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    Success In the Food Catering Business
    Success In the Food Catering Business
    Success In the Food Catering Business
    Ebook229 pages2 hours

    Success In the Food Catering Business

    By Vincent Gabriel

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    About this ebook

    This book marks the fact that food catering has gone mainstream. At one time associated with organizers of seminars and conferences as a means of bonding the attendees of the event or to provide convenience so that each person who attended did not have to look for his own food. The food catering business is very closely connected with the industrial economic development of the Asian economies that underwent transformation in the late 1940's and continues up to today. The food provided at the seminars were arranged in three groups. A coffee break was held in the morning with a range of light snacks that included a major starch like fried rice or fried noodles. The lunch menu was clearly more extensive with a soup, a vegetable dish, a meat dish, a fish dish and a dessert. Care had to be taken to avoid offending anyone. Pork was not allowed nor was beef. The only meat served was chicken and it came in different forms: fried, roasted, boiled, with sweet and sour sauce, or with black pepper sauce or simply hot and spicy. The last meal was the tea break. In a way this meal was a milestone because the people of the Asian economies never had an afternoon break as they were expected to go home at 5 pm and have a meal at home at 6 pm. With the tea break it became a custom to have dinner or the evening meal later at 7 pm.

    The food provided at seminars went beyond the training room because it was convenient to have meals provided for, cooked by someone else. The idea that developed was called parties brought to you.

    Today sixty years after the introduction of the first seminar catered meal food catering is the norm for people wanting a party at home to celebrate a major feast or a personal milestone event like the birth of a baby or a wedding.

    Food catering has also become an event related to hospitality and appreciation. The mourners at a funeral wake are grateful to those who come to pay their respects and food is now catered to provide for these guests.

    In this book the author takes the approach that food catering must grow beyond its present roots and move out to become more mainstream in the form of a meal for a social gathering like that around a steamboat.

    Food catering has also the responsibility to maintain the health of a community by observing the rules of being:

    Less salty

    Less oily

    Less sweet

    Free of transfats

    Free of gluten

    Free of MSG

    And other Chemicals.

    Food catering becomes a mainstream food by being available and by being healthy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9781456626006
    Success In the Food Catering Business

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      Book preview

      Success In the Food Catering Business - Vincent Gabriel

      Catering

      UNIT 1

      Parties Brought To You

      Synopsis

      At the end of this unit you will be able to describe:

      • How wide this part of the food business is

      • What are the trends in this business

      • How the business will evolve

      Introduction

      Historically food catering did not develop as a separate business. The restaurants were doing well but seats were limited. Some enterprising restaurateurs decided to take the food to the people for occasions:

      • Weddings in the villages

      • Office parties

      • Corporate seminars

      Of course there were diners who missed the atmosphere and the ambience of the restaurant but in return the guests had:

      • Food hot and bubbling as it was cooked there and then

      • Food, served where you lived, without having to travel to the city

      • Chance to avoid paying the charges associated with restaurant dining

      • Chance to bring the elderly as they did not have to travel to the food

      Before the 1970s, the Chinese, the Malays and the Indians had their parties in the open field of the village. Then the Indians moved to the temples for their weddings and the Chinese moved to the eating house, which offered protection against bad weather. The Malays carried on the tradition of having their feasts as close to the guests as possible. This has opened the opportunities for a parties brought to you food business not only the wedding but also the:

      • High tea

      • 7 th month feast

      • Chinese reunion

      • Corporate seminar meals

      • Baby’s full month

      • Birthday party

      What is so special?

      In Unit 2 you will discover the details of the 5Is of this parties brought to you food business:

      • Interesting

      • Individual

      • Inclusive

      • Iconic

      • Inventive

      and these factors gave this branch of the food industry its running legs.

      Navigating Food Sensitivities

      Like any other food business there are danger zones.

      Food caterers handles these danger zones by having the kitchen divided into a number of areas, where food is prepared, cooked and packed according to the specifications of the religious, racial or sensitivity of the food order:

      • Hindu

      • Christian

      • Islamic

      • Jain

      • Vegetarian

      Quality control is strictly enforced in the areas of:

      • Religious, racial and food sensitivity

      • Time the food is prepared, the food is delivered and the food is eaten

      • Hygienic conditions of delivery in the clean environment

      • Presentation of food in the most appropriate manner

      The Competitive Edge

      As you should note in the Unit 3, the food is not the main item of the event. For example a corporate seminar attracts people for the topics under discussion. The food helps the host facilitate the flow of ideas as people feel relaxed and able to talk.

      However this may not be true, wholly, of the Lunar New Year Reunion Dinner. So the food presented must represent.

      Table 1.1

      Then, at other times, the food represents the event.

      The baby’s full month celebration must include:

      • Red-dyed eggs

      • Angku kueh

      The wedding buffet must include:

      • Slices of the wedding cake

      The Eurasian wake usually includes the Kueh Kochi.

      At other times the items in the meal represent what the caterer thinks is typical of that event. The best example is the so-called European food buffet:

      • Spaghetti bolognaise

      • Pizza

      • Assorted cheese, salmon, cucumber sandwiches

      • Fruit punch

      What is Not Included in the Party Brought to You

      One glaring gap is the area of drinks.

      All of the caterers only serve:

      • Tea, coffee or orange juice syrup

      The current range of drinks can be deepened.

      For example:

      • Broad range of tea both Chinese and black tea can be offered

      • Broader range of coffee can be offered to pair with the food

      Then there is scope for enhancing the food experience by offering

      • Wine pairing

      • Beer pairing

      This can be done in two ways

      • A suggestion by the food caterer and the supplier of the variety of tea, coffee, wine or beer

      • A suggestion by the buffet supplier and the host to buy tea, coffee, wine or beer that the host wants to pair with the food on offer

      Issues Related to the Evolution of the Food Catering Service

      As the food catering service evolves it becomes important that suppliers of food face up to the following:

      • Keeping the distinctive marks in food

      • Providing more healthy food

      • Knowing why food go extinct

      • Selling affordable food

      • Closing the missing link or providing food for the elderly

      • Respecting the geographical origin and intellectual property of international food suppliers.

      Keeping the Distinctive Marks in the Food

      As mentioned earlier with the example of European food, the customer has only the food to represent and meet his expectations of what the food ought to be. To help you focus on the essentials. the following will be mentioned:

      Chinese food offers the whole range of tastes and offers the whole range of food.

      Sometimes people in search of a quick simple way of looking at Chinese food refer to that food, like noodles, rice, that is eaten with a pair of chopsticks.

      This is a rough and ready way of looking at Chinese food but I want to go a little further but not being really correct historically, socially or politically and suggest that chinese food can be grouped into 4 broad features as CANT that helps you, the reader, get an operational idea of Chinese food.

      Chopsticks are used.

      All kinds of food, ways of cooking and all kinds of taste.

      Noodles, rice, dumplings and porridge are the kind of starches normally consumed.

      Tea is drink in many instances.

      However all Indian food innovators keep the iron rule - TRACK.

      1. Keep the T raditional taste.

      2. Eaten with R ICE in the south and bread in the north of India.

      3. A ffordable. Indian food has to be sold at three levels, for all at the most affordable prices, for the middle group at prices they will pay and for the rich, with the food that they want to buy.

      The traditional local taste is the tendency to a certain level of spiciness.

      The traditional rice of Indian eatery has been basmati or poona but in many Indian eateries the rice may also be Thai Jasmine

      Long grain Burmese

      Calrose Australia     

        Glutinous Cambodian

      Each type of rice has its own special characteristics but Indian eateries extract the starch from the rice during the cooking process.

      Healthy Eating

      Customers want food to be

      Less salty

      Less sweet

      Less oily

      That MSG is not used

      That trans fats is not used

      In the past, customers wanted strong flavours like:

      • Fiery taste of some Indian curries

      • Rich, thick oil of curried mutton

      • Creamy rich taste of soft cheese and yoghurt

      • Herbal taste of pork rib soup

      • Lardy taste of fried noodles

      • Tongue-burning taste of peppercorn oil

      • Over-powering sweetness of lychee juice

      • Tongue-drying taste of salted carp

      • Thick wad of fat of belly pork

      Today the trend with food caterers is to:

      • Use fresh fish from ponds and use less marine fish

      • Fry only with vegetable oil

      • Use less of soy sauce

      • Wash the salted carp, mussels, crab to remove the preserving salt to bring out the original taste of the food

      • Dilute all the sweet juices – lychee, mango, pineapple, apple, orange

      • Offer milder varieties of tea and coffee

      • Encourage more consumption of fresh, raw vegetables

      Still more can be done. In 2011 the Health Promotion Board Survey found that three in four patrons of catered food exceeded the sodium intake of 3,000mg a day. The average amount of sodium consumed in 2011 was 3,527mg a day.

      Why food go extinct

      Fig 1.1 needs an explanation

      Difficult to Make

      Some eateries find that their cooks are not prepared to put in the required hard work.

      Example

      Guanchang (Chinese Sausage) starts off by having the pork minced. The minced pork is stuffed by hand into the casing of the small intestine of a pig. The sausage is coloured pink, to appeal to customers and deep fried.

      Inability to Get the Producer’s Children to Take Over the Business

      Chinese food is closely rated to a particular dialect group and the food sold to a particular family and the recipe is a trade secret of that family.

      Example

      Bar chor mee (minced pork noodles) is based on a soup of yellow beans, dried shrimp that is brewed over a slow fire to reach a certain level of richness.

      Limited Market

      Some Chinese eateries have gone extinct because their market is limited. What they make and sell is considered food item peculiar to a particular community. They have not been able to put the food onto the bigger market. Table 1.1 provides some examples.

      Table 1.1 Examples of Community-Based Food Gone Extinct

      Ingredients are Difficult to Get

      Other sellers have stopped because the chief ingredient is difficult to get.

      Table 1.2 Example of Key Ingredients being difficult to get

      The

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