Kitchens and tech

In my view, the future of hospitality hinges on how we evolve our kitchens. As ready meals get better, and delivery from dark kitchens improves, we need to make sure the food from our kitchen team is up to scratch.  

For me, there is a risk that over time some kitchens, maybe many of them, are seen as the modern version of a coal mine; hot, dark, and a bit frantic. Of course, a great kitchen is none of those things, but the perception remains.  

In order to avoid this becoming our reality, we need to establish a strong competitive advantage, which I believe resides in several crucial areas. The first and most obvious advantage is great cooking. The skills of a talented chef are unparalleled, and no one can match the artistry and precision that a master in the kitchen brings to the table. The value of a great chef goes beyond just the taste of the food. Like a fine wine, the expertise and creativity of a skilled chef command a premium, and people are increasingly willing to pay for this experience. We are able to deliver high-quality meals which set us apart in a crowded market. 

The second advantage comes down to our equipment. Our kitchens are equipped with sous vide machines, deep fat fryers, chargrills, and rationales, among other advanced tools. These sophisticated pieces of kit enable us to produce food of a better quality, far beyond what can be achieved with standard home cooking appliances. Even if the operator’s skill isn’t at a first-class level, the capabilities of this equipment ensure consistently excellent results. 

And then there’s the crucial advantage of the freshness of our ingredients. I couldn’t count how many times I have been at home and have failed to add dill, yoghurt, or an ingredient I have never heard of in the latest Ottolenghi cookbook, simply because I do not have them to hand. For me, this kind of situation highlights the big difference between home cooking and a professional kitchen. In our kitchens, we have a wide array of fresh ingredients readily available every day. This constant access to fresh, high-quality ingredients makes a huge difference in the dishes we produce. 

So, what are the challenges, and how can we improve the future of our kitchens? Several things need to evolve in the next few years to achieve this. First of all, I think the supply chain needs to take on more responsibility for preparing dishes that hold well over time. For example, making a Boeuf Bourguignon doesn’t necessarily need to be done in a central kitchen or on-site; much of it can be efficiently handled by machines. The real challenge lies in how manufacturers can adapt to small-scale, bespoke production, but fortunately, some are already starting to do it. 

The dishes we serve must be better than the store-bought M&S version! Our goal should be to add the finishing touches. We add the parsley, make it look good on the plate, and then serve it with a smile and a lovely glass of red. 

Ticket management has typically been one of the most challenging skills in the industry. Managing three tickets simultaneously is common, but handling more than five is rare and exceptional. While ticket management systems are evolving, they are typically used by operators with multiple sites or very large spaces. What we need is a simpler form of ticket management that everyone can use, regardless of their operation’s size. Will we ever see the end of the tab grab? Only time will tell. 

Ordering should be simple, but it often requires a level of technology that many of us still lack. Achieving a system where the correct amount of fish is ordered based on actual usage, and where we process larger fish to meet a standard specification, is still a work in progress. But, if we could receive the right food at the right time, with the system advising us on what to cook, life in the kitchen would certainly be a lot easier. 

Working on these three areas would undoubtedly transform our kitchens for the better. There would be less work to do, lower stress levels, and lower numbers. Efficiency would be optimised by shifting more responsibilities vertically to tech suppliers and food manufacturers, allowing us to streamline our operations and enhance overall productivity. 

All of this is not to say that there wouldn’t still be some challenges in running our kitchens. However, I think that these changes would allow us to focus on our key advantages and deskill the less important areas of our kitchen, which seems to be the most important next push for the industry. 

Set it and forget it: How template rotas make labour management effortless  

One of the most frustrating elements of management in hospitality is the drift in labour cost. After a huge amount of effort working with the team to get to the right cost for a week, including NI and holiday, holding to the same labour cost in subsequent weeks seems to undo itself at a more rapid rate than we are happy with. 

We all hope that we can leave labour management alone to run itself for a few weeks (or maybe months), before revisiting the site and resetting the numbers. Having to go back to it early and rework it, undermines the focus and energy we put into streamlining the process in the first place. And ultimately, it leaves us with a sinking feeling and a bit of resentment for the team running the site, because we feel they could have done a better job managing it all.  

Our hospitality bones want to focus on service and sales growth, leaving labour management to run itself and not require too much of our time. This is possible, but the process needs to become more routine and more consistent first. How? One way I have found works well is using rota templates.  

If we put a load of effort into getting the rota right, we then want it to be repeated. Writing a rota is hard: deciding when people start, and how many you need is vital. But we also have to take a different approach to the ‘who’ and ‘when’ for each day of the week.  

The person who is best at line cleaning might always need to come in early on a Wednesday; the manager might always need to work on a Monday because there is a head office meeting, and then there’s the kitchen. Someone might work on a Thursday because they prepare the desserts for the weekend, and another might be the best at carving the Sunday meat. These intricacies all play a part in gross profit – in fact, there are more to consider before we even get to the simpler ones, like how many hours and on which days. 

Once you have considered all of the people and their particular skills and foibles, you can decide where an hour can be removed here and there. And, just as importantly, you have planned a rota that is economic for your business. 

Typically, a rota can flex up by 15% without needing any more people if the sales spread relatively evenly across the week. So, a rota for a £20k week will be pretty solid, up to say, £23k. 

In reality, not many rotas need to be written to optimise your business. If I take my own restaurant, there has been a £10k spread in sales across all the weeks of the year. The only exceptions are the very highest weeks, like Christmas, or whenever there’s special events and bank holiday weeks. But, generally, 5 templated rotas will run most of the year for the business. 

When I look at our customers, I find them gravitating towards starting from scratch, even when we have spent time writing the rota with them. Inevitably, these rotas cost more and have a negative impact on sales because they don’t consider all of the nuances that are required.  

This process doesn’t just apply to the rota – the same goes for your shift planner. A well-written shift planner will include all the detail needed to run your specific business really well: the right people in the right places and the critical float roles utilised effectively and with the right purpose. Having no shift planner equals a poorly run shift, as the team are not clear on what they are doing. Shift planning remains the key to a great team, great retention, great service and great productivity. 

Too often, I find that businesses treat the shift plan as an afterthought. Writing a plan for, say, 6-on shift is the best approach, as you can then add the 6 team members to that plan, rather than the other way round. The same goes for using templates – they will massively reduce the drift in cost because the basic principles are agreed first. Together, the two create a first-class business! 

Gen Z and Hospitality: A call to action for leaders 

A recent topic that seems to come up often when I talk to industry colleagues is the appalling damage covid has done to Gen Z. For a while there has been much talk of the academic damage done, but less energy is focused on the social damage, particularly when it comes to the implications it has had upon them entering the workforce.  

If you are currently employing 16–20-year-olds, you are dealing with a generation that were between 12-16 when the pandemic began. School closures, remote learning, and social distancing measures completely rid them of face-to-face interactions for a long time. Of course, this led to an increase in social anxiety and discomfort in real-world settings. For many Gen Z workers, the prospect of engaging with customers, colleagues, and supervisors in person is really daunting. And, of course, within our industry, the need for social skills when entering the workforce is essential! 

As an industry, we see it in the people we recruit. Our teams struggle with some basic engagement skills; eye contact, initiating conversation and smiling, among others. As operators, we are having to work much harder than we did pre-covid to help young people through this journey. And we must – our industry survives on young people and improves the lives and capability of so many. It also helps people to develop essential life skills. 

This is unprecedented territory for us all – how do we help? From talking to others in the industry, I know there has been a focus on teaching conflict resolution and better customer service etiquette, whether that is through mentoring, or role-playing different scenarios. The other big one is opening up communication, to create an environment where employees feel comfortable asking for advice or discussing challenges, whether it be job-specific or general social competencies.  

We rely on young people in our businesses, so we want to encourage and support them so we can retain them. Gen Z are tech-savvy, quick learners, and often more open to change and innovation than older generations. I find that these traits can be really undervalued by leaders, but in our post-pandemic world, they need more recognition – particularly now we are increasingly relying on digital solutions and service models everywhere! 

In our pubs, I always enjoy it when I see the younger members of the team getting dropped off in a nice Range Rover. Their parents could easily afford to give their children the money they are earning. But instead, they recognise that working, particularly in hospitality, gives them much more. For starters: a work ethic, an ability to understand the value of money, an ability to talk to other people and engage with different generations in a meaningful way. These skills are invaluable and cannot be taught by staying at home or by asking mum and dad to fund your life every weekend!  

And beyond this, I think that our industry is now more important to UK plc than it has ever been. It would be great if, at some point, the government stopped taxing us to the hilt, and instead helped drive an industry that prepares people for the working world in a way that school, or even university, cannot. It is real work, with real customers and real expectations. 

I heard recently that hospitality employs over three million people. But given the high staff turnover, the percentage of young people that are in some way involved and moulded by hospitality is immense. An incredible number of the people I meet have, at one point in their journey, worked in hospitality, even if it was only for a summer.  

We need more recognition for the job we do, and more support for helping people through this journey. One-to-ones and coffee chats are all part of the training journey, but I think that one of the most important things is praising people when they do a good job. This is the reinforcement people need to try harder, be braver and challenge their fears. 

I do not think I am alone in believing that our standards have dropped since covid. We are all working hard to build back and get to the levels we want, and even to go beyond that. Of course, many things have changed due to covid, but with change also comes a real opportunity for hospitality leaders to shape a more resilient and capable workforce. So, get to it! 

RFI documents- Help or Hindrance?

As a business, we often have the onus put on us to fill in an RFI document for our software. For those of you lucky enough never to have encountered this task, it is a document built by a company to ensure they get the right specification for the product they are trying to buy, and that it does everything that is required. 

In theory it is a great idea. Essentially, you are writing a list of what you want and then ensuring that the supplier delivers. What could go wrong? Several things, actually.  

The first risk is that you learn an immense amount through the buying process. When you begin this process, you start with some key objectives – what are you looking to achieve and what specific functionality will help you to get there? But as you delve into different solutions, you learn the different capabilities of suppliers and the things they offer that you may not have thought to specify. So how do you adjust your list? Do you start the whole process again, with a new, longer list, or do you ignore what you have learnt?  

It is likely that in this process, you keep adding to the functionality, and end up asking for everything that you might possibly want. But these lists do not necessarily bag you the best supplier. A company that does the basics excellently and has a great track record may be dumped for someone who skims the surface. The supplier might tick a box; they might say they do something, but knowing whether or not it really works is a pretty tough ask. That is where reputation matters more than anything else.  

I think there are a couple of areas where it is hard to make this judgement; service and ease of use. I was talking to a new customer this week (which is what prompted me to write this article), who told me of a supplier that came top of their RFI process, but there was so little customer service that operational issues could never be resolved. Saying and doing customer service are two different things. And of course, how do you judge ease of use?  

The easiest system to use is the one you use currently, and the further a system deviates from this the harder it will be to use. You therefore can’t really judge a system for a while. I call it the day 1 versus the day 21 test. If something is still frustrating at day 21, it is an issue. 

I have saved my biggest point until last, and that is benefits. An RFI can articulate features, and test against them to a degree, as outlined above, but it can’t assess the benefits. The benefits are all around where you are on your journey, how willing you are to adopt best practise habits, and how your supplier can help change those habits. This isn’t normally in a document anywhere. There are plenty of well-documented examples of great new systems being introduced, only for the company to stick with the old system and work around the new system, creating even more work. On top of this, the departments further away from the change process are even harder to create the change in. 

However, benefits are the only reason for the change in the first place, and all these benefits, in a perfect world, need to be set out, and articulated. Cost saving benefits are easy to create in theory, but practically driving out the cost is far harder. Saving 25% of a job probably saves no job at all. Sales growth is of course the easy way – I wish I had a pound for the number of times a supplier has articulated the benefits in extra pints sold per day! 

So, am I saying that RFI processes should be abandoned? I think I am. I think we should try to move to a world where we have requests for benefits, with those benefits being articulated through a short number of key items. 

For example, we moved from using Mailchimp within our restaurant business last year to using a hospitality-based system. It has taken some time to set up and get going, and we still have some way to go on getting all the automations set-up and optimised, but the benefits are really clear. We are now able to send out customer e-mails (yes – our audience still responds best to e-mail, and we get a 40% open rate) incredibly easily and frequently. Since we started, our growth rate has increased. As always in this industry, we have to be incredibly focused on the projects that grow sales or save cost.

How single sites can be their best

As I journey around the industry, I am fascinated by who is successful and who is not. In particular, I love to see the success that single sites can have. My sister and her husband run a very successful single site near York (The Alice Hawthorn for those who know it – John is an amazing chef!) I was even more surprised when my sister said that she enjoyed reading my articles – and not just because she never compliments me! It is true that some people are just great single site operators – they have their own procedures and routines, and for the most part, tend to stick to them.  

I have recently been talking to another single site operator quite close to me in Harrogate. They have no wish to be a multiple, either because they earn enough money, or are settled in how their lives work, hopefully it is both. As I observe single sites though, I find that their biggest challenge is how they avoid getting set in their ways, and how they seek out best practice.  

Reading, attending conferences, and having a good network of similar local business is important, and should never be underestimated. So is using suppliers and even the ‘dirty’ word, consultants. Some of the above are free, and some cost money, whether that is time away from the business, or the cost of employing someone else. 

The hard bit when you are a single site operator is challenging yourself to get better, to try and change, and try things that might not work. The danger is that slowly but surely you become less competitive and less profitable until it is too late and the cash to be brave has run out. And, sometimes, this should also happen right at the start of your journey.  

I am constantly frustrated by newcomers to the industry who listen too much to their head chef, and run a menu and a cost structure that doesn’t work! These are probably two of the biggest risks for single site operators: going into a business with some key skill gaps and relying on the wrong people, and then having a successful business and not initiating enough change. 

We want to help operators recognise where their operations may need to be adapted and show them the best ways to enact these adjustments. This is why we decided to launch an operational excellence programme on labour management for single sites. We are also keen to help facilitate more programmes on the subject matters that we are not experts in, because we understand the value of shared knowledge. We are constantly learning new ways to help operators to be their best and plan to continue doing so.  

I really hope that we can help a nation of single site operators become better and better. 

Labour Training

I read an article in Propel recently on the lack of training in the hospitality sector. Research from the Economics Foundation suggests that spending on training has reduced by 35%, and that this is leading to a reduction in productivity. 

I often find myself wanting to challenge perspectives on anything related to how our teams operate, but usually good judgement gets the better of me. In this case, I am not sure whether I want to challenge the article or put more colour on the detail. Either way, I hope it is ok to continue, and I won’t offend. 

My first point is that we have had a revolution in the hospitality training environment over the last decade. Fifteen years ago, face-to-face training was the norm, and online training was a minority sport. This made training very expensive, and I suspect it was therefore done very sparingly. Now, online training is how nearly everyone works, particularly for the easier items to train. It has probably cut the cost of training by more than 35%, I would guess by nearer 90% for the same activity. So, our efficiency and productivity in this regard has improved substantially, and a reduction of 35% in total spend probably means we are doing much more training than we used to. 

But we need to also consider what is being trained. Compliance courses are a necessity, and it is essential that people are trained to ensure they don’t hurt themselves or break the law. I think we are pretty good at that. I also think the training industry has been pretty good at developing further skills courses, be it wine knowledge or conflict management. I hope here our skills are much better, but I would still argue not good enough. 

The article makes the attempt to link the lack of training to poor productivity growth, which of course, is of much more interest to me. At S4labour, we are seeing a massive increase in our requests for training. For the most part, perhaps even all, it is focused on productivity increases. I am also pleased to say that in the more complex world of labour management, it is mainly face-to-face, and in groups. Face-to-face means you know when you need to dig deeper or explain more because you haven’t gotten your point across, or that you can see in the body language that there is some level of resistance. Training in groups means that the team all learn from each other and develop best practices together. 

Despite these initial efforts, I think it is fair to say that productivity improvement across the industry has been poor. We haven’t really embraced change in this area, and too many of us are relying on the ways we learned 30 years ago. Best practise is improving quickly and will accelerate further in the next few years. 

It of course requires us to change what we have always done. It is a sobering fact that at least 25% of our total labour cost is wasted. At a time when every £1,000 counts, this is still a big opportunity for the industry, and I think it is time to set harder targets and help people become even better. Cutting out the waste through great analysis and good techniques, combined with great facetoface training will get us a long way!