Welcome to July – summer time in Britain – as I write this blog I am looking out of the window, the wind is howling, the rain blasting down, and people don’t think that environmental issues are changing our world!!

We have taken a decision as a company to move our car fleet into environmentally friendly 1.18 diesel cars that emit 119g/km and consume diesel at over 50 miles to the gallon. All those who need a motor vehicle to work within Host will get one (me included) when their cars come up for renewal, so we have got a little bit ‘greener’.

We are also moving our unit support programmes towards a ‘one set of wheels’ strategy (‘The One Plan’ = TOP Plan!), where we focus on the relationship between our unit and contract manager, and how we then deliver the additional support required at the unit within an environmentally sensible manner. All part of the larger HOPE (Host’s Operational Protection of the Environment) programme.

Our ‘TOP Plan’ is based on the triangular relationship between Client, Host and our Catering Manager, as shown here:
We are embracing this style of support into our business so we can reduce the miles (and therefore the emissions) that we are making as a company.

We have invested heavily in e-business over the last four years so that we can deliver technical support services to our managers, and as such the Matrix is now an integral part of our knowledge base and the answer to 95% of our manager’s questions.

The H-Team is also available between 8am to 6pm on a Monday to Friday basis, and out of hours/weekends there is a manager on duty who will take on board any issues.

That said, the critical HSE/HACCP and Food Safety responsibilities and systems that the company has in all our contracted sites continues apace, as does the central development of recipes, nutritional analysis, the e-training library, Caternet, the payroll interface, e-procurement, stock management, and now a new healthy eating initiative that is being championed by Neil Wightman –
The Health Club!

Please take a moment to read about Neil’s exciting innovation that he wants to take on as a project in his own right – he has lost quite a lot of weight as well – all we have to do now is get him to keep it off!

So how will we achieve our support strategy? How can we make sure that our clients are entirely protected at all times? Well, there is a Government initiative that is already helping us achieve this, and we are now tightening and increasing our minimum HSE/HACCP standards to create a far more visible scheme.

We believe that next year we will see a national ‘scores on the doors’ system for grading food businesses following an EHO inspection come into force. Local authorities are already running pilot schemes which some Host sites have been part of, with most achieving the 4 or even the top mark of 5 Stars, so well done them.

We are embracing this standard NOW, and including this into the SMILE project which is moving along to identify our standing operating procedures and to create a tailored ‘operator’ development programme. To show you how things are progressing, here we outline what a Host unit manager needs to know and develop and these areas are already being worked on to make sure that our people have the tools to achieve the targets that we set them in the future Host unit operation.

Michelle Roberts is heavily involved with the training development and Mike Chubb is busy upgrading our HSE/HACCP standards to get into synch with this new style of EHO judging of food premises – I am sure you will see lots of reaction in the Matrix, as well as within your team groups.

Again, Michelle is heavily involved with this part of the SMILE programme – next stop is our Contract Manager format within the ‘TOP Plan’, and then we start the process of development and continuous improvement as it swings out into the Host community. Watch this space for more as time goes by!

Regards

We did a smoothie week at Fox’s Kirkham last week and here are Sarah Kozlowski and Alison Dugdale & Lisa Little proudly showing the products. We provided a choice of 6 Smoothies consisting of Grapefruit Smoothie, Mondo Mango Smoothie, Great Grape Smoothie, Stress Reliever Strawberry Smoothie, Lemonade Smoothie and a Vitamin C Smoothie. They all sold really well especially the Vitamin C containing water melon, honeydew melon, strawberry and yogurt!

It was all happening at Christ College when the team catered for a VIP dinner where the CCB Head invited Moor Park School Head & Bursar beside some of both schools parents and pupils. The special menu created included:

"A huge thanks to Dan, Gwyn and Rob and all the team at Host for such a wonderful meal.  I'm afraid conversation virtually came to a standstill as fresh plates were placed in front of everyone as the food was so good. Many, many positive comments were uttered as our guests tucked in -  it was a great success and your attention to detail and professionalism was noted by many new and current parents. - thanks again for your efforts." Rhion Johnston - Christ College Foundation and Marketing Secretary

And Food Fair continued in fine form with Green tomato week, where pupils could try Salad Nicoise, Chicken Caesar Salad, Various home made quiches, tomatoes on the vine, peas in a pod (great to nibble on!) and much more! All fresh, all great!

Pierluigis was another success with Pasta Bolognaise, Hot smoked salmon and Dill Tagliatelli, Spaghetti Carbonarra, Penne with roasted vegetable in a tomato sauce, spaghetti with fresh tomatoes, black olives and Mozzarella, Penne with sundried tomatoes in a tomato and basil sauce, fresh Minestrone Soup, Bread Bar, No-cook Focaccia Pizza, fresh fruit salad and individual puddings.

The ‘Food for Thought' concept was still going strong throughout the exams period with positive comments fed back to the team like:

“The benefits of a determined, imaginative, and responsive catering team are obvious on a daily basis at Christ College. Theme days and recent innovations like the ‘Food for Thought’ project and the ‘FoodFair’ expand on and develop this in a way that typifies the interest and motivation of the Catering Manager, Daniel Zimmer, and his team. The overwhelmingly positive response of the pupils and staff in the school is a pleasing testimony to the success of such schemes.” Simon Spencer - Deputy Head

In the Midlands we’d like to say congratulations to Chris Harrison on his new management role at Gresham Office Furniture. Chris has been the Head Chef at DSGI and has made that big step on the Management Ladder. We wish him all the best.

PPG – Birstal held a BBQ on the 10th June and with glorious weather and freshly prepared food it was great success and we plan to hold them on a fortnightly basis throughout the summer (Weather permitting of course!).

Plenty of people were nominated this month which is fantastic, and I am sorry that we can’t put everyone up for the £50 reward to spend on a leisure pursuit for the Star and their partner – so please do nominate your special Host ‘Star’ for July – to do this go to the website (www.hostmgt.com) and simply click on the Stars hyperlink – it is really easy to do and we want to find those really great stories of Host personnel who are going the extra mile (that is kind of everyone, so get nominating)!

There are big congratulations to be passed onto the following ‘Stars’ for June:

Star Operator; Well done Simone Callaghan! Simone’s manager Kath Whyte at New Look said: ‘Simone arrives 30 minutes early and very often goes home 30 minutes late. She arrives early so that our customers are able to have a drink from the vending machines as these are very busy. She works well in the team and does most of the vending training, including our other site, keeping the machines very clean and stocked throughout the day. She is also active in the kitchen doing buffets, cakes and anywhere she can help out!’


Star Manager; Well done Maria Greenshield! Maria has been with Host for 3 years, starting as a sports tea chef at PGS, progressing to sous chef, becoming a relief manager and now getting her own unit, as well as playing an important part in the mobilisation process. A year ago she had never touched a computer, but instead of giving up she has persevered and improved her skills and can now even update the mobilisation plan on the matrix. Maria has come a long way since her days at PGS and is showing good signs of becoming a great manager. Maria is a 'Hostie' through and through, she loves the company and always wants to learn more and give everything she has.



Star HO teamster; Well done Craig Williams! Here is what some of his sponsors said of him: ‘You Know, no matter how much you throw at him, and however late it arrives on his desk, he always seems to come up trumps!’ ‘Craig is a bit of an unsung hero. He is always helpful & polite and willing to go that extra mile for people, but never makes a fuss about it, so it goes unnoticed. You can tell he is genuinely far too busy if he can't help with an issue and seems to feel bad about it even though he shouldn't. He's been of great help to me and my team recently, and I have also noticed that whenever we forward a unit request to him he always jumps on it as soon as possible.’ ‘He is always willing to help no matter how busy he may be. He is always smiling and is a very friendly person. A pleasure to have around the office and a hard worker.’

SA and Police warn of food fraud scam
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Hi everyone!

I know you will all be looking at my picture in disbelief that I am championing the Health Club as those who knew when I was in operations could not really call me that healthy (!), but I have found a very healthy lifestyle has suited me recently, and I am really keen to get involved with one of the programmes that is ongoing in the company.

With the emphasis on Funtastic Food that is happening for this September for the Prep Schools, I felt that the student, adult and elder generations should also be supported, hence my idea of ‘The Health Club’ in Host which is due to e launched at the same time as Funtastic Food.

The Health Club will also incorporate Funtastic, and is a programme designed to improve the ‘well being’ and ‘lifestyles’ of all our customers. The ‘Club’ will have three core objectives in terms of our customer requirements.

• To educate customers on the benefits of a healthy life style in terms of diet (mind and body) and exercise and how to best achieve those results.
  
  
• To enable our customers to make an informed choice on the products they purchase in terms of dietary / nutritional / RDA’s. (recommended daily allowances) at all Host restaurants, and
  
  
• To increase the well-being of our customers through life-style tips that they can follow as required.

Objective 1 – educating our customers
I see this taking the form of a Health Club ‘pocket guide’ that will cover all age groups and offer our customers information on the follow areas:

• Knowing your personal RDA’s and how to achieve them
• Knowing what to eat and why?
• Super foods and the benefits they can have in your diet
• Seasonal guide to foods and their benefits
• Knowing your limits – alcohol, caffeine, sugar, salt etc
• ‘5 a day’; clever ways of ensuring you meet the target
• A brief description and some facts on each food group, their benefits and how to ensure you cover the range (protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants)
• Weird and wonderful, some interesting facts and statistics on ingredients
• The effects and benefits of cooking correctly (maintaining nutritional benefits)

The whole program will be backed up with A4 posters printed from the Matrix covering all of the areas above and Harry can continue to recommend dishes on welcome boards with greater information provided to our customers.

Objective 2 - giving our customers Informed choices
We need to ensure any customer in a Host restaurant can be informed of the content of what they are about to eat. The ‘Balance’ nutritional analysis program is on time for launch in September in Caternet, so we can identify as much nutritional information as possible to customers in terms of RDA’s and nutritional information in the form of a traffic light system.

Food allergies will be included so customers are aware that we can tailor menus accordingly and support customers where required with specific menus and advice.

We will include a section on vegetarian / vegan food and how customers need to ensure the correct intake of minerals and proteins and how best to go about it. We will also include a section on simple exercises that can be completed at lunch time or even at your desk to help promote healthy life-style whilst at work or school, etc… and depending on your age group.

The central recipe database which is developing in the Balance system will cover all items that will appear within the ‘labeling system’. This will ensure we have consistency of healthy production, and our Chefs will continue to be trained on our Health Club ‘V8 tips’, following the recipes which means we can ensure that we are providing the correct nutritional information for our customer to make an informed choice.

Objective 3 - Life-style tips
This is where we see the Health Club developing a range of suggested life-style tips so that we can encourage our customers to perhaps change their habits at work, home and play, in order to turn the corner with their own targets.

There are many areas where we can develop a range of tips and we will be managing a page on the main Host web site as well as inputting to the newsreel and putting in a ‘Dieticians Diary’ and an ‘Ask Norma the Nutrition’ feature where our customers can make suggestions and ask questions of our professional dietician and nutritionist.

I am really looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into this challenge once I get back from my Boot Camp holiday (only joking)!!!

Neil Wightman

Looking around the sites, there are lots of exciting events going on, and what we have to master is the consistency and the structure of such events.

We have the executive chef putting ideas on the Matrix daily and we need to gather all of this information and share it with our clients and customers alike.

We need to embrace the Matrix more and share all of our experience and knowledge to help each other become successful. Currently the teams are developing training modules and business modules to help support our quest for excellence and you will be helping this development by sharing your experience.

And in P&P it’s great to share our successes with everyone, be it BBQ days and special events in partnership with our clients, like Summer Balls. It is really fantastic to see the pride in our teams when it is published in the P&P I am sure you will agree.

I would like us all to focus on getting familiar with the Matrix and using this powerful tool to help us on our journey to success.


Retail strategy; at Host we are very focused on creating the right ‘shopfront’ for our customers which includes the way our catering area looks, how it is promoted with various promotions and the way in which we display our food for sale to, or consumption by our customers (both cash taking and consumption units are covered on this plan).

To that end, we have worked hard recently on planograms to support the ever growing Matrix library that we have in promotions, incentives and loyalty ideas/schemes.

I have illustrated here the retail strategy model that we have developed and are currently rolling out into the operations (today’s management inductees who start their two day course this morning 1st July, will be testing this out for us!) - the rest of the activities are available in the Matrix, including various planograms and marketing zoning so you can set your counter up for extra sales and greater customer satisfaction with your promotions!

Please let us all know in P&P how you get on and what feedback you get from your customers and clients.

Douglas Wood

June has been a lively month for Caternet, focused around the CUBO (College & University Business Officers) conference held on the 18th and 19th June. It became the ideal opportunity to chat with colleges & universities about the control Caternet will give to their Catering operation, the features we have planned or what they would like to see.

The Caternet web site has been updated this month to include much more information about the system together with an online demo walking you through the main features.
We have also created the first Caternet glossy handout! This gives an overview of the system together with features we have under development in the coming months.

Major updates are in the pipeline for BAV reporting, to enable a much deeper analysis of historical data in the system to compare budget against actual right down to a single day! Plans are also in place to enable a ‘snapshot’ of this data to be taken for further analysis using tools we provide, or using your own tools outside of the system.

Nutritional analysis is coming on strongly – Gavin Roche (Host’s Executive Chef) has been a great help in providing a number of recipes for us to analyse further using the nutritional calculators we have created – and this will become the base for the ‘Caternet Cookbook’. Expect to see these recipes in the Matrix very soon!

Please let us know your feedback – we are always keen to find out about your experiences with Caternet, whether you wish to be a beta tester for some of our brand new developments or to discuss what the system can do for you. Just send an email to info@caternet.co.uk and we will be happy to help!

As you will have read in last month’s Pinch & Punch, I have taken on the role of Research Manager. Research is of massive importance to the company because the researchers gather information about companies with catering and find out who to speak to. We are really excited about kick starting our new campaign to cleanse our current database.

A fundamental part of research is finding out about new companies that have catering... this is where you come in!

The Effective Detective Campaign has been running for the last three years, however, there hasn’t ever been anyone specifically looking after it. All that is about to change! With the help of our new OSCAR database, we have a special Effective Detective field which means that I can keep a record of exactly the information that you give us. You will own the record and therefore are guaranteed the rewards during your employment with Host. Whenever we make the presentation and get the contract, you will always be rewarded.

Not only has the running of the campaign changed, but the also the amounts and range of incentives in order to make it more attractive and easy to earn extra money!

Host operates in business & industry, independent education, further and higher education, and the healthcare industry in care homes and hospices. When you are on your travels from home to work or in your leisure time, or just talking to friends it is surprising how many potential catering sales leads you will find out about if you ask the right questions! Someone might have heard of poor food being served at a local school or at work, perhaps a relative has an elderly Mum or Dad in a care home and they don’t enjoy the meals. Perhaps you have heard that a catering manager has left a particular local company or school, or as you go past a large building you see a dumpster and next to it are a lot of bread baskets!!

These are all signs and opportunities for you to earn money.

For each company name (with address and telephone number) you give us, that has catering and isn’t on our database, you will receive a £1 voucher (we will pay you in batches of £10 vouchers, so once you get going you cannot stop!!).
If you give us the company name as well as their current caterer and the correct decision maker contact within the company you get a £10 voucher instead of the £1 voucher.
Once you have given us this information, your name goes onto the record for your life at Host. This means that whenever we get an appointment there which leads to a presentation you will get a £250 voucher.
If this Presentation leads to a contract win you get a further £750 in vouchers.
In addition, if you give us some new information about a company, which we already had on our database, which leads to an appointment (about a change of Decision Maker, that they are very unhappy with their contractor etc.) You get a £50 voucher! So if you get information on someone else’s record (or someone gives us information on a record that you own), both parties are rewarded.

You will now be rewarded with ‘Love2Shop’ vouchers. This voucher is accepted by 75 retailers, nationwide, including Boots, New Look, River Island, HMV, Comet, WH Smith, Woolworths, Homebase, and over 200 travel companies including Thomas Cook.

This is a fantastic opportunity to earn a large amount of vouchers that you can spend on anything from a pair of socks to an LCD TV, from a family meal to a family holiday. Whether you want to fill your fridge or your wardrobe is completely up to you!
 
All you need to do is find out the information and then email me at...
effective.detective@hostmgt.com, or go onto The Matrix Effective Detective page, or just come through the web site at www.hostmgt.com  and fill in your information. We promise to get back to you within 24 hours of receiving the information so do not forget to give your contact details!

Happy Hunting,
Bertie Day

The H-Team now has fully functioning support forums available through the Matrix. On these forums we will endeavour to find a subject expert to assist unit managers or answer ourselves any queries we receive on the forum.

To find support please visit:
https://matrix.caternet.co.uk/helpme/faq/Lists/Support%20Forum/AllItems.aspx


H-Team Tip of the Month – Email Etiquette Rules

Sometimes it’s hard to understand what someone really wants from an email, just as much as it is very easy to misread or take the content of an email the wrong way. The H-Team thought we should give you a quick guide to making the most of your emails, to ensure that you get the right message across every time.

As a nation we are continually increasing the number of emails we send and receive and this makes it much easier to get it wrong; but, by following the simple guidelines below and ensuring the email needs to be sent in the first place we can help ourselves and each other.

Be concise and to the point - Do not make an e-mail longer than it needs to be. Remember a long e-mail can be very discouraging to read.

Do not write in CAPITALS - IF YOU WRITE IN CAPITALS IT SEEMS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. This might trigger an unwanted response; therefore, try not to send any email text in capitals.

Read the email before you send it - A lot of people don't bother to read an email before they send it out, so reading your email through the eyes of the recipient will help you send a more effective message and avoid misunderstandings and inappropriate comments.

Use a meaningful subject - Try to use a subject that is meaningful to the recipient as well as yourself. It is very easy to not use the subject at all but this could help your email be answered efficiently as it is easy to see what you are requesting.

Use cc: field sparingly - Try not to use the cc: or ‘copy to’ field unless you really need to; using the cc: field can be confusing since the recipients might not know who is supposed to act on the message.

Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation - This is not only important because improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give a bad impression, it is also important for conveying the message properly. E-mails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can sometimes even change the meaning of the text. And, if your program has a spell checking option, why not use it?

PLEASE SEND IN YOUR IDEAS AND ANY SUGGESTIONS HERE- WE WILL ENDEAVOUR TO ANSWER ALL YOUR QUERIES/QUESTIONS!