The third Caterer Middle East Food & Business Conference, being held at The Ritz-Carlton DIFC on March 18, 2014, will address the biggest concerns facing the F&B industry today, from the need for a mid-market restaurant revival through to dealing with suppliers, while maintaining quality and service standards

The Caterer Middle East Food & Business Conference is back in its third avatar, which puts together an agenda bursting to the seams with interactive panel discussions, workshops, and case study presentations.

The event builds on the success of the last conference, where 153 executive chefs and food & beverage directors came together to discuss the opportunities for growth and to debate key challenges facing the UAE culinary industry over the next 12 months.

Story continues below
Advertisement

This year an advisory panel debated and discussed at length what the issues immediately relevant to the industry are, and the final programme reflects the current and future concerns in the sector.

The UAE needs to start thinking about catering to the mid-market, and one of the discussion panels will look at how businesses can search for a middle ground.

During the UAE boom we saw an influx of high-end establishments open and flourish, however the market is now saturated with exclusive restaurants with only a small percentage of the total population able to frequent such expensive eateries on a regular basis.

The UAE needs more affordable restaurants that can still deliver quality food — but how to go about re-vamping the mid-market venue? Our panelists will tackle this issue head on.

Up next we will see industry heavyweights including Atlantis, The Palm senior vice president Mark Patten, and JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai director of culinary Sebastian Nohse talk about the issue of whether chefs can enter the business realm and run their own restaurants.

In recent years we have seen a number of executive chefs promoted to F&B director positions in the UAE, ergo, the birth of ‘chef & B’s’.

This has arguably seen a model for business and creative success, but is it possible for chefs to handle and succeed at the business side of running a restaurant, or should executive chefs remain in the kitchen and leave the F&B directors to the administration? We expect strong opinions from this one.

Article continues on next page ...