Recently, I got tickets to Oliver! at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. It was a great show, and the opening number
got me thinking about something. Food!
In particular, glorious food.
My background is in four- and five-star hotels. I’m passionate about great food and in this
industry, it’s important to be so because increasingly, so is the customer.
When I meet with event planners, I invariably hear
about their concerns about the price being right and the space being
appropriate. The service is key and as I
illustrated in a previous entry to this blog, so are customer concerns about
the environment and corporate social responsibility.
But it’s the food that is the common thread
throughout. Buyers almost always want
reassurance about the quality of food their delegates will receive. And why
not? Happy delegates (and productive
delegates) are well fed delegates. Let’s
face it, if we have to attend a meeting or a conference, it’s the lunch we secretly
all look forward to the most.
As a group, we are consistent in our approach to
sourcing our ingredients from carefully selected, nominated suppliers. They’re all based locally in the UK and most
of them are Freedom Food Approved. In
fact, we’re the first UK hotel company to subscribe to the RSPCA’s Freedom Food
scheme.
For example, we only use 21-day aged Scotch Beef
that is fully traceable to its point of origin. Our pork is produced to the British Meat Quality Standard and it’s free
range and outdoor reared. Our white fish
is wild and caught from sustainable sources around the UK.
What’s more, this doesn’t just extend to the food
we serve in our restaurants but also to our working conference lunches.
Why is this important? Well, today’s customer is a sophisticated
customer. As a population, we’re ever
more aware of issues surrounding sustainability and food provenance and we each
take a careful approach to the food we buy ourselves, so why would we expect
any different when we stay in a hotel? I
remember even quite recently, that conference delegates were often satisfied
with a simple sandwich buffet with chips.
That’s not the case these days. Heston, Jamie, Delia and Hugh et al have
turned us into a nation of foodies with high expectations and as a company
which is proud to lay claim to a heritage of quality, it is only fair that we
meet these expectations face on.
So we’ll continue to be as passionate as we always
have been with our food, and we’ll hopefully continue to see many a happy
delegate in our hotels.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
