only a half-hour drive from her home in Eastbourne and, as usual, she snatched time to walk her dog on the beach this morning. She has to employ a dog-walker, though, as on performance nights she rarely leaves before 9pm.
Performances
But that comes with the job. When the opera season starts in May, she knows she will get only six performances off. The workload can be anything from three performances a week minimum to 18 performances on the trot during August. Although she and general manager Andrew Wood manage to cover for each other occasionally, there'll be no time for a holiday until after the last performance in August.
From September, she says she will review the menus and wine list, ready to go to print in December. Every year the menus are tweaked, uniform standards are set, and table layout and crockery are also changed slightly. Next winter, for instance, the Middle and Over Wallop restaurant will get a face-lift, moving from silver service to plated.
By October, the touring opera company will have started rehearsals, and in December and January there will be shooting parties on the estate.
On top of that, there are always about 80-100 permanent opera staff for wardrobe, wigs, lighting, etc, on site throughout the year (which rises to 500 during the season when the cast is included) and also a core team of eight L&C staff (again rising to 100 waitresses and 14 chefs during the season).
Miller will take the remainder of her holidays in February and start recruiting the staff she needs for the season in March. At about that time, she'll agree service levels with Glyndebourne, finalise operational procedures, train and brief the seasonal managers and gear up to starting the whole process again. "Once the season starts, you've got to know it's going to work," she says.
The bell signals the start of the next act. It's just as well Amy kept us moving. Apparently, latecomers are locked out of the opera and we'd have had to choose between seeing the performance or staying to eat the "rich chocolate tart, boozy cherries and cherry ripple ice-cream". Close call.
As we file back into the opera house, Miller goes in search of petrol for a guest who doesn't think he's got enough to get home. After that, she says she'll head down for supper with the rest of the staff.
The Food
Every six weeks, the Joint Catering Review Board meets - comprising the founders' grandson, Gus Christie, and the management teams of Glyndebourne and L&C - to brainstorm new ideas. They will also discuss technical requirements, such as the best way to feed everyone if there are two hour-long intervals rather than the usual one of 75 minutes.
The menus offer between four and eight choices, depending on the restaurant, and are changed every year. But at least 70% of the choices, such as strawberries, salmon, summer puddings and lobster, are in such great demand with the mainly British crowd that they can only be tweaked. One year lobster thermidor might be on the menu, while another year there's lobster, dill and mustard potato salad, and gazpacho sauce.
Some customers return frequently during the season and, in response, the Mildmay menu changes after two months. Miller plans the same at the Wallops. The menu at Middle and Over Wallop costs £49.75 for three courses and coffee; at Mildmay, £37; and at Nether Wallop, £34. There's a 40:60 wet-to-food sales ratio.
An opera buff's notes
The venue: Glyndebourne, near Lewes, East Sussex BN8 5UU, www.glyndebourne.com
History: Started by John Christie and his wife, singer Audrey Mildmay, in 1934 at their home, Glyndebourne. In 1994, a new opera house was opened, seating 1,200 people. It cost £34m to build. About 65% of revenue comes from ticket sales, with the rest raised privately. It's now run by Gus Christie, the founders' grandson, and his wife.
Performances: six operas, alternating over 76 nights a year
Opera ticket prices: £21 to £160
Turnover: the box office brings in nearly three-quarters (72%) of Glyndebourne's income, programme sales provide 4-5% and catering contributes 2.5%
Membership: there are about 248 corporate members and 5,220 private members. Some 88% of the £34m was raised by the founder members, but they receive only 32% of the tickets and take-up is only 23%.
The caterer: Letheby & Christoper operates in 50 UK venues and is part of the leisure division of Compass.
Operations director: Sarah Miller
General manager: Andrew Wood
Head chef: Andy Barlow
Turnover: £2.5m a year
Contract: royalty basis; has run for 20 years, with 11 to go on latest 13-year contract
The nitty-gritty
Letheby & Christopher won Glyndebourne's business 20 years ago and there's still 11 years to go on the 13-year royalty contract, whereby the caterer pays Glyndebourne a "certain percentage" of the £2.5m annual turnover.
L&C pays the electricity and water bills, pays for fixtures and fittings and shares responsibility for cleaning.
According to L&C operations director Sarah Miller, the contract has evolved because her employer has invested "significantly" in developing the catering - for instance, Mildmay restaurant. "We've kept the contract because we've been willing to consider investment and have worked together on those projects," she explains.
Sarah Hopwood, Glyndebourne's director of finance and resources, adds that it's a hard contract to operate but the two sides work well together. "It's a short season and people expect a high standard of food, not just a good opera," she says.
"We're not in a location where there's lots of highly trained chefs, so we rely on L&C to bring in people who can deliver."
Hopwood points out that the customers, many of whom pay £145-£160 for a ticket, have remained discerning over the years, but there are now more of them.
The new £34m opera house, which was opened in 1994, doubled audience capacity to 1,200, although only about 500-600 guests use L&C's facilities. Mildmay was built at the same time to accommodate the extra covers, but Miller doesn't think it would be appropriate to build more restaurants to bring the other 600 on board - "There will always be about half who want to bring their own picnics," she says.
In fact, L&C's 600 customers include some picnickers. The caterer started to offer the service in 1995 to win business from those who prefer picnic suppers. Prices start at £42 a head for three courses, pre-packed in cool bags with cutlery, crockery and linen, and go up to the option of furniture and a porter to carry it all for £50 a head.
There's more corporate business during the week, while at weekends and in August business is nearly all private. Members can bring only eight guests, although sponsors, which have access to larger numbers of tickets, sometimes have about 50 or 60 people for dinner.
Miller says bigger receptions tend to be internal, such as first-night parties, but adds that a sponsor has invited 150 people for drinks on the terrace the night after our visit.
Glyndebourne, though, is not as elitist as you might think. Corporate members raised 88% of the £34m needed to build the new auditorium but have access to only 32% of the tickets.
