Time to prune the backhander rot
Chefs accepting backhanders from suppliers in return for taking their goods is "a rot that has plagued the catering industry", according to chef John Benson-Smith, director of Hazlewood Castle in North Yorkshire.
Although most people in the industry accept that corruption exists, it is difficult to quantify and even more difficult to prove. Few hotels or restaurants will talk in public, for fear of being tainted.
"It's nigh on impossible to get to the bottom of it," admitted Ivan Shenkman, managing director of Purchasing Systems, a firm that provoked outrage in the industry four years ago when it highlighted the problem in a sales letter.
It is extremely difficult to prove whether a chef is taking kickbacks because of the very nature of the fraud. "A supplier will meet the chef in a pub, miles away from where he works, slipping him a brown envelope under the table," said one London-based supplier.
Monthly meetings
Said Mr Benson-Smith: "The supplier comes along every month, has a chat in your office and gives you an envelope full of cash."
Mr Benson-Smith said his worst experience of being offered bribes was in 1992 when, as executive chef, he helped open Granada's Victoria & Albert Hotel in Manchester.
"When I first went to Manchester, it was rife," he said. "The biggest approach I had came just before the hotel opened. A salesman came to my office. He pointed to a Suzuki Vitara outside and said, ‘If you give me your account, you can have the keys.'"
Mr Benson-Smith also recounts incidents where chefs have had foreign holidays or their mortgage paid for by suppliers.
"I made a lot of enemies for refusing to take backhanders," said Mr Benson-Smith. "It got to the stage where a lot of chefs wouldn't speak to me because I was a threat to their monthly income. I even had threatening phone calls."
With the usual rate for backhanders standing at 5% of every invoice, earnings from kickbacks can be substantial.
"An executive chef of a big city centre four- or five-star hotel could earn £15-30,000 a year, tax free," claimed Mr Benson-Smith. "I could have easily earned twice my salary."
According to one London-based supplier, the practice is more widespread within medium-sized catering businesses, with annual turnover around £3m to £4m, as larger companies increasingly employ professional food buyers.
It also tended to be small and medium-sized suppliers which got involved with kickbacks, said the supplier. Bigger firms might put their large group contracts in jeopardy.
Yet some in the industry say the situation is improving. "It's dying a death," claimed Don Irwin, former chairman of the Craft Guild of Chefs, who runs the Alma Mater restaurant in south London. "But when I first came to London in the 1970s, it was rife. Chefs used to have a lot more power and used to abuse it quite often." He says he was offered bribes more than once.
Who pays?
"Of course, the establishment pays in the end," said Don Irwin. Suppliers simply put up their prices to cover the extra payments, and establishments can end up paying 15-20% over the odds.
Mr Benson-Smith warns that the route is a slippery one for chefs to travel. "If you start to take bribes from the meat man, then he controls you and manipulates you. He sends in poor-quality crap and it's difficult to send it back. All he has to do is leave an anonymous message saying the chef is taking backhanders."
Chefs accepting bribes would be forced to cut corners, serving poor-quality food and fiddling the stock-take, argued Mr Benson-Smith. "The whole thing becomes a great big, nasty, never-ending spiral. It's a really good way of shagging up your career."
