Dining room layout reflects new habits

The pace is quickening at both Southampton and High Wycombe. With four weeks to go before the first day of trading in Southampton, we have a reasonably complete area. The building work is finished and most of the equipment is installed but, as always, we have difficulties with the signs. This is nothing to do with the signage consultants; we and the designers have changed our minds at the last minute.

High Wycombe, however, is more testing. It is basically a building site and, with five weeks to go, that doesn't leave us long to do the menu trials, register training and manage all the other issues. With a new head chef starting only four weeks before we go live, I am a bit anxious.

Not only are we opening a much larger customer catering operation at High Wycombe, we are also refurbishing the staff dining room. It was not in particularly poor condition, but it shared the kitchen of the old Place to Eat and both were being completely rebuilt, so it seemed sensible to refurbish and enlarge it too. This gave us a chance to look at our staff catering and the changes in eating styles through the working day.

We have seen a huge shift towards eating larger breakfasts mid-morning, and lighter lunches. Although we still sell a huge number of hot meals, particularly when it's the roast of the week or fish and chips on a Friday, more staff are buying home-made soup, salads and sandwiches - particularly made to order. These changes have made the team review the number and the type of counters we place in a dining room. At High Wycombe we have enlarged the cold counter and improved the sandwich operation. A card system will also be introduced, speeding up payment.

Besides visiting the two new catering operations, I have also visited seven branches. The main issue is still the lack of staff, particularly people interested in a career in catering. To advise us how to tackle this subject in a different way from the usual bland adverts in a window, we asked the head of hospitality studies at Henley College to talk to us. We were particularly interested in what attracted students to certain businesses. The discussion was extremely enlightening, and showed that we as employers have to sell ourselves much better than we are used to doing. Adverts in windows will no longer do.

CAROLINE MORTIMER is general manager, catering, for the John Lewis Partnership