Nice work?
When youngsters take the decision to follow a career in the kitchen, it's five-star hotels and glamorous city restaurants that tend to fill their dreams. The ultimate ambition for many is to make it to a top position in a Michelin-starred establishment and to draw the applause of famous restaurant critics.
Contract catering, in contrast, sparks few youthful fantasies. For those starting out, it appears that this is the unglamorous, inferior side of the industry, one which offers scant reward by way of recognition.
A few years down the track, however, and many chefs take a totally different view. Rather than pursuing careers in prestigious hotels and restaurants, they begin queuing up to move into contract catering. Or at least, so argues Paul Lucas, general manager of recruitment consultancy Berkeley Scott Chefs.
"Over the past three or four years, most parts of the industry have experienced huge difficulties in recruitment, but there's no such problem recruiting chefs into contract catering," he says. "For many candidates, contract catering is their first choice now - they come to us eager to move into this area. Indeed, candidates currently outstrip vacancies by a long way in this sector."
When asked why this might be, Lucas does not hesitate. "It's the hours," he says. "The majority of those moving into contract catering are aged between 28 and 33. They've spent all their young lives working long hours in hotels and restaurants, and want to begin spending more time with their spouses and children."
Certainly, hours were the chief motivation for Donald Marshall moving into contract catering in 1998. Until recently head chef for High Table at its contract with law giant Linklaters in London, he previously worked for some of the country's best-known hotels, including the Marine Highland hotel in Troon and the Waldorf, Landmark and Claridge's, all in London.
Despite enjoying his early career, Marshall, who has just taken over as head chef at Lloyd's of London for Avenance, was tired of working 15-hour days for 10 days in a row. "I did years of split shifts and had no life outside work," he says. "It was so bad that, when I first started going out with my wife, none of her friends believed that she really had a boyfriend, because they never saw me. After we got married in 1997, I decided I wanted more in my life than just work."
These days, Marshall's normal working hours are 7am until 4pm, Monday to Friday, with only the occasional evening function to cook for. "I used to feel guilty that I was free at four in the afternoon," he says. "I didn't know how to fill my spare time, because I'd never had any. But now I love it - I've got my life back."
Nigel Boschetti tells a similar tale. He spent the first 13 years of his career in five-star hotels in London, including the Grosvenor House and the May Fair Inter-Continental, then worked as head chef at Amberley Castle for six years, before returning to London as head chef of Simpson's-in-the-Strand. Last year, however, he turned his back on hotels and restaurants to take the job of executive chef at event caterer Payne & Gunter.
"I had two children and a third on the way, and I wanted a job that would give me more time with my family," he says. "In event catering, between May and July and between October and December, it's frantically busy, but at other times of the year I can be at home more. Overall, I get a lot more time with my family."
Another contract catering chef with an impressive CV is Christopher Harper. He formerly worked at Tylney Hall in Hampshire, Congham Hall hotel in Norfolk, the Portland Thistle in Manchester, and Le Méridien Hong Kong, and spent three years as head chef at Cannizaro House hotel in Wimbledon. "A year-and-a-half ago, I decided to get a life," he says. "I'd done years of 16-hour days and six-day weeks, and was exhausted. There was no balance at all." Harper became executive chef for Leith's at its contract with law firm Allen & Overy, and now usually works from 7.30am until 5pm, Monday to Friday. "I get weekends and bank holidays off, and I actually take my holidays," he says. "I don't have to cancel them at short notice any more."
For Anna Miller, head chef at bank BNP Paribas in the City of London, there is no doubt that, had she not moved into contract catering from hotels and restaurants 10 years ago, it would have been difficult for her to have had a family. Her early career was spent working in venues such as the May Fair Inter-Continental in London and Maxim's de Paris, and she initially had no desire to work in contract catering at all. "It was not something I'd ever thought about going into," she says. "But, when I got married, I wanted to work shorter hours, so decided to give it a shot. I ended up spending seven years at Morgan Grenfell and had my two children while I was there."
Gavin Fenwick, a committed competition chef and self-confessed workaholic, made the leap into contract catering two years ago because he realised that it would allow him more time to pursue his love of competing. The pressure of service at previous workplaces (such as the Oak Room at Le Méridien Piccadilly, Le Soufflé at the Hotel Inter-Continental, Crockfords Casino and Bluebird, all in London) made it tricky to practise competition dishes, which had be "squeezed in around everything else".
He says: "I could see that my friends in contract catering, in contrast, were doing a lot of competition work, with the support of their companies. So when I was approached about becoming executive chef at Baxter & Platts' contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, I decided to take it." The move has proved a shrewd one for Fenwick. This year, he won 10 medals at Hotelympia and was also named Chef of the Year in Baxter & Platts' own awards. "Both Baxter & Platts and PricewaterhouseCoopers are brilliantly supportive of my competition work," he says. "Doing this job has allowed me the time to take competing seriously."
Fewer working hours are not the only reason for moving across to contract catering, however. Fenwick claims that he was also attracted to his current role by the scale and diversity of the job. He is responsible for five PricewaterhouseCoopers offices across the capital, which between them feed more than 4,000 people a day. The contract covers everything from staff lunches to client entertaining, banquets and cocktail parties. "There aren't many hotel or restaurant jobs of this scale and which offer the same kind of challenge," he says. "When I came here, it was up to me to improve the style of the food, the service and training, which made it enormously attractive to me."
Boschetti's job at Payne & Gunter also offers the challenge of diversity. Frequently, he will be responsible for several events on the same night. These might, for example, include a dinner party for 65 at Kensington Palace, a banquet for several hundred at Madame Tussaud's, and a dinner for 150 at Hampton Court. For every event, Boschetti has to create an imaginative menu that also takes into account the logistics at the venue in question. He recalls: "We recently did a dinner for 350 at the Natural History Museum, where we didn't get access to the venue until 6pm and had to start serving the guests at 8.30pm. It's a challenge making such events work, and really rewarding when they go well."
A further advantage of the contract catering side is that the kitchen atmosphere is far happier, says Marshall. Neither contractors nor clients will tolerate foul language or abuse of staff. "I learnt very quickly that you have to be careful how you operate here and treat people like people, not like slaves," he says.
Just because the atmosphere is more relaxed and the hours better in contract catering, it does not follow, that the food is substandard. Indeed, all the chefs Caterer spoke to say that they would not have altered their career direction if it had not been possible for them to continue cooking at a high level. They claim, in fact, that the food they serve in their directors' dining rooms, and at client functions, rivals that in any top London restaurant. "I used to think that contract catering was all about packets and tins," says Marshall, "but that couldn't be further from the truth. In our staff restaurant we cook only fresh food and make everything ourselves. And the fine-dining menus that we produce are on a par with Claridge's food."
Harper, too, says that the food he cooks at Allen & Overy is comparable with what he used to serve at Cannizaro House. And Miller believes that the dishes she serves in the 10 private dining rooms at BNP Paribas would stand up to scrutiny by a restaurant critic.
"Obviously," she says, "not all contract catering is at this level. But I'm lucky to be working for a client which pays serious money to allow me to use the best suppliers and buy the best ingredients." Recent dishes on her menus have included roast guinea fowl, truffle rösti and wild mushroom sauce; and grilled sea bass with braised fennel, vine tomatoes and Pernod butter.
It seems that the only thing that Miller and her fellow chefs admit to missing from restaurant and hotel work is "the buzz" of service. As Harper puts it: "A good service in a restaurant kitchen, when 20 orders come in at the same time, is the biggest high in the world. But, overall, I'm really glad I made the move - contract catering has a hell of a lot going for it."
