Letters

Earnings - the right to criticise

I am intrigued by AA Gill's comments as reported in Caterer's News pages on 6 March.

Judging by the ongoing debate in the Letters pages, I think I speak for all when I say we are aware that chefs' salaries are not competitive compared with other professions. Nevertheless, higher salaries are difficult to sustain.

If Mr Gill feels that a salary of £40,000 still falls "appallingly" short of a respectable remuneration, then I would be interested to hear from him how he would structure a restaurant in order to decrease table turnover and treble chefs' salaries in one fell swoop. Presumably, should Mr Gill be successful in doing so and still maintain a financially viable operation, he would extend the same policy to his front of house staff?

My thought for the week is the following: if Mr Gill earns such a ludicrous amount of money for writing one article a week in the Sunday Times criticising an industry he seems to be out of touch with… shouldn't we ask how he earned the right to criticise anyone in the first place?

What is Mr Gill's professional background besides having an ostensibly fine palate?

GUIDO ROMERO

London W2.

Pilloried by Paddy's pen

On many occasions I have cringed when reading Paddy Burt's column in the Weekend Telegraph, and my sympathy went out to the latest of her victims. It's more the style of writing, so clearly designed to amuse the reader rather than provide an assessment of the visit.

Then, lo and behold, "she done me". It was a real rip-snorter of a column. The chef was mocked, personal comments were directed at the staff and my wife - the hotel cat escaped only because he was away for the night.

I received four phone calls that day from fellow victims of this lady's columns. Nobody likes criticism, but it should be fair and constructive in nature. The poor hotelier has no right of reply or recourse but simply has to take all this bad publicity on the chin and then attempt to rally his team around him.

I was almost tempted to invite Michael Winner to dinner to gauge his reaction, but not quite.

The ironic thing is, I advertise extensively in the Telegraph trying to promote my hotel - then the same paper prints this attack on my business.

JONATHANARTHUR

Proprietor,

The Kings Arms Inn, Hotel & Restaurant,

Montacute, Somerset.

How to say no to an earful of gifts

would you like to hear about an underhand and devious method recently employed to try to sell various items of computer equipment?

A tele-sales person started by thanking me for my help in "research" last year.

I didn't remember taking part and guessed what was coming.

She then informed me that as a "thank you" I would receive an electronic organiser sent to my house. Having refused twice to give my home address it was reluctantly agreed that she would send it to my place of work, despite her experience that "these things go missing when sent to business people at their work".

Then she enquired about how business was and speculated that I most probably didn't get much time to think of summer holidays and sunshine. She was right on that score.

I politely said that I really hadn't got time for this general chat, but thanks for the gift. I was already on to her because I've been approached like this before. Usually the phone goes down when you ask for their number. Now what was she going to offer? A free holiday in the sun?

Having apologised, she then pursued a line about the printers that, according to her records, we use and - surprise! - she had a special offer for a super-value printer cartridge.

Send the details and price list, I said. They're in the package with the cartridge, she said.

But I'm not going to buy one, I said, especially from a company with which we don't deal and certainly not over the phone, and certainly not in return for an organiser.

DAVID BROOKS

General manager,

Dean Court Hotel, York.

Industry needs its qualified staff

I am always saddened to read letters in your columns that seek to distinguish between those who have professional academic qualifications and those who are prepared to work hard.

L McKenna ("Luck does not come into it") is "of the old (classical?) school" and deserves our respect for that.

Let us rejoice in the fact that our industry can provide a challenging and rewarding career for those who choose to set out with few, if any, qualifications. But let us also acknowledge that those who choose to study for professional qualifications, and can justly stand alongside architects, engineers and accountants, have capabilities that our industry needs more and more.

The fact that they are graduates does not mean that they are by definition work-shy, as the hundreds of successful graduates of my institution and many others around the country would testify.

GERRY BANKS, FHCIMA

Course leader,

University of Portsmouth, Southsea, Hampshire.

The personal touch cannot be branded

Following on from Christopher Dean's concerns expressed in Letters, 6 March, I feel it is time to ask whether hotel and restaurant chains are recruiting their managers from high street banks?

I wonder how many hotel managers now employed in the larger organisations are even able to give a bouquet of flowers to a disappointed guest without recourse to head office?

As the chains continue to merge, acquire and unify, and hoteliers and restaurateurs are displaced by chartered accountants, their marketing must become far more complex if they are not to lose trade to the independent sector.

As someone responsible for marketing a small number of independent hotels and restaurants, my first task for a client is to identify what makes their establishment individual and special.

Invariably, the subsequent marketing mix will draw upon the character and colour of the hosts. At whatever level, the catering industry must never forget that the host is more important than the building, the uniform and the trouser press.

The corporate image must remain largely behind closed doors, and every hotel and restaurant within a chain should live and breathe with its own face and its own smile if the multiples are to thrive in the long term. This requires managerial staff with the requisite qualities - no bank managers!

MATTHEW RYMER

Cotswold Public Relations,

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Steer clear of sticks and carrots

In the light of the huge bonuses being paid in the City, I wonder if we will now question the use of bonuses in our industry.

While I appreciate that the bonuses on offer in hotels are unlikely to come close to the £1m per year apparently available in the world of high finance, the fact remains that bonuses and rewards in general have a negative effect on performance.

Whenever reward schemes cause problems, people are quick to point out that the problem was with that particular scheme - the reward was too small or large, the target was too easy or difficult, the scheme was poorly monitored, etc - when in fact the problem lies with the use of rewards themselves.

While the use of a reward will increase the likelihood of a person carrying out a particular task, what rewards cannot do is make a person want to carry out that task: in fact, rewards do the opposite. Once people have been rewarded for engaging in a particular activity then they are less likely to engage in that activity when the rewards are no longer available.

I am not, however, trying to say that people do not want to be paid for working: of course they do. But once a remuneration package has been agreed we should do as much as possible to get money off the agenda and allow people to concentrate on what they are doing.

Instead, more often than not, large "carrots" are dangled in front of people so that they spend most of their time thinking not about what they are doing, but what they will get for doing it, or rather what will be withheld if they don't do it.

A lot of hotel companies are now talking about quality, but how can you achieve quality when the work that people do is little more than an accidental by-product of the quest to achieve the half-yearly "carrot" - or avoid the monthly "stick"?

DANNY O'DONNELL

Leigh, Greater Manchester.