We need forward thinking to address our industry’s challenges

We need forward thinking to address our industry’s challenges

Ryan Holmes, Culinary Director at Eurest and 14Forty

We are in the midst of what newspapers are calling a hospitality staffing crisis, as businesses struggle to attract and retain the right talent. As the third largest business sector in the UK, it is imperative that every employer within hospitality finds ways to inspire and attract future generations to the industry. The challenges are immense, clearly, but it falls to those of us who love this sector with a passion and really appreciate its potential to spread the word.

Creating the industry leaders of tomorrow

We have teamed up with world-renowned chef Marcus Wareing to teach the next generation of chefs the all-important skills they’ll need to become tomorrow’s leaders and innovators.

Launched in August 2021, our ‘Forward With Marcus Wareing’ programme has been designed as an enhanced course to run alongside a Level 4 Senior Culinary Chef or Level 5 Operations Departmental Manager apprenticeship.?

Focus areas include sustainability, creating a more diverse kitchen brigade in terms of ethnicity and gender, developing mental-first-aider skills, mentoring, and analysis of different leadership styles and outcomes.

Despite the challenges we face, there’s still so much we can do to question, challenge, innovate and create. The opportunities are endless. For ambitious, thirsty and inventive people I can think of few sectors that offer as much scope.

Reinventing the food chain

Marcus, who everyone knows as a judge on MasterChef and as the chef-owner of Marcus, the Michelin-starred restaurant in London’s Knightsbridge, is committed to giving back to the industry. He wants to teach the next generation of chefs, culinary directors and catering executives to understand what ‘the best’ looks like.

Something that Marcus and I both understand is that without the patience and commitment of people higher up the ‘food chain’ when we started out, we wouldn’t have felt empowered to reach our true potential. Everyone involved understands that this is how we will create strong foundations for the future. We want to remind upcoming chefs that this has the capacity to be the most fabulous and exciting career, and it can take you all over the world.

The goal is to put 15 chefs through the programme, help them to reach all their objectives – and then support them in doing the same for the next generation.

For this project to have legs, we needed to take an almost forensic approach to its creation. We have pushed hard to build something different, and the course structure has been through many iterations. No doubt it will continue to evolve as it progresses.

‘Forward With Marcus Wareing’, which runs for two years and takes in a new cohort every eight months, demands real commitment from everyone involved, especially the apprentices. For that reason, it’s no easy ride to get accepted.

Chefs need to be nominated by their culinary director, or equivalent role, and there’s a gruelling panel interview with Marcus and myself to see whether they will have what it takes to keep up.

It’s not just about being King of the Stove, we expect people to be able to present convincingly and with authority, to wow us with their ideas and execution, and to demonstrate their ability to mentor and lead. We’re asking them to say goodbye to their comfort zones in a big way.

But the rewards will be worth it. This course has the potential to accelerate careers and shape futures. And what could be better than one-to-one mentoring time with Marcus?

Developing a comprehensive understanding

Throughout the programme, our two-day workshops increase in intensity and complexity as students progress, and we introduce special projects along the way.

Modules cover how the wider business works and encourage recruits to think of new concepts and projects to take their kitchens in exciting directions, for example: “How can we create menus that encourage people to embrace plant-forward eating?”

We’re also trying to teach independence. These are our future industry leaders, so they need to think on their feet. Marcus is a stickler for detail, expecting that everything is done precisely and with real purpose behind it.

Students are taught how to communicate effectively with clients, suppliers, even the media. It’s OK to be nervous and struggle a bit at the start – this isn’t normal habitat for many new chefs – but we encourage them to trust the process and build confidence in their abilities. Even Marcus, the polished TV pro that he is, found it hard at first!

Food production, menu planning and sustainability are all key features, as well as being subjects that are very close to my heart. We are bringing on board scientists, nutritionists, farmers, producers – it’s all about encouraging holistic, 360o thinking.

We’re keen for students to develop a real love of British produce; to understand where it comes from and learn to work with farmers, whether they’re asparagus producers from Worcestershire, strawberry growers from Kent, or sheep farmers from Wales.

A whole-carcass method to meat cookery, celebrating ‘forgotten’ cuts and making them go further, is another crucial component. As is understanding ‘sustainable switches’ – including encouraging a plant-forward approach, thinking about waste and plastic and reducing carbon footprints (another reason British produce is so important to us).

The first sessions have been an enormous success. We’ve explored foraging and fermentation and designed menus that leave no scrap of waste. Everyone is learning all the time – even Marcus and me!