Cater for a wider audience

By Sarah Britton

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Restaurant Chef Food New product development

Cater for a wider audience
NPD chefs tell Sarah Britton why a culinary background is essential to food manufacture and how restaurants continue to influence their work

Anyone who's seen Gordon Ramsay in action will be aware that working in a restaurant is far from easy going. Whether the outspoken chef is better known for his cooking or his expletive outbursts is debatable. His language may be more colourful than a pack of smarties, but he claims that it's restaurant protocol to curse. "Swearing is industry language," he was once quoted as saying. "You've got to be boisterous to get results."

The question is whether such a baptism of fire is really necessary for those planning a more structured development career within the world of food manufacture.

Kenny Eastes, head chef at the Worshipful Company of Innholders, a specialist events firm, certainly thinks so. He is quick to dismiss the suggestion that all restaurant chefs yell at their staff, but agrees that it can be a highly stressful environment. Nevertheless, he believes that working in a restaurant is vital if you're going to understand how to approach new product development (NPD).

The speed at which restaurants run forces chefs to think on their feet, says Martin Walker, a contract chef currently working for Bakkavör. "There's a lot more time to get things right in manufacture - about six months per product." He explains that NPD in a restaurant can often depend on how long the ingredients will stay fresh. "In restaurants, we used to get fish delivered in the morning and have it turned into a dish for lunchtime - it's high pressure." The constant demand to stay afloat is what, many chefs claim, stands them in good stead for a career in manufacture. There isn't the luxury of market research to help restaurant chefs gauge whether their innovations will be successful, nor the quality assurance machinery on hand to assess each dish for consistency. And as for working hours, kitchen staff frequently stay late in order to keep their customers happy.

A contrast to catering

Indeed, after hearing about the strains of working in a restaurant, you could be forgiven for thinking that manufacture is a retreat where tired kitchen chefs go to wind down before hanging up their hats. Not so.

Hygrade Foods' NPD manager Adam Milosz claims food development in processing is far more challenging than in a restaurant and the transition between the two roles is unlikely to be smooth.

He says it takes years to master the restaurant trade and that simply studying the art of cooking is no substitute for hands-on practice. But such expertise often goes unappreciated once you cross over into processing. "You probably don't get the same respect in manufacture as in catering because you're working with financial and marketing people who don't understand the time you've put in - they think you can read it all in a book," says Milosz. "I'm not having a swing at these people, but they just don't understand what it takes to become a development chef."

He also points out that food manufacturers are dealing with a much wider customer base. "In a restaurant you stand alone," he says. "You're only competing with people in a 10 mile radius, not every retailer in the UK." He explains that the NPD process is much easier in a restaurant because you have only invested a matter of hours into creating something. "Restaurants are a great forum for testing new products on customers," he says. "If customers don't like the product, you just get a slap on the hand from the head chef."

But in processing, there is a far higher price to pay: "It's always harder when you've spent months developing a product, which is too niche for the market and ends up getting removed after two months. In manufacture you're losing hundreds of thousands of pounds and you have to think about how much you could have made the company if you'd used the shelf-space for a successful product."

Beyond the basics

And so it becomes evident that while a restaurant background is without doubt a useful tool for NPD specialists, there is still plenty to learn when embarking on a career in processing.

However, this is by no means a reason to cut the proverbial apron strings, as throughout their careers, NPD chefs are dependent on restaurant influences to feed their imagination. Eastes has often relied on restaurants for inspiration. "When I was at Ferndale Foods we used to get given a brief from the major retailers. Then you'd look and see what was going on outside," he says. "Anything that was happening in restaurants would be developed by manufacturers within four months."

TSC Foods' Simon Gamble has also visited a wide range of restaurants in order to get a feel for the marketplace. "We've been to Ramsay's, but also McDonald's because you can get influences from everywhere," he says. "You tend not to copy exactly what you see - you mix it with your own ideas. Say, for example, there was a roasted squash soup, you could use similar ingredients to make a risotto." He explains that the aim is not to match the quality of a restaurant product, but rather the ideas behind it. "We can't manufacture food to Michelin starred restaurant standards, but we can be inspired by the flavours."

Milosz also concludes that it is nigh on impossible to recreate a restaurant quality meal in processing: "When I started development work, my manager asked me to cook a restaurant dish, but once I had, the technologists would take it away and redevelop it." He explains that you can use the same formula, but the difficulty is making a product with an eight day shelf-life, as opposed to a product that will be eaten within a matter of hours. Some foods lend themselves to storage, he says, but you can't get the same freshness with certain ingredients. "Now, when I'm asked to match food from a restaurant, I'm honest and say 'no, I can't do that'. People at home aren't going to be cooking their food in a 500°C restaurant oven - it'll lose moisture." He adds that food manufacturers have a responsibility to maintain public health and that the Food Standards Agency guidelines for salt must be adhered to.

Another reason why processed food cannot match restaurant standards is because the ingredients used in eateries are not designed to withstand heavy processing, says Walker.

"From a chef's point of view, we can replicate most things we see quite easily, but the challenge is making something that can survive the manufacturing process. You get used to ideas getting pulled because you can't get something approved."

When he worked in a restaurant, Walker used to hand-pick much of the fruit and vegetables he served and even grew his own tomatoes, but this obviously isn't an option in manufacture. "Sometimes you just can't source ingredients on a large scale," he says.

In an eatery, you can purchase any ingredients you want once it's within the budget, adds Eastes. "Transfer that to manufacture and it's much stricter because of added costs such as handling and logistics."

Flavour combinations

Although a manufacturing chef can't use like-for-like ingredients, there is plenty to be learnt from restaurant dishes, such as flavour combinations. But you can't always tell just from tasting a dish how it has been created. Milosz has carried out research in pizza restaurants before, and claims you have to be extremely tactful to find out more about the products.

"The pizza market is quite secretive - people want to hide their tomato sauce recipe," he says. "To be honest, I sometimes go a bit more undercover. You can find out a lot from asking the right waiting staff - they'll ask the head chef whatever you want to know."

But there is always the risk of being too inquisitive. "It can be the case that once they know you're in the industry, a chef sees you as a threat. I've had instances where you ask too many questions and they start to catch on, but often they're more than happy to talk in the kitchens. You have to have that chef camaraderie," he adds.

It is often the case that consumers are more willing to buy a new retail product if they have previously tried it in a restaurant. "The food place is so saturated, it's hard to find a new niche and when you find something, you're not going to have everyone behind you," says Milosz. "If it hasn't been seen in a restaurant, people aren't always willing to take it on."

So whether its using their own kitchen experiences, or being inspired by the latest dishes, there is no doubt that NPD within the processing industry is heavily reliant on restaurant influences. "Any food company with good ethics should have somebody in the kitchen who has spent time with food other than in a laboratory," says Milosz. FM

Related topics NPD

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