Letters

You would have to be sedated to enjoy this

Perhaps Ken Breaton ("Let's not forget the good NHS caterers", Caterer, 14 September, page 20) has worked in a different National Health Service to the one I was unfortunate enough to experience last weekend.

As a result of a heavy fall in a cellar while surveying a restaurant's premises, I suffered a badly broken arm and damaged shoulder(my left and natural hand) - and experienced the versatility of NHS catering in all its majesty.

The first meal available to me, some 24 hours after admittance (and when I was much less sedated) was dinner - two fish fingers, frozen peas, and one scoop of powdered mashed potato, served with complete indifference by so-called "care assistants".

Breakfast was porridge, one slice of brown bread, butter and marmalade, in packets - difficult to open with only one hand, and impossible to spread.

My chosen lunch consisted of roast pork, two undercooked roast potatoes (one blackened inside), chopped carrots and packet gravy, with syrup sponge (packeted) and powdered custard.

Is there a catering manager, or a chef, in this hospital worthy of the title, and does he or she believe that this food is really nutritious or tasty? Menus inviting you to tick boxes as to your preferences are produced daily with a flourish, but the reality is somewhat different.

No one would expect, on very small budgets, Gordon Ramsay-quality food, but it was sad to see what passed for food in this particular hospital. And I was a Bupa patient.

It gives me no pleasure to tell of this experience.

A Blyth, Maidstone, Kent.

Counting the cost of the fuel crisis

It has been a bad week for the industry. First, the fuel crisis. Many hospitality businesses in the North of England have lost a huge amount over the past 10 days. I estimate that it cost us £19,000-£20,000 in lost sales; on top of that I have had to pay my staff while half of them were at home.

Then, just hours after the blockades were lifted, BBC local TV announced that fish prices in the North of England were to rise by 30%.

We were told prices had to be put up to cover the extra costs that the fishing industry had faced during the past week.

This is just extortion. Exactly the same thing happens at Christmas: the fishing industry holds us all to ransom.

Perhaps UK chefs should follow the lead of our farmers and French counterparts and do something about it; instead, us Brits in the kitchen will just shut up and pay the robbers.

John Benson-Smith, Chef-patron, Hazlewood Castle, Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.

Your suppliers can't be left to take the blame

I wrote to Caterer last year ("Hospitality learns from Coca-Cola", Caterer, 8 August 1999) and suggested that hospitality firms should not blame their suppliers when disaster strikes.

By way of example, I asked: "Could Ford insist on selling cars with erratic hydraulic brakes and then blame the component suppliers?"

Tragically, my example has proved prophetic, although it wasn't brakes. Instead, 135 people have died recently in the USA in Ford Explorer cars fitted with Bridgestone tyres. Ford is attempting to blame Bridgestone, but it just isn't working. The Financial Times (5 September) quoted a bank analyst saying that people bought the Ford brand in the expectation that the tyres supplied were fault-free.

It is worth repeating the message to hospitality firms, particularly in instances of food hygiene. Customer concern can be allayed only through complete transparency. Firms must immediately come clean, say exactly what happened and, furthermore, announce what they propose to do in the future.

Companies should not only ensure that they supply a quality product and service to their customers, but that their suppliers supply them with quality products and services - including safe eggs.

Esperanza Martinez-Zurita,Zurita Hospitality Consulting.

Think twice before adding service charge to the bill

I refer to "Questioning a VAT assessment" (Caterer, 31 August, page 34) and the answers given by Mike Payne to the VAT Inspector.

I agree with everything he says apart from the part concerning the percentage service charge put on the VAT-inclusive bill for food and drinks. This amount is subject to VAT and the reason for it is as follows.

Suppose the food and drink comes to £100. Say a 10% service charge is added, which amounts to a £10 tip. This tip includes VAT at 17.5% (£10/6.714 = £1.49), so the actual tip the staff should get is £10 minus £1.49 (= £8.51), and the £1.49 is added to the VAT output tax that the business has to pay minus its total VAT input tax.

I devised a billing system that accounted for this VAT tax on the service charge and enclosed one of the bills I used, so that, at the end of the week, the VAT amount owing on the tips could easily be added up.

If, however, a cash tip is given to the staff, no VAT has to be added, but the person receiving it is responsible for the tax on these tips.

This is one of the reasons I can tell most of my clients not to put a percentage service charge on their bills.

John Gomersall, Business consultant, Worminghall, Buckinghamshire.