Keeping it Cornish
"How do you get your children to eat vegetables?" asked Bob Lamberton, St Austell Brewery's company trainer.
A bemused audience of 13 Cornish publicans sat in a horseshoe seating arrangement amidst the management course paraphernalia of boiled sweets and jugs of water, searching their minds for a suitable answer. Silence ensued.
"Cover them in chocolate," someone said. "Deep fat fry them," said another.
Sitting at the back of the aptly named "Prosper Room" in St Austell's White Hart hotel, notepad at the ready, I realised why so many people have such a low opinion of pub food and why training was so crucial for the licensed trade.
Bob went on to describe a pub he knew where children's portions were not available and drew the conclusion that a lot of pubs 'say they are family friendly but they're not'. He had a point.
Someone shouted, "I blame the parents" and then, as I began to wonder why I was in darkest Cornwall sitting in on day three of an 'added value' version of a British Institute of Innkeeping advanced catering qualification , Bob told his audience to think about their menus as a selling tool.
After a liberal sprinkling of discussion points - the rise in healthy eating, the increased popularity of vegetarianism, the all important 'grey pound' and the importance of 'family dining' - Bob handed out a selection of pub menus and asked his students to pick a dish and then make up their own locally flavoured description for it .
They had 20 minutes. Silence ensued again and Bob exited stage left to answer some of my questions. "The overall aim is to increase their awareness of Cornish quality and increase their profitability. We want them to become destination venues with a reputation for quality," he said.
According to Bob, 14 courses have been run by St Austell Brewery this year compared with under half a dozen in 1999. Demand is increasing and the catering 'AQ' is easily the most popular. Rather than simply offer the basic advanced qualification, St Austell jazz it up a little by organising trips out to visit local suppliers as well as inviting people in to provide cookery demonstrations.
"These people will go to Newlyn Fish Market and the pilchard works, there are local produce tastings - we are trying to get them to buy fresher food locally," said Bob, who argued that most of his students were too reliant upon frozen food.
Resting on a table in a corner of the Prosper Room was a selection of leaflets from local Cornish food suppliers. Bob made no secret of the course's far from hidden agenda - that of promoting Cornish prosperity.
Next year he hopes to run residential courses, something Carol Bennett of Gaslight's Dungeon Bar in Redruth would appreciate. "It's hard work and there's a lot of reading. I don't think there's enough time. We are cramming it into five days; it's too much to take in," she said. "We need time to put things into practice. It would be better to just learn without the pressure of the exam." She had a point.
The White Hart hotel has been taken out of the St Austell Brewery's managed estate and is now used exclusively as a live training facility.
St Austell spent £100,000 on refurbishing the 17-bedroom hotel, according to personnel and public relations director, Vicky Crossingham. "It was a loss-making establishment but they refurbished the kitchen and now it's a live training facility with people working in a real life situation. It has been my dream for a long time," she said. Vicky shares the license with Debbie Pascoe.
Vicky said that St Austell Brewery started its training programme eight years ago and was very quickly recognised by the BII. "We now offer a full training experience with added value and the brewery is commited to the regeneration of the region," she said.
It all makes good sense. Cornwall's traditional industries of fishing, mining and agriculture have been decimated leaving tourism as the region's key earner. That's why the St Austell Brewery's five-day, added value catering management AQ focuses on local produce and stresses the importance of supporting local small businesses.
Back on the course Bob was explaining the value of uniqueness. "If we're going to be unique, it's got to be home-made," he argued, as the students read back their interpretations of the dishchosen at random from the pub menus handed out earlier. All of which was music to PubFood's ears - a brewery trainer pushing freshly produced, local produce! Rock and roll! Someone buy that man a beer!
To take the BII Advanced Qualification in catering management, each student paid £64 with the sole aim of improving their business performance and increasing profitability.
Catering management is one of eight 'modules' available via St Austell Brewery, which include wine retailing, business development, leadership and motivation, customer care and finance management. Courses range in duration from three to five days and combine theoretical and practical training with interactive sessions.
The modular nature of the BII Advanced Qualification courses means that licensees can pick and choose. Once each module has been completed, three 'key learning points' are highlighted for consideration into each student's portfolio. The learning points are based on activities already completed during the course or back in the pub and could involve, say, researching the female market in the student's pub and his or her competitors' pubs.
The BII has nine Advanced qualifications in total in addition to the Advanced Qualification Diploma.
To obtain the Diploma, students must sit the financial management and business development modules plus up to three others and then produce a portfolio based on set assignments connected with their five chosen Advanced Qualification modules. Once completed, the portfolio is assessed during a half-day workshop when students are required to present their findings to colleagues and members of the BII. The students' presentations are designed to illustrate how knowledge gained from the course modules has been applied in a real business environment.
Students are free to pick and choose from nine available Advanced Qualifications of which catering management is one. There is no obligation to do more than one and some students select, say, the catering management module, simply to familiarise themselves with pub catering.
At the White Hart Hotel, St. Austell, for instance, Julie Dutton told Pub Food that she was sitting the catering management AQ help improve her food offering and provide a better menu. Fran Harris, manager of the Ship Inn simply wanted a little more food knowledge and Russ Smith, of the Duke of Cornwall in St Austell was there to learn about catering. "I'm a cook, not a caterer and I want to improve my skills," he said.
But students don't have to be employed by St Austell Brewery to sit the catering AQ.The 13 students on thecourse attended by Pub Food were a mixture of managers, tenants and freeholders.
According to Bob Lamberton, the course is open to all comers thanks to a handy £83,000 secured by Leader - Liaisons Entre Actions de Développment de l'Economie Rurale) - which, loosely translated, means 'links between actions for the development of the rural economy'. Leader is a local China Clay Area regeneration agency which secured the money to run 15 BII Advanced Qualifications over a one year period starting in January 2000 and ending last month (December 2000).
According to Mel Richardson, Leader's Cornish Food & Hospitality Programme Co-ordinator , 80 more licensees were interested in sitting the Advance Qualification courses and demand was expected to increase. But with Leader money exhausted, Cornwall County Council is looking to the European Objective One scheme to raise an ambitious £750,000 to 'run more courses for brewers'.
Cornwall County Council has established Cornwall Enterprise which, in conjunction with St Austell Brewery, has applied to Objective One for the money. Mel
