Henley contract sparks L&C growth

by Nigel Bartlett

Letheby & Christopher (L&C) is to provide hospitality and public catering at the Henley Regatta, replacing rival event caterer Ring & Brymer after six years.

The firm's new managing director Tony Roestenburg described the gain as "a major coup" for Letheby & Christopher, a subsidiary of the Compass Group. He declined to put a figure on the contract's value.

The news was followed by the announcement of a second contract gain, at the Henley Festival of Music and Arts, which takes place the week after the regatta. Again, the contract was previously held by Ring & Brymer, although L&C operated it in 1993.

The wins came in the week that Mr Roestenburg officially took the reins from former chief executive Neil Goulden, who has joined ten-pin bowling group Allied Leisure.

Mr Roestenburg told Caterer he planned to build turnover from its present £40m to more than £100m by the year 2000. This would be achieved both through acquisitions and organic growth, primarily through building banqueting business.

"Banqueting profit drops to the bottom line very quickly because you don't have the overheads," he said.

Mr Roestenburg added that he was currently in the process of recruiting a "hard-nosed" sales manager.

Another of Mr Roestenburg's "crusades" was to roll out brands from the Compass New Famous Foods portfolio across the company. "Our Upper Crust and Dixie's Donuts units at Aintree racecourse have doubled the revenue there year-on-year," he said.

Mr Roestenburg promised a new era of risk and innovation, and said people would find his management style quite different to Mr Goulden's, who remains a non-executive director.

"I'm probably a lot more autocratic, but that's what is needed during a time of change," he said.

However, he added that he had empowered more of his managers, with the removal at the start of the year of two operations director posts following his own promotion and the transfer of Robin Watson to Compass's education division. Instead, 11 regional managers have become regional directors, reporting to Mr Roestenburg.

"This was not an exercise in reducing overheads, but in taking out bureaucracy and hierarchy. These directors now control patches as big as some companies quoted on the Stock Exchange," he said.

A further development has been an emphasis on improving quality. A working party called the Quality Circle was set up last year.

Its first initiative was the £250,000 launch last month of a new corporate logo, uniforms and company livery.