#136 Thomas Gent - Gentle Farming
Humans of Hospitality
Thomas is a 4th generational farmer in Cambridgeshire.
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#135 Adam Phelps - Cellar Society
Humans of Hospitality
Adam has been working at the top end of prestigious events for 22 years. Chatting through some of the choreography and planning required to deliver for clients who expect perfection, and are happy to pay for it was inspiring. 100 meals delivered to the table in perfect synchronisation by 50 model looking FOH members, immaculately presented is just one that creates a vivid picture in my mind.
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#134 Nathan Outlaw - Chef
Humans of Hospitality
Many of your will know today’s guest Nathan Outlaw from his various TV appearances, Michelin stars, all round love of hospitality and the author of 5 well regarded books. Chatting to Nathan you can see why he’s such a popular hospitality human. Relaxed, positive, knowledgeable, with no pretentiousness and happy to chat about the challenges, lows and highs of his hospitality adventure.
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#133 Stefan Leser - CEO Langham Hotels & Resorts
Humans of Hospitality
I spoke to Stefan to get an insight and understand how different markets across the globe are performing and wether that performance is in part due to governments taking a different approach on how to manage Covid. We recorded this show a few weeks ago, but at the time Stefan’s hotels across China, Australia and New Zealand were trading pretty well, whilst London obviously was closed. Where his hotels were doing ok, they were aimed at the domestic market only.
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#132 Dan Austin - MD Lake District Farmers
Humans of Hospitality
A tale of perseverance, of business acumen, of learning and making things up as you go, of responding to business catastrophe and adapting fast to keep the business running. Dan and his team's perseverance and commitment comes across in so many of the stories he tells. Wether that’s being found half clothed having slept in the delivery van before meeting an important potential customer, or relocating the entire business over a weekend following a fire.
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#131 Victoria Searl - DataHawks
Humans of Hospitality
I’m fairly techie and I’ve found it frustrating over the years seeing the potential of data in the hospitality sector. Cleary unlike for example selling double glazing, we operate in a social space where people often want to hear from us. Where guests are happy to take photos and share them to social media, where they are happy to check in and arrange to meet friends. And whereby perhaps sharing data on birthdays, or dietary preferences or working patterns are all things the customer is happy to s
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#130 Phil Haughton - Better Food Stores & Cafes
Humans of Hospitality
Phil Haughton has had a great food adventure over many decades. He has just written a book ‘Food for Thought’ that brings together this journey, combined with recipes and producers he’s met along the way. Phil’s current business is the Better Food stores and cafes dotted around Bristol. That combination of combining the hospitality of a cafe drawing people into the building and then hopefully inspiring them to leave with some exceptionally ethical and delicious food and drink.
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#129 Hamish Martin - The Secret Garden - Edinburgh
Humans of Hospitality
Hamish is a brave soul who at the age of 41, with his own business and a career working around the wine and whisky trade decided that his number one love in the world was plants. Not only was he brave enough to sell the business, he was crazy enough to have no idea where his next adventure would take him. He pretty much let the plants decide.
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#128 Darren Venables - Estate Manager - Chewton Glen
Humans of Hospitality
Darren has been working at the Chewton Glen for over 30 years so really has seen a huge amount of change, and as far as the grounds are concerned has curated much of that himself. Developing an orchard of 250 of the rarest trees in the country perhaps, breeding your own Queen bees, or surveying wildlife on an annual basis, or attracting a wider species of birds into a habit for the first time in decades, to growing food for a cookery school, to planting xmas trees and so so much more.
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#127 Sarah Heward - Real Food Cafe - Scotland
Humans of Hospitality
Sarah has been pretty vocal throughout the pandemic in representing the Scottish Hospitality Sector. We chat about being the MD of a decent sized company in the city of London, to buying an ex Little Chef by the side of an obscure road in rural Scotland. Along the way driving revenue to over £1.7 million per year from a pretty small footprint. Sarah has embraced technology to revolutionise how this road side cafe operates. Motivated by the pandemic, but along the way learning some really interesting thi
info_outlineSurely schools are the place to improve knowledge on food, on what we should eat, to inspire a life long love for whole food and to understand the difference between real food and processed food. To understand that food is essential for life, and that in the modern world nobody should be going hungry. To try and fathom how on earth it is possible for the same areas struck be food poverty and lack of access to food to at the same time be suffering from diabetes and obesity due to the shocking quality of the food that may be available. It’s just so bloody obvious. How on earth have we allowed ourselves to have an education system that spends so little time on the one thing we put in our bodies every single day that nourishes us. That gives us energy, that fuels our bodies and our minds. We cannot achieve our potential either individually or as a collective unless we fuel ourselves efficiently.
Naomi Duncan and the charity Chefs in Schools are right at the beating heart of this debate and trailblazing some of the improvements that can be made. They will soon be working with over 70 schools, predominantly in London, but with grand plans to work with, or inspire a transformation across thousands, if not tens of thousands of schools.
In this chat we dive into understanding what the problem with school food is, how have we ended up here, what should be done, what can be done and what is being done. The impact that Naomi and the Chefs in Schools team are having is exceptional and very exciting. Wether helping get fully trained restaurant style chefs into schools, or working with existing teams, they are focused not only on providing better food in canteens, but working with the curriculum in educating children and inspiring them around what good food can look like. But whatever you do, don’t call the food healthy, since they have learnt the hard hard way, that can turn the average teenager off.
I hope many of you listening will be inspired to speak to your local schools. If you are a parent perhaps you can ask better questions of your kids school. But if you work in the sector, why not reach out to your local school and see if you can help. I’ve personally found working with my local primary school in inspiring and teaching children about real food and seasonality and presentation and the ethics of food has been hugely entertaining and exceptionally rewarding.
Read about the School Food Plan and visit Chefs In Schools online or follow them on instagram or twitter