Alan Sugar sets pub challenge for The Apprentice
Running a pub food operation was the task of contestants in BBC1's The Apprentice last night.
Sir Alan Sugar challenged his budding apprentices to put on a themed food offer at two London pubs for a day.
The boys team went for an Italian menu at the Duke of Hamilton in Hampstead while the girls team adopted a Bollywood theme for their food offer at the traditional wet-led King's Head in Islington, London.
Sir Alan Sugar said: "Pubs have been suffering for a while now. There are ways and means of bringing people in and one is to put on a food service."
Dishes on the menu at "A Taste of Italy" at the Duke of Hamilton included spaghetti bolognese, carbonara and tomato soup.
The girl's team won the task at the King's Head, despite failing to serve any lunchtime food, by negotiating free marketing, buying supplies locally and by getting pre-event ticket sales of £5, which was deducted from customers' bills.
Despite generating the biggest turnover, the boys team lost for failing to calculate gross profits correctly and because they overspent on marketing and on food supplies from Tesco.
Team leader Ian Stringer, who grew up in pubs and whose father is a chef, was fired.
MasterChef judge and restaurateur John Torode said the boys mistake was not costing up the menu on volume and calculating the gross profit of the food as three times the food cost plus VAT.
He also said: "Why re-dress an English pub. They could have served fishfinger sandwiches and sausages.
"People will go to a pub for food."
Clueless
Greene King Pub Partners managing director David Elliott said: "What came across from the two sets of teams, especially the boys, is that they didn't really have a clue or understand what is needed to put on a good food offer.
"They had very few ideas around costing food profit margins, staff turnover or overall costs - the very basics of a small business.
"What the programme demonstrated is the fantastic jobs that licensees are doing up and down the country and I think that these so called 'top of the tree' professionals will need a few more real life experiences to get anywhere near the talent we have in our business."
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