EVENT PREVIEW: The Caterer Middle East Conference

The Caterer Middle East Conference: Food & Business is scheduled to be held on March 18, 2014, at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC, and its agenda, as always, is of great importance.

To decide the topics that would be of most interest to the dynamic and constantly evolving F&B sector, an advisory panel met on January 15, 2014, to debate and discuss pressing concerns that needed to be addressed.

These included: Gates Hospitality CEO Naim Maadad, Whissle Group co-founder Markus Thesleff, Capital Club Dubai executive chef Cyrille Troesch, The Cutting Edge Agency founder Duncan Fraser-Smith, and Lafayette Gourmet culinary director Russell Impiazzi.

At the end of the discussion, a whole host of relevant issues were discussed, with a lot of input on what chefs and culinarians want to talk about at the upcoming conference. While a few new topics have been raised this year, there have been recurring concerns that only seem to have gotten worse over time.

Mid-market vs fine dining
One of the first issues to be discussed was the mid-market versus fine dining scene — Maadad and Troesch pointed out there is an issue with a stagnant audience in the high-end restaurant market, and then added that there is a need for a “mid-market revamp”.

The high-end market has become crowded and focus has been taken away from mid-range establishments. The UAE, said the experts, needs more affordable restaurants that can still deliver quality food.

Troesch said: “With most of the high end outlets, you will easily spend AED 700. Where do we go now ... at the middle level with high-end qualities but staying around the AED 300-400 mark? There’s not a big market for that yet.”

Maadad added: “We’re 10 steps faster than any other market. We have gone straight to the Hakkasans of this world rather than developing Ginger Boys and Wagamamas. We went straight from one to 10 and now we are going backwards.”

Fraser-Smith agreed and said good food needs to be the focus of the F&B industry, with a shift to ingredients rather than accompanying frills. However, he pointed out that there is a conscious shift away from chef-driven restaurants.

He said: “We are moving away from chef-branded outlets. In order for a chef to be very good at running a restaurant, they need to be a restaurateur first, and a chef second. If you don’t understand the business model you won’t succeed in the delivery.”

Brands were another contentious topic — with the constant harping on about ‘home-grown’ and ‘local’, is it even easy for original brands to survive? Maadad said not. “Everybody wants a brand, especially landlords; nobody want my business concept because they want the brand above their door rather than deliver a service.

That’s impacting our business and our dining habits,” he said. He further said that local brands are not getting a fair chance, and are often relegated to getting the second pick of great locations.

“We need to cultivate home-grown brands here. Dubai has done replication brilliantly for the last five to seven years ... let’s create now and build from scratch,” said Fraser-Smith.
Troesch agreed and added: “Dubai is ready as the place to launch home-grown brands.

We have talented F&B people who can invest in creating new concepts. But you are fighting international brands, who will give you the chance to develop something? Will hotels invest in something standalone or prefer to get an international concept?”

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It’s still the big R
Labour retention and the dirty little secret of poaching was tackled. “Poaching has got to stop in this industry, it is rampant,” said Fraser-Smith. The experts then discussed labour contracts and how to protect themselves from this practice.

“What are we doing as an industry to pick the industry up, to make it a better destination for residents and tourists?” asked Thesleff. He pointed out that poaching brings the overall average quality down. How do companies secure labour force and foster loyalty?

Quality was a major point. “The level of service is a big problem in Dubai wherever you go, and the level of training and staff is poor compared to the food quality,” said Troesch.

There are also high levels of turnover in the high-end market. Troesch said that companies need to wise up and realise that they can either lose their staff, or keep them with value-added incentives like training programmes and other kinds of rewards.

One of the methods used to keep labour forces is promoting before people are qualified to move up the career ladder. Restaurants are promoting internally without ensuring proper experience and qualification which leads to high turnover and low standards across the industry.

“Someone resigns and you react rather than offering a training course. You give people the next best position purely by default rather than if they deserve it,” said Maadad.

Impiazzi agreed and said this practice was not conducive to the industry. “People are moving up too quickly and within no time a commis chef becomes a sous chef,” said Impiazzi.

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Supplier Issues
To no one’s surprise, the relationship between restaurants and suppliers came up. Fraser-Smith dangled the possibility of direct sourcing to get his colleagues’ input. Was the idea of such a practice worth it?

“For me direct sourcing does one of two things. One, it gives you access to better quality product, and two, it keeps the local imports and suppliers competitive in their rates,” said Fraser-Smith.

“We speak to a lot of new chefs coming to open restaurants here and the first thing they say is, ‘we are going to get all our produce from France’ and we have a little chuckle because we know they are going to have a very hard time making that happen.”

But is it possible to do so? One of the challenges is that you need to have a certain volume in order to make it worth it and you have to have HACCP permissions to store the product.

“If you want foie gras, for example, you speak to a supplier in France and say, ‘I want 10kg a week’, then he is just going to laugh at you,” said Troesch. Fraser-Smith jumped in at this point and put forward the idea of hotels and restaurants forming ‘co-operatives’.

“Okay, if we all order foie gras let’s build a cooperative around the ability to direct source whether foie gras or truffles. We order 100 kilos a week and distribute it out,” he suggested.

Maadad disagreed and said the industry is not strong enough to do so. “We’re not that keen yet, and I think operators want to compete rather than co-operate.”

They all also said that receiving product from suppliers is a challenge as sometimes the receiving clerk, mainly at hotels, is not properly trained on what to accept and what to send back — which is another nod to the lack of standards and training in the industry.

Thesleff said some sous chefs will even accept low quality product, because they are scared of telling their head chef or GM and think they’re letting the team down.

Impiazzi however, said his chefs send product back because they have been trained to judge what is good quality, and encouraged to take decisions. He said: “We need to define the line between cost, quality and operational issues.”

However, Impiazzi said the relationship with suppliers is a two-way street. “You have to be transparent with them as well.”

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Legislation
Laws of the land are obviously an important consideration when setting up in the F&B industry. However, our experts pointed out they need more support to ensure they are following all the rules set in place. They suggested setting up a hotline for clarification of guidelines, with a need for streamlining of information about opening restaurants, and the rules and regulations.

“It would be good if DTCM or DM put together a proper online system with maybe a hotline to get things clarified. Because what I find is I get conflicting feedback,” said Thesleff.

Everyone called for transparency in the setting up process and were keen to talk to the authorities about how to make it easier for restaurateurs and owners to open.

New trends
One of the latest moves to hit the block is the practice of promoting executive chefs to F&B director positions — some said this was inefficient because of differences in those fields. Chefs are classically trained to cook, not deal with administrative issues, and there needs to be a push for more traditional separation of roles.

“There are more and more chefs in F&B director positions, which is new here compared last year,” said Thesleff. Fraser-Smith said they need to understand the business model as a restaurateur over anything else. “The way they are being trained is to perform in a kitchen environment,” said Maadad.

Impiazzi, however, said he thought it was important to get involved in all aspects of the business. “The guy in the back needs to know more about the front; times have changed,” explained Impiazzi.

Maadad and Thesleff both said the move is reflective of a cost-cutting exercise — but all agreed that chefs are now wielding more power than F&B directors in decision-making.

Either way, Impiazzi concluded by saying it’s important to encourage people to join the industry and be open-minded. “New ideas are considered a threat, and they are not,” he said.