Civic service
"The image of council catering being an old dear toddling around with a tray of trifles is vanishing rapidly," says Neil Owens, operations general manager for Manchester Fayre, the contracting arm of Manchester City Council.
His words reflect the changes in civic catering which, forced by the threat of privatisation and more aggressive marketing of city facilities, is stepping into the limelight.
Having made two bids for the Olympic Games, Manchester Fayre, with a turnover of £1.8m, is adept at meeting the requirements of high-powered VIPs and is already gearing up for the Commonwealth Games in 2002, when it will feed 5,000 athletes and officials from 72 nations over 10 days.
When a bomb blew apart Manchester city centre in 1996, Manchester Fayre played a large part in attracting funds for regeneration by wining and dining captains of industry. At the other end of the scale, it is now the biggest provider of civil weddings in the city.
Despite its high profile, the catering arm is keen to keep in touch with the people.
"Civic caterers are the unsung heroes. What we do is largely taken for granted and while planning gives a glitzy edge to some of the high-profile events, there is another angle that is not often appreciated," says Owens. "We give a lot of rooms over to community use, which in the private sector would be squeezed out because they are less profit-making. We can adjust our profit margins to accommodate these events as a service to the borough. This is the advantage of having an in-house team that can be flexible."
As well as municipal buildings, Manchester Fayre, headed by Ruth McNeil, director of catering for Manchester City Council, runs three public restaurants and a coffee shop. It introduced the first café-bar in Manchester and its chef at Clarion Café was recently elected a member of the Academy of the Association of Civic Hosts.
Birmingham City Catering, one of the largest local authority catering organisations in the UK, operates from 14 main locations and has an annual turnover of £2m. In 1998 it helped to cater for the G8 summit (feeding 5,000 police officers), in 1999 it hosted the Royal Variety Performance, and it is preparing to cater for the Nato conference this year.
"For many years, we've been taken for granted as providing a service to VIPs. But over the past 10-12 years we've had to look at developing the service to cater for increased tourism and commercial business coming from such centres as the NEC," says Margaret Wells, head of operations at Birmingham City Council Commercial Services, and a founder Fellow of the Academy of the Association of Civic Hosts.
One of the turning points for Birmingham was the advent of compulsory competitive tendering (CCT). "Our standards were always high, but we changed our profile and our image. If we didn't make money, we wouldn't survive," says Joe Owens, civic and commercial manager. "We started to publicise ourselves, look at how we sold our services and learnt from the private sector how to package ourselves. The barriers between us and the private sector don't exist any more. We exchange views and they learnt from us as well."
Birmingham went on to win three rounds of CCT, with 70% of income now coming from external business. All profit is handed over to the city council.
By tradition, Birmingham wants its council buildings to be used and viewed by the public. It organises events such as the popular three-course Christmas lunch, priced at £17.50. Held over two weeks in the Council House, the event was fully booked by August.
Elsewhere, civic caterers have other opportunities. Eastbourne, for instance, has different requirements, complicated by most of its seafront being a conservation area. Coastline Caterers, the in-house caterer for Eastbourne Borough Council, beat other contenders to run all the seafront catering outlets, including 15 ice-cream kiosks, as well as events such as Airbourne, a four-day air festival attracting 500,000 visitors.
"The benefit of doing it ourselves is that we have the strict control necessary for a conservation area and it's easier to administrate," says David Hiley, general manager of Coastline Caterers. "Day trippers to Eastbourne have risen in the past eight years by 400,000 people to two million a year, so seafront outlets are important."
Coastline employs up to 250 people and has a turnover of just over £2m. Its main council premises is the multipurpose Devonshire Park Centre, which can house conferences for 2,000 people and includes the Congress Theatre and the Winter Gardens.
Coastline's biggest event is the pre-Wimbledon Ladies Tennis Championship, which involves feeding 34,000 spectators with a variety of catering, from carveries to Champagne receptions. It hosted the International Darts Weekend in January, at which 2,000 competitors and visitors downed 100 kegs of beer and lager.
"Our conference business is booming, with bookings rising from 85 days this year to 131 for next year. This is an addition to regular events such as weddings," says Hiley.
Coastline is unusual in that, once it has paid the council for operating the catering, profits are split into staff bonuses and the balance is ploughed back into the business. This enabled the elegant Pavilion Tea Room to undergo a £100,000 refurbishment.
The sums given to the council have risen by 77% over the past five years. Other local authorities take all or part of the profits from this sector, which can have margins as high as 30%.
City councils now aim to attract big business, a lucrative target. When Glasgow City Council hosted Rotary International in 1997, turnover rose by £280,000 in five days.
"The service is dictated by the client," says director Fergus Chambers. "We have many fine function halls but we're in competition with hotels, so we have to provide an excellent service. This is not just about reputation but about value and contribution to funds."
Chambers sees any event, especially conferences, as an opportunity for repeat business. "The economy is buoyant so conference business is increasing and we respond to the challenge so that people leave with a good image of the city and return with their families. It's all part of a wider selling experience.
"Council catering has improved over the years. Civic caterers woke up to the developing standards of the private sector, which they matched and now exceed." n
