Caterer letter

Management information is IT investment priority
Further to the letter from Alex Ventura (Caterer, 22 May) I fully endorse his call for the Government to publish a standard and encourage the move to electronic document management.

 

However, with many companies failing in such a high profile way (Le Petit Blanc, Fish!, etc), the priority for IT investment should be in management information systems, to support senior management decision-making. This enables them to make informed decisions based on the hard facts in front of them.

 

There's no doubt the operation is the most important area for investment (no customers equals no profit), but it's becoming even more important for the figures to add up.

 

Surely access to accurate and timely management information is the highest priority?

 

I for one enjoy eating in many of these restaurants and would very much prefer them to succeed.

 

Jevern Partridge, Consultant, Ridge Solutions, Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire

 

Don't support lawbreakers
Why should Forbes Mutch support the lawbreakers when they are illicitly undercutting the upholders of the law (Caterer, 15 May)?

 

No one should support the scum of the industry who underpay their staff and then expect the customer to shell out the unrecorded 10-15% extra over the advertised price in order to give the staff a living wage.

 

John Jenkinson, Evesham hotel, Evesham, Worcestershire

 

Le Petit Blanc: question of balancing Yin and Yang…
I was interested to read your article "What went wrong at Le Petit Blanc?" (Caterer, 8 May).

 

There are more than 60 successful food service chains in the UK with 20 outlets or more, and not one is based on a concept linked to "fine dining" or "celebrity chefs".

 

Having investigated chains in depth, I suspect the prime reason for this lies in the different skills required for successful chain restaurants. Groups such as Le Petit Blanc rely heavily on artistic skills, while chains are essentially scientific in approach.

 

Success in chains comes from being able to analyse, measure and continually improve every action and sequence - menu, labour, use of equipment, table-turn, service, etc. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

 

This scientific approach can sit uneasily with those who view their skills as artistic, but to grow a small group such as Le Petit Blanc into a nationwide chain, the new owners are going to need to find a way of balancing this Yin and Yang.

 

Hugh Cade, Deterministics, Tring, Herfordshire

 

… in order to avoid the Fawlty Towers factor
It came to no surprise to me that Le Petit Blanc hit the buffers. My husband and I had a Fawlty Towers experience in the Cheltenham branch last September, with fire alarms going off because the wrong candles had been used on a birthday cake, food delivered not as per menu, untrained staff giving no clear direction and no manager on duty.

 

We were sent a letter of apology - with the phone number of a Cheltenham scaffolding firm on it.

 

We'd gone there thinking there might have been some semblance of a French tradition in the brasserie. We expected simple, well-cooked food served by willing staff.

 

How wrong we were - and so many other people have obviously voted with their feet, too.

 

Rosamund Young, Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire It's an elver argument
Michael McEnearney's appointment as head chef at Scott's restaurant in Mayfair, London, has been well received. Journalists were lured to the restaurant with the most powerful of baits: elvers (Review of the Reviews, Caterer, 1 May).

 

The British don't eat a lot of elvers - there aren't many about. And if they continue to be overfished, eels will become endangered.

 

It seems irresponsible of Scott's to exploit a potentially endangered species to fill the restaurant.

 

Christian Sandefeldt, Head Chef, The Aquarium, London

 

Should we have to put up with nudes on hotel walls?
I was concerned to read that Peter Tyrie, managing director of the Eton Group, is hanging large photos of naked women in 65 bedrooms in his new hotel, the Glasshouse in Edinburgh (Caterer, 29 May). After a tiring business trip I wouldn't want to be faced with a picture of a naked woman when relaxing in my room.

 

There have been major moves in recent years to make the female business client feel more relaxed and secure. This "real art" indicates that Peter is not aiming at the female business or visitor market, or families, which will limit his clientele. I'm not sure men want such pictures hanging there either. Will he put pictures of men showing their genitalia on the lounge walls?

 

I have written to Mr Tyrie about my concerns. Would he like his wife or daughter to be displayed on a hotel wall?

 

There's too much use of naked women to sell products without them being displayed in hotels.

 

Janet Salmon, Richmond, Surrey
Food education will lead to better society
Well done to Jeremy Ford ("What happened to home economics in schools?", Caterer, 15 May) for highlighting the fact that the current school curriculum pays lip service to food and cookery.

 

If you tackle the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), the response is that "food and cookery is covered in design and technology". However, it is our understanding that this module - which might include "how to design the packaging for a bar of chocolate" - may be taught at the discretion of the teacher and, even then, is allowed a wholly inadequate 40 minutes a week at best.

 

Also, there appears to be no provision for children in primary education to learn about food, and it is at this age when it is most effective.

 

The DfES is involved in various activities which are food-, cooking- and health-related, but much of these are paperwork-led and do little to meet the criteria of hands-on cookery.

 

The Academy of Culinary Arts has been running its own schools project, Adopt a School, since 1990. It relies on the goodwill, time and talents of our members and others in the industry who "adopt" a school and, through tasting and hands-on cooking, teaches and equips children with an understanding of ingredients, food provenance and healthy eating habits as a life skill.

 

If all children from an early age learnt about the food chain, from farm to plate - and the art of eating, which is about sitting around a table enjoying food together and learning to communicate - it would lead to the next generation of better informed people able to cook and therefore a better society both in terms of health and social welfare.

 

We all need to put pressure on the DfES and the Department of Health for the reintroduction of home economics to the curriculum.

 

Sara Jayne-Stanes, Director, Academy of Culinary Arts, Trustees Adopt A School Trust, London
For further information, please contact 020 8673 6300 - Ed.