Christmas? We can take it or leave it

I HAVE just spent a very cordial afternoon with our local EHO, who was extremely helpful, offering advice on training courses and publications, and even suggesting that by putting certain procedures in place we could actually save ourselves time and trouble elsewhere.

The visit seems to come around with depressing regularity, according to the rating applied by our council. There is no classification for event caterers and we are categorised, with other mobile caterers, as "high-risk".

In the early years this posed a problem, as we had a succession of inspections with a new officer each time and, almost without fail, they arrived expecting to look at a fleet of burger vans. In recent years, however, we have retained the same contact and this has proved to be most beneficial.

Our business has changed beyond belief in the course of the past 18 months, with the move to the new warehouse bringing all sorts of health and safety issues, and it was useful to have an external, informed view of the situation.

It appears that, though our systems are in place, some are fairly casual and attention needs to be paid to recording of processes, assessments and decisions. This ties in neatly with our employment structure review, brought about by the recent Working Time Directive and the impending human rights legislation, and we should soon have a system for all eventualities.

As this process continues, we are considering ISO 9002 certification, as our push for new contracts and venues highlights the need for a consistent audit trail.

December bookings are currently ticking over as we have not chased the huge functions that have been part of our Christmas planning for the past three years. While we have put superb food on the tables, the nightmare of finding sufficient staff and facing delays in getting clients to pay (one went into liquidation owing us more than £17,500) has taken the gloss off these large functions.

However, we have recently added two local stately homes to our portfolio of venues and have major functions booked well into next year. It is the current period that is the bane of my life at present, with functions often being booked at little more than a week's notice. n

ROBERT ALVAREZ is proprietor of Phoenix Catering event caterers in Towcester, Northamptonshire

Next diary from Robert Alvarez: 16 November