Open to business
Unfortunately for hotels and caterers, the skills shortage does not mean that students are fighting to sign up for hospitality courses. You are more likely to read about college departments closing than opening - witness the advanced GNVQ course in hospitality and catering at East Surrey College in Redhill, which shut after just three weeks last year, because only six students enrolled on it (Caterer, 12 October 2000, page 5).
This makes it all the more impressive that at Coleg Menai, one of Caterer's Adopted Business establishments last year, student numbers have doubled since course leader Mike Mathews took over four years ago. He now heads a department that has more than 300 full- and part-time students.
It isn't hard to see the reasons. Undoubtedly, the move to a new building - the converted Friars School - funded by a hefty European grant, helped to raise the profile of the college. And the attitude towards recruiting students is hard to fault and has a long-term feel to it. There is a strong emphasis on links with local schools, which gets future students interested two or three years before they go to college. This year the department started to run cookery classes for St Gerard's, a local private secondary school, and it runs open days for school students to come in and visit.
Lecturer Martin Jardine says: "It is a long-term investment. We organised an event in the Springboard careers week two years ago, and some of the students who came to that are now signing up for the courses here."
The college has increased the number of courses on offer, too. In the 2000-01 academic year the college ran an HND course for the first time, a project that will come fully to fruition when the first dozen students graduate next summer.
The college puts emphasis not only on attracting students, but on helping them get jobs. It doesn't just produce chefs. One student, for example, has just started work at the five-star Chester Grosvenor hotel, working as a waiter in the brasserie.
The broad approach extends to the type of cooking the students are taught and the relationship the department has with businesses. One of the events organised this year involved Manchester Japanese restaurant Samsi Yakatori sending two chefs and a manager to the college to help with a Japanese dinner. Students also got lessons in ice-carving.
But the availability of such varied experiences is not down to mere luck. Tutors painstakingly went through the phone book and called Japanese restaurants until they found one that was interested.
In addition, the college is not shy of sponsorship. This year, food and equipment supplier Watson & Philip Foodservice is trying out new products at the college and supplying chefs' jackets and waiters' waistcoats to some students. Meanwhile, the college restaurant, set up in the new building, is still fully booked by both students and locals, and the college added a coffee bar this year.
You may well read about more catering course closures, but none of them is likely to be in Bangor.
The story so far
The catering department at Coleg Menai in Bangor moved to a new building in 1999. The new site was Friars School, a 19th-century listed building that had to be extensively converted to make it suitable for its new role. The new site cost £2.5m, £1m of which came from European funding. The second academic year for the Friars in its new role has now come to an end.
Coleg Menai
Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2TP
Total students: 8,000
Catering students: 320
Head of catering section: Mike Mathews
