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Hi, I'm Simon McNamara, I'm executive chef at Canterbury Leagues Club. A couple of things
I'd like to touch on today were having a great relationship with your suppliers, setting
them guidelines, setting them parameters, being very specific with your purchasing,
and varying what you buy and how many supplies you buy from each of them.
Don't give everybody the monopoly in having your business and make sure you came on top
of them and what they're delivering to you. That's a very important thing.
Something else I'd like to touch on, it's also very important that, to have a good procedure
in your loading dock, make sure you have good purchasing staff, when you're checking the
deliveries has been to your specifications when they delivered, go through open up your
boxes, make sure that your count is correct, make sure what you ordered is correctly there,
and if there is anything, chase it up with your suppliers, make sure they have a good
system for sending you credits or they're nice and efficient in replacing the goods
to you as soon as they possibly can are very important things for food purchasing.
To keep in touch with your suppliers, have regular meetings with them, discuss what's
new on the market, make sure your suppliers are working for you - I think that's very
important - make sure they're getting the best deal they can from their suppliers, get
them emailing you - that's probably the best way to being in touch I find myself, the email
is in front of me, I have to read it, whereas if I write it down a piece of paper generally
gets lost during the day - very important to keep those lines of communication and most
of all, make sure the suppliers work for you - I think that's a really good point.
I think one of the most important things for having a good kitchen is having a happy kitchen.
Make sure your guys, you reward your guys if they do a good job.
The importance of putting good meals on the table, I think the best thing is hve good
recipes, taste your food, check your food, go back through and have procedures in place
so your guys making sure there's a good system product.
I think the biggest challenge for kitchens these days is producing a consistent product.
Your customer needs to know that when the next time they come back, they're gonna get
the same meal, it doesn't matter who's cooking, it's gotta be the same. So, producing a good
meal is important, it starts with good quality ingredients, that comes again from your suppliers,
good cooking techniques, making sure your staff are well-trained, and a bit of seasoning,
and a bit of love, really, put it on the plate and the way it goes, and having a good, friendly
staff that's good to your customers - I think that's also important because they are the
face of your business as well. The chefs might be at the back of the house but it's the plate
that will have to face your business and then your sales people, they have to make sure
your customers are happy. I also do agree that it's very important to customers never
leave the business unhappy, we certainly maintain that as well. We'd much rather fix the problem
while things are in the club than have to ring you the next day and discuss the problem
with you after you've left. So, if we could solve it before you get out of the building,
that's a big challenge for us and that's very important for us to make sure we do that.