Report: Arena Christmas Event
Karis Thomas, chair of Arena Futures, reports back from the networking organisation’s Christmas event – which was chaired by our own Jane Renton and featured CH&CO’s principal players...
The Arena Christmas Event returned to the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel on 6th December, where over 150 industry colleagues gathered among the glistening festive lights at this central Knightsbridge location. Drawn in by a panel from CH&CO comprising chairman Tim Jones, chief executive officer Bill Toner and chief operating officer Allister Richards, guests were welcomed with prosecco from Unity Wines and canapés by Délifrance.
In true Christmas style, the main event began with food – a three-course lunch of butternut and caramelised onion tart, followed by a rump of lamb, topped off with a chocolate fondant with pistachio ice cream for dessert. A table raffle to win an overnight stay at the Celtic Manor Resort also raised an impressive £1,450 for industry charities Springboard and Hospitality Action.
After lunch, with everyone full and ready to hear a snapshot of CH&CO’s 30-year history during the company’s anniversary year, Lorraine Wood, director of Arena, introduced Jane Renton, our very own executive editor of H20 Publishing, as host of the panel discussion to welcome the team to the stage. Guests heard how Jones’s late wife, Robyn Jones, founded CH&CO (then Charlton House) back in 1991. With Robyn’s experience as a school chef and Tim’s full-time job as a chartered accountant, the pair used a redundancy pay-out of £5,000 to buy a car and a computer, and set up the business at a wallpaper pasting table in their spare room.
The pair soon landed a catering contract at Brooklands Museum, Weybridge, after a neighbour suggested they could improve the food at the establishment where he kept his old car collection. This move led to another big break when team members from Sony Europe, who used the museum for meetings and desk space, fed back that they wanted food as good in their own place of work. Soon, Charlton House was awarded the Sony workplace catering contract too.
In the years that followed, the company also earned a Royal Warrant for catering services to HM The Queen. Jones told Renton: “It was great for the team. For example, working the garden parties at the Palace.”
In 2015, Toner, who was then CEO of Host Catermasters (HCM), and Madeleine Musselwhite, then HCM’s company finance director, met with Tim and Robyn to propose a merger. Between the two companies, their joint revenue would be in the region of £180m, which “was an enabler to achieve more in an industry where it was becoming harder to do business as a niche player”, Toner said.
Prior to this group meeting, Toner had moved up to his position having begun his career aged 16 working at The Bridge Castle Hotel in Stirlingshire, Scotland. From there he worked his way through many a role in hospitality, from chef to restaurateur to working for Aramark as its youngest ever CEO, after seeking a role which he claims was better suited to working alongside family life.
In 2019, CH&CO acquired Gather and Gather from Mitie and Richards joined the team as COO. He really developed something special as the MD behind the Mitie catering arm”, exclaimed Renton.
Unbeknown to them back then, the timing of this acquisition was perhaps not ideal, as the team accelerated from discussing a potential labour shortage as a result of Brexit, to navigating a pandemic in which the company revenue fell to just 20% of the £550m they were turning over in 2019. “Nowadays, companies need smart solutions to increasingly complicated problems,”’ said Richards. “The road to recovery will be longer than most people anticipated.”
However, Toner stated that “2021 was better than 2020, and 2022 will be better than 2021”. He added: “We can no longer talk about figures as a percentage of 2019. It’s about growth from where we are now.”
What emerged as being key to CH&CO’s successful regrowth story so far is “loyalty and collective enthusiasm from the team and a real desire to rebuild the business”, according to Richards. He also told guests how the CH&CO leadership team had made a conscious decision to be upfront and honest and “not let people join the dots themselves” during the hardest times the company faced.
New initiatives to support colleagues included Wellbeing Wednesdays, with Toner stating: “It is important not to just move on now and think ‘that’s done’ and assume everything has returned to normal. People’s struggles don’t go in a straight line and we must continue to support them.”
When asked whether they thought government had done enough to support hospitality and understand it’s complexities throughout the pandemic, there was a sense that despite an industry effort in lobbying, the stop-start nature of the lockdowns had put huge strain on businesses. This was helped only by the furlough scheme, which had been “a huge lifeline”.
Describing their regrowth plan, Richards said: “In the midst of so much uncertainty, we developed a three-year plan that will continually change. It focuses on a turnaround to rebuild the business through growth opportunities and investment in our five pillars which include technology, people and ESG [environmental, social and governance].”
Toner then spoke about how necessary it is for companies to be diverse in order to maintain cashflow and claimed that the resurgence of workplace catering had been the hardest segment for CH&CO to predict, since employees are now insistent on having a better home/office balance and so attend work locations less than they used to. Toner added: “The growth opportunity here is growth-per-transaction at a consumer level. Can we get people to trade up and spend what they might have done in five days in three now?”
Meanwhile, outdoor business is returning, though opportunities driven by tourism are still almost non-existent and events remain quite volatile. The school sector has also not returned to 100% due to regular illness leading to school closures, though CH&CO claimed they do still see schools as a stable future investment.
We all know about the labour shortage within hospitality and while discussing the new, lower capacities that the company is working at versus 2019, Toner did admit candidly that if all businesses requiring foodservice resumed to 100% capacity overnight “the whole sector, including CH&CO, would be challenged trying to service this level of demand”. When compared to retail business, he identified that hospitality “can’t sacrifice a shift or close down shops” when labour is short – hospitality needs people to deliver a service. “People had to find new jobs to feed their families during the pandemic and now it’s our job to encourage people back into our industry.”
However, in a nod towards the future and finding a solution to the labour shortage and utilising technology, Renton said she wasn’t quite ready for robots to serve her dinner, and CH&CO admitted that this wasn’t in their sphere of thought either. With the team confirming that the use of technology is key for future development, and that its use for pre-ordering and making payments is now a hygiene factor, perhaps, however, we should watch this space! But don’t worry, these were my words, not theirs.
After a fascinating panel conversation and Q&A, and with some questions left unanswered for next time, it was time to close the day and provide time for guests to network with colleagues past and present. It was, by this time, 4pm and it was only Monday after all!
Happy new year to everyone. Look out for more Arena events in 2022.
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