Reader Soapbox

Food service consultants face significant challenges over the next few years in the business and industry sector, where the pace of change has become fast and furious. But there has to be a question mark over whether today's consultants are up to the task.

On the face of it, it would appear not. Consultancy is mostly populated with very experienced former caterers. This "poacher turned gamekeeper" approach has brought a much-needed opposing perspective, a level of openness and reduced costs. For years, consultants have made a living by exposing dubious industry practices, and reducing subsidies by sending out thousands of tenders. But isn't it time for a new approach?

Today's foodservice consultancy environment is moving rapidly towards retail-style solutions, zero-subsidy and high-street style offers, accompanied by the emergence of much smarter contractors with a retail mentality.

Consultants need to join the party, and this may mean learning new skills, changing approaches and developing new core competencies. Otherwise, we could become surplus to requirements.

The role of the consultant is to lead and drive new and dynamic ways of achieving client goals, and to create an environment that sees all parties working together.

Consultants from the traditional background of operations management will have been trained in management, personnel, finance and, of course, profit maximisation, but may not have the skills for the challenges ahead. They are unlikely to have learned relationship management, retail merchandising, sales generation, retail data analysis, customer profiling, presentation and group skills.

This means that, to a great extent, these consultants are armed with the same skills as the contractors. This erodes the consultant's position.

A consultant's vocabulary should now be about sales and marketing, product development and consumer trends, not "shopping baskets", purchasing reviews and cost-plus contract. We should only be appointed if we add value; after all, we are employed because we can do what the client can't.

There's a new opportunity for foodservice consultants to lead the contracting relationship from the front by displaying innovative thinking, current best practice and polished delivery - all, of course, consistent with the fees we charge.