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Marco Sabatini
Source
Zafferano Magazine Vol1 No.2
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IT seems like only yesterday,
that you could picture a patriarchal family, where one or two
women would cook for the "staff" planned for the
harvest or wine making; instead half a century has already
gone by and today that staff has been replaced by combine
harvesters with air conditioning and electric windows, able to
do in one day what it took 30 persons to do in a month.
And
where is that cheerful staff that stopped for its lunch bread?
Somewhere or an another it still exists: differently organised,
perhaps more neurotic, surely changed, but it still continues
to stop for it
lunch break to eat something prepared by who knows who. The
first steps of public catering (that we will call p.c.) can be
found wherever there is a large group of people gathered to
eat food together that's cooked by others. Today these groups
are always more frequent (man has chosen to live in a
community, to decide together with others and aim more towards
the public more than towards the individual) and therefore
numerous organisations think, organise and work according to
this point of view.
A
popular saying is : strength lies in unity. Many meals eaten
together give strength, that is bring profits.
One
starts to talk about p.c. with the creation of the great
industrial plants that used to gather hundreds of employees,
some of who had to work far away from their homes, working on
two shifts (today even in 3, thanks to or to be blamed on
consumerism) and protected by trade unions. Employees and
trade unions, united together, have fought to improve the life
of the workers: great steps forward have also been especially
in catering: it is enough to mention how lunch has gone from
the "little lunch box" with a sandwich to the
canteen at 670
C
(any lower would be against the law).
We
must not forget that p.c. is a different business from the so
called traditional catering, where an unexpected number of
consumers and their tastes bring to reasoning and strategies
that are misleading with regards to the subject being
discussed. Therefore, even if both of the catering methods
must respect the same regulations and the same principles,
these are differentiated by the objectives that must be
achieved. After having defined that, we must remember that,
because everything changes, today when we talk about p.c. We
do not only include canteens that for years have represented a
source of wealth for those firms involved in these, but also
numerous other opportunities that have lately been discovered
self service, free-flow, pizza-restaurants, bars, plane and
health catering, school-meals).
We
would now like to a few things concerning the later type of
catering and favour those towns that have had the courage to
privatise this service with
positive consequences: today their budget does not
result fluctuating but tending towards being steady, bound to
contracts; they have a smaller load of responsibility; they do
not have to organise a control that, as scrupulous as it may
be, in any case results to be delicate and a burden; they
offer more professional service
because private workers are forced to be in accordance
with the laws in more and more detail and to respect stricter
working standards, that otherwise the town employee may not
respect.
At
this point it would be normal to wonder how firms gain profits
from p.c., considering that the profits from a complete meal
(first and second course, vegetables fruit, drink and bread)
is rarely over 10.000 Lire.
Many
people know their arithmetic, so if I multiply 100 Lire by
1.000, the product is 100.000 Lire; but if I multiply 100 Lire
by a million, the results would be a hundred million Lire;
therefore firms that earn a million meals a year, if they were
to earn 300 Lire for each meal, they would gain three hundred
million Lire.
The
problem now becomes how to earn 300 Lire for each meal. It is
easy to understand that 300 Lire corresponds to 150 gr. of
semola pasta, 50 gr. of pork or 30 gr. of beef.
It
is easy to understand that for firms dealing with p.c., the
surplus is detrimental and, above all, it eats up possible
earnings.
However, the big p.c. organizations, are not able to carry out
a direct control by the owner or by whoever is acting on his
behalf; therefore, a person is especially designated to check
the consumption and the wastes: and that is the cook of the
productive unit. In fact it is the cook who manages, sells,
co-ordinates the staff, checks the ups and downs of the unit.
This is the person who organises the sanification according to
the laws, who acts in accordance with the regulations that are
more and more detailed on the handling of food, this is the
person who knows the new technologies of "food
equipment" that constantly change, this is the person who
orders the raw materials to cook. And the directors refer to
him to prepare, inform and instruct the staff (laws 626/64 and
155/97). When you create the daily menu in any productive
unit, you must be able to predict how, where and when to
organise the distribution and the selling.
How
do you prepare the food? The question seems to be banal but it
is not: today more than ever the preparation is difficult
because it is no longer possible to use superficial and
approximate methods: you must respect the temperature of the
food, use equipment according to the law that allows you to
prepare various meals (you cannot think of cleaning 150-200 kg
of potatoes by hand as was done in the past, or prepare a
meat-loaf without the help of a meat mixer). Knives can no
longer be placed in a drawer to be used when necessary: the
law expects them to be sterilised. Beaters, boilers, fryers,
pasta cookers, slicing machines, vegetable cutters, etc, are
all equipment absolutely needed to prepare numerous daily
meals and you must know how to use them best, where they
should be placed and sterilized. Who can do this in a
professional manner? The cook.
Where
is the food prepared? A question even more banal. Obviously in
the kitchen. Where are the vegetables and the fish washed?
Where is the meat prepared? Where is the salted meat sliced?
How are the spaces organised? Nobody can know this better than
the cook.
How
much food must be prepared? Knowing you have approximately 300
meals and three varieties of menus, how can you know which one
the consumer will choose? Only the cook can predict the tastes
of his customers.
The
cook of the p.c. covers a fundamental role because he is the
centre of the productive unit, he is the technician of the
utensils, the organiser of the service, he guarantees the
hygiene and the safety of the environment; he handles the
food, he is the one that is able to make you earn those 300
Lire a meal or make you lose 100, he is the one that can
create jobs (by increasing the number of employees with the
number of meals); he is the one that must be satisfied if he
requests improvements.
Without
cooks that are fathers and not bosses, the p.c. could not be
able to operate and would not exist.
It
is true that some people declare the contrary, that is that
the cook of the p.c. becomes a mere shadow of a cook; here
instead we want to say that the cook of the p.c. is fulfilled
by becoming a professional technician of the kitchen.
The
p.c. will be the future of nourishment and the firms that base
their strategies on the preparation of the staff and on the
community, guided by a restaurant-cook manager will thrive and
survive.
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