Service tensions

Understandably, when you are being a sold a piece of catering equipment, the last thing the salesman wants to talk about is it breaking down - it is, of course, other manufacturers' equipment that does that. Yet not only should caterers openly discuss servicing and breakdown costs, it's now unwise not to have every aspect of service firmly nailed down before the purchase is agreed.

The reason for the heightened importance of service agreements is that the cost of unplanned repair work is climbing sharply, not because service companies are profiting from distress situations in the kitchen, but through the chronic shortage of catering engineers and the consequent cost of employing them.

Mark Drazen, managing director of Blackpool-based distributor Caterware, explains: "There are probably about 2,000 qualified service engineers in Britain. We should have 4,000. When you have a shortfall like that, service companies are going to have to pay a premium price to get engineers. It might come as a shock to chefs to know that the engineers servicing their equipment could be earning twice as much as them."

No service company would talk about the wages their own engineers earn, but they confirm that an annual salary of £30,000 for engineers working in major city centres is not unusual.

The complaint from caterers about the length of time it can take to get an engineer is also answered by Drazen. "A lot of service companies will work like us and use a priority listing. Warranty work, service contract work and emergencies get priority number one. Then comes equipment out of warranty, not under contract, but we supplied it; then, at the end of the queue, is the caterer who rings up out of the blue and wants an engineer immediately.

"These are the caterers who think service contracts are a rip-off and it's cheaper to just call an engineer when you need one. When we tell them there's a £40 call-out charge, an hourly rate of £30 an hour, and we'll try and get there a week on Thursday because we have so much contract work to do, they get cross."

There is a double whammy for those who think that despite the high cost of an unplanned call-out, it is still cheaper than a maintenance contract. Insurance companies, ever looking for ways to avoid paying out on write-off claims such as a kitchen fire, are beginning to ask routinely to see the maintenance contract to demonstrate that kitchen equipment has been serviced in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. No maintenance means a payout escape. And things get even worse if an employee is injured by a piece of equipment that has not been properly serviced. Then the Health & Safety Executive may investigate to see if there has been criminal neglect.

Many kitchen managers will say they accept the high cost of service contracts, because of the assurance that an engineer will come when needed and because the costs are spread out and budgeted for, but it isn't difficult to find examples of caterers who still feel let down.

Carl Les is owner of the Motel Leeming, at Leeming Bar in North Yorkshire. He thought he was being sensible when he took out a parts-and-labour service contract on an oven bought from a company he regarded as the Rolls-Royce of catering equipment. "I bought that brand because I expected it to work for a long time."

The shock Les got was when the supplier wrote to tell him that they were changing the service contract from parts-and-labour to labour-only, because the oven was lasting too long and costing too much in parts. "That's why I bought it - because its reputation was that it would last. When it began costing the company too much, they just rewrote the agreement."

The potential difficulty in getting spare parts was never discussed when Jim Byers bought a combi-oven made in mainland Europe for the Brentwood hotel in Aberdeen. "The engineer was waiting for a spare part for three months; then when it came it was the wrong one. The importer just doesn't want to know now I've bought the oven. I even rang the manufacturers to complain, but they just referred me to the UK distributor again."

The cost of getting an engineer from the distributor who supplied one piece of equipment for two-Michelin-starred restaurant Winteringham Fields in Lincolnshire was frightening, says co-owner Annie Schwab. "It would be something simple to replace or repair, and the bill would be over £300 with call-out charges, labour and travelling time. You had to almost plead for them to come quickly if you weren't on a contract. We've had to go on to a local service contract."

There are two principal reasons for the shortage of catering engineers. The first is because of the pay rates a qualified kitchen engineer can earn in the domestic market. If pay rates as a catering engineer seem high, working in the domestic market can be lottery money. A fully qualified kitchen engineer working in the domestic market for the high-street retailers can earn up to £100,000 a year. Not uncommon is an income of £1,000 a week.

The second reason is historic. Ten to 15 years ago there was no distinction in terms of training and qualification between domestic and catering engineers. The local plumber skilled in gas and water could work in any kitchen. Regulations on engineers have since grown progressively more strict, particularly in the area of gas. For an engineer now to work legally in a catering environment a whole raft of specialist and expensive training is needed. Today you are either a domestic kitchen engineer or a commercial engineer.

The problem doesn't end there. Just as the availability of engineers has been reducing, the number of catering outlets has boomed. It's not just pubs that have become food outlets, but non-hospitality businesses from garages to garden centres, too.

The good news is that the first steps to address this shortage of engineers have been taken. Salisbury College in Wiltshire has become the first college in the country to provide a dedicated catering engineer's NVQ course, going up to level 3. It works with existing engineers to raise their level of knowledge and with trainee engineers who come into the industry under the Modern Apprenticeship scheme.

One of the service companies taking up this NVQ route to engineer training is Carford Services, based in Ferndown, Dorset. Chairman John Carter has nothing but praise for the arrival of college-based training. "We are using the course to give further training to existing engineers and for our apprentices, who now have a clear career path with formalised qualifications."

Carter was also one of the members of the Catering Equipment Distributors Association (CEDA) who set up Cedacare, a service for both caterers and service providers designed to deliver more effective use of the available resource of catering engineers.

Instead of a service company having to send an engineer hundreds of miles to make a single visit because of a service contract, independent service companies who are members of the CEDA servicing network will cover each other's call-outs. All the engineers are fully qualified, but they spend their day in the kitchen, not on the motorway. Drazen explains the logic: "If we, as service companies, are going to give the most rapid and effective response to service needs, until we get more catering engineers in this industry, we have to make more of what we have already got."

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 21-27 September 2000