The view from the Pod, No. 3: Betty's Tea Rooms, Harrogate

Heatwaves, Queues and the Quintessential English Tea

I'm sure most of you will have heard of Betty's Tea Rooms, whether you have visited one of their traditional victorian style operations across the various towns and cities in Yorkshire that they are located.  It's easy to spot them, even if you don't see the signs as they are the one shop on the high street that has a queue snaking out its doors from mid morning to late afternoon 7 days a week.  But why are they so popular? What are they doing to maintain such large queues and why do people put up with a 10-15 minute wait on the pavement.  

Well as a family we often try and make a detour to a Betty's whenever we are travelling on the A59 to Yorkshire, even if I am travelling alone I always try to pop in, just to buy some tea or one of their gorgeous Yorkshire curd tarts.  This time though we were in a quandary as to whether we stopped.  The weather was close to 30 degrees outside and on sweeping past the Harrogate restaurant we could see up to 30 people braving the heat for the sake of afternoon tea.  We decided we couldn't resist stopping and so found a parking space and joined the other patient customers.  Now what is typical of a Betty's customer? nothing demographically as they attract everyone off the scale from young to old, affluent to less so, and they have a steady mix of regular and one off visitors.  Geographically you can see so many nationalities represented from Japan and America as well as Europeans, all trying to take a bit of that Britishness about them that intrigues more than you or I sometimes realise.  

So back to our visit, something which astonished us was how impeccably the staff were dressed, even in this heat, and when you consider the managers are in full suits and the waitresses in full victorian style dress, and yet not a bit out of place it is excellent that they managed to continue the theme through, although we did feel sorry for them.  For drinks, tea for me is a no brainer, however I was also tempted due to the heat by the ice cream strawberry milkshake which was extremely refreshing, however over too soon and so it was back to the tea and adulthood.  

One thing that always pleases us is the child friendly approach, and although Jamie's Italian won the best child friendly restaurants last week, Betty's more than fulfils its obligation, with children's drawing kits, and friendly staff, it helps to allay the fears of boredom that we as parents often have when we sit waiting on many an occasion in a restaurant.  The menu's as well are well put together, with good fresh dishes and not a nugget in sight as you often still see in most places.  our children plumped for the omelette and the macaroni, which they ended up sharing with each other as both were jealous of the others food.

As for us, we chose the quiche and the caesar salad, the quiche really hit the spot in that it was had good texture and flavouring, the salad was different to the norm, and refreshing in that it consisted of some lovely local produce. with dishes serving all tastes from afternoon tea to Austrian dishes harking back to its heritage.  Although you will never hear music piping through the restaurant, there is never a feel of a library too, as it is is always full, hence the continuous queue outside, and because of this there is the constant chatter of all the table, whether it being a group of ladies in the middle of a shopping expedition or a family reunion, catching up with each other, or even a couple having a romantic lunch, no conversation imposes on another and everyone is captivated by the contents of their table.  

Overall the food should be the main star of the show, however the experience as a whole is the main star, with excellent service from start to finish and good choice for all ages to enjoy, and that is even before you see the sweet trolley and all it has to offer.  I personally will stick to the Yorkshire curd Tart, but I dare you to leave without trying one of the sweet delicacies on offer.

So to sum up, a good experience was had at Betty's, it is testimony to Managing Director, Linda Brunton Douglas and her catering teams that the name of Betty's is being sensitively managed and can only go from strength to strength.  If you ever happen to pass by one of their restaurants and see the queue of eager customers, don't be put off, join the line and treat yourself.  Its worth the wait trust me...

Inspiration - Who Inspires You?

So inspiration, it's a subject that crops in the media a lot at the moment, it's also a question a lot of recruiters ask at interview to break the ice and see what drives the candidate, but if you dig a little deeper what is "inspiration" and who inspires you.

Inspiration comes on a number of different levels, ranging from parents which is common in hospitality as so many of today's managers like myself had one or both parents in the industry running pubs or hotels etc, up to sporting icons, charity fund raisers and other high profile people.  We saw a lot of talk about inspiration around the time of Margaret Thatchers passing, and even though she divided the nation, people from all walks of life drew on her unique position of being the country's first female PM, and her rise to being one of the most iconic PM's as well, and how it both inspired them and empowered them to take a step into the unknown and try something that they may never have done.

In a different way we have seen inspirational people in the spotlight for the wrong reasons in the last two years, with Lance Armstrong to name one who had inspired millions of people through his Live Strong charity and his fight against illness to win the Tour de France so many times only for the revelations on his drug taking to wipe away all credibility in this area.  Out of sport we also had the Jimmy Saville revelations that again takes the shine off in a big way all the work he did during his life with the various hospitals and charities. For people who have been inspired by these, it must be hard for them to take and thankfully is a position I have never been in, so see my inspiration go up in smoke.

On a positive note though most inspirational people are unaware that they are inspiring as it is just what they do, getting on with the job in hand, from Mother Theresa to Nelson Mandela these people aren't doing it for the column inches in OK magazine or for the money, they are doing it because they love their work, they feel that it is a job that needs doing.

On a personal note my wife's business which started about a year ago making dresses for girls of 1-7 yrs and personalised cushions for people to cherish, has been told by some of her 7,000 "likers" on facebook on a number of occasions recently that she is an inspiration to them. As she learnt to sew in order to set the company up and has worked up to 20 hours a day perfecting her craft and using her business acumen to grow "Betsy Boo Creations", even attracting media attention along the way thanks to Kirstie Allsopp's company Raise the Roof who profiled her.  This is hard to take in for her as she never set the company up with the mindset of inspiring people, merely to make ends meet at a tough time for both of us, which thankfully we worked through, however a large number of her customers have now dusted off the old sewing machines in the loft and have taken them out to give them a go again.

So as we have seen, inspiration can be driven on a number of levels, but overall it drives us to achieve and do something, hopefully bettering ourselves along the way.  With that in mind it would be great to hear your inspirations and so feel free to share them with us on here and hopefully it will "inspire" others to achieve their goals by hearing your stories.  In case you were wondering by the way, my first inspiration was Nick Faldo, and although I became quite good at golf I never made it to professional level, however the things I have learnt from golf which have been able to transfer into business have been invaluable and so in some ways my inspiration has helped to influence my life, however this changes with my first job in recruitment, and the Chief Executive of that business became an inspiring figure to me and gave me someone to take direct inspiration from, and I can happily say that I am pleased I worked for him for 8 years and grew a great deal under his leadership.

Go and check out my wife's company also, shameless plug I know, but I'd be in the doghouse if I missed the opportunity, so go to BetsyBooCreations on Facebook and take some inspiration.

The View from the Pod, No.2 : Rojano's in the Square, Padstow

The View from the Pod, No.2 - Rojano's (in the Square)

So next stop on our travels was the wonderful town of Padstow, famed for Rick Stein and his whole plethora of restaurants, cafe's and shops, however this review isn't one of those and it instead is part of the new guard in the town.  Rojano's In The Square, or Rojano's for short has been a must visit for us on a number of occasions now, it is a lovely restaurant just one road back from the picturesque harbour that is lined with all its shops and cafe's.  Owned by Paul Ainsworth, this restaurant has been transformed into a fresh and vibrant operation that is a casual but refined venue for lunch and dinner.

More importantly when you have children with you it is a restaurant that is more comfortable to suit their needs without losing any quality in the food that is on offer.  This trip to Rojano's for us was a lunchtime visit on a quieter day in February, and once again the restaurant didn't disappoint.  Looking around the restaurant it attracts all types of clientele, and on that day it showed it, there were parties of ladies out to lunch, retired couples of friends meeting, couples lunching out and families enjoying a bite to eat.  

The children were catered for and not just by the food, with drawing provided to keep them happy, and a very attentive staff all of whom seemed to be friendly and alert to the needs of 2 and 4 year old customers, Paul, the manager who served us indeed shared that he had children of similar ages at home and loved having children in the restaurant.  

In terms of the menu, this again is packed with dishes to entice, from nibbles to sharing options, every base is covered, we chose to share the Calamari which was billed as a main for one or starter to share and it was delicious, the dressing on the rocket was amazing, The dough balls that we also ordered were delicious and devoured by the children.  

As for the mains, the children picked pizza off the Bambini menu, with The Boy selecting a range of vegetables for his, while The Princess had the Bolognaise dish, which she polished off, we didn't take the offer of the full set menu for the children as the only disappointment was that the drink choice was Fruit Shoots of all flavours, a drink that we are passionately against and our children prefer fresh juice or water, so maybe this should be looked at, however this is a personal choice.

For our mains, we went for very different dishes ranging from Sirloin Steak which was cooked to perfection, as it was asked for medium rare, the chips also had a crispness and texture that was extremely morish.  I on the other hand had a blast from my past and chose the Calzone, a favourite when I was younger with the lads having a cheeky takeaway as a student, however this surpassed any previous attempts I have had, it was full of flavour with a some good spicy arrabiata to make the taste interesting, the mozzarella was melt in the mouth stuff and the presentation of the dish was worthy of any dish in Paul Ainsworth's other more established restaurant in Padstow, if it wasn't a calzone.  Being in Cornwall and having a cornish style Pizza seemed apt and everyone enjoyed a taste of it as it was probably the best of all the dishes chosen.  

Overall,  the experience was an enjoyable one for the whole family, equally so if you were going for a evening meal as a couple or with friends this is a great place to go with good all round menu, and also great cocktails upstairs.  If you happen to be on holiday and visiting Padstow this year make sure you visit this restaurant, and it will give you a break from all the pasties and cream teas on offer.  Finally also if you get chance, try the charcuterie plank, we did on a previous visit, great to share, all the meats are full of flavour and the fondue in the middle is a great accompaniment to the dish.  Rojano's is the place to go for all reasons and so if you get there this summer, don't necessarily make a bee line for the seafood restaurants pay Rojano's a visit.  Thanks to Paul Dodd the General Manager for another great meal.

Service:  5/5

Price:     5/5

Food Quality:  4/5

Cleanliness: 5/5

Overall experience: 19/20

Peapod is 1 year old!

So we have chalked up our first year as Peapod Recruitment, Wow that was quick! overall it’s been a good year, a learning curve and an experience.  We have built up new skills, re-acquainted ourselves with old ones and placed candidates along the way.  Hopefully you are a client reading this who has experienced our work and now have an employee placed by us, but also you could be a candidate or client who hasn’t worked with us yet, and I hope that that will change in the next year or so.

Don’t worry this won’t be a sales drive on what we can offer.  

Peapod was created by Sascha Rawlinson and myself coming up with an idea over coffee, that with her operational experience over a number of years and with a client viewpoint on work, along with my recruitment career with national recruiters over 12 years in hospitality recruitment, that we should combine our knowledge to create a friendly and personable company, avoiding all the usual fanfare and small print that comes with a lot of recruiters, keeping the terms simple with no hidden charges and getting the job done.

This has worked throughout year one on the whole, and we have done everything from appointing General Manager’s to Head Chef’s, contract catering Operations/Area Managers to CDP’s, its been hard work, however it has been rewarding and hopefully will continue into the next year. 

Hopefully the guide’s we have posted have been useful for CV’s and interviews and I have had some good feedback on these and how they have helped candidates get interviews, so if you haven’t seen them go and check them out.

So for year two, keep an eye on our blog which we hope will continue to interest you and also we will be writing more restaurant reviews of clients, potential clients and just good places to eat, after all we are in the business of food and good service.  And finally feel free to give us feedback, comments on the blog or email us directly as we want to grow this further to let you know what’s going on in the industry, we have our twitter site @peapodrecruit and so join us on here and you will know when the latest blogs are out and also see what is being tweeted in the industry with what we retweet as well.

Here’s to Year Two, we’re off to celebrate the occasion and then get back to helping you find that next role you are looking for!

Provenance is crucial!

Knowing the provenance!

Over recent weeks, we have seen some pretty large operators and food retailers hitting us with revelations that horse meat has been found in their produce.  Everyone from general consumers to hospitals and schools have been affected by this, with one thing in common, the end user, in this case the consumer doesn’t know where the food has come from, or apparently what it contains.  But even more of a scary thought was the trail of blame that each supplier put out, that their meat had come from somewhere else, with trails crossing backwards and forwards across Europe.

Now most of the products found have been discovered in what you would call the ‘ready meal’ department which has been going through a renaissance in recent years as more and more ready meals have been sold each year, especially with each supermarket setting up its own ‘Dine in for 2’ offers (It should also be pointed out that M&S, the creators of this meal deal and whose produce relies greatly on ready meal products has found no traces, as their Chief Exec proudly boasted last week).  For me though the scariest thought impacts on the discovery by Lancashire Council that 40 of their schools had been supplied horse meat, unknowingly within the cottage pies that they had been supplied. 

For me, a father of two children who will soon be entering mainstream education in the near future, this was both surprising and shocking.  Shocking that the horse meat got into the system at all and surprise that schools were selling ready meals to primary school children instead of making fresh on site, especially with dishes as simple as Cottage Pie and lasagne.  I know that no harm can come from horse meat itself, but if you order beef on a menu, you usually would expect to receive it. 

Now I am not daft and realise the argument of cost is banded around by the various authorities, who at the same time are trying to cut millions of deficit off their council running costs, but it does surprise me that they feel fit to put the health of the children that they are helping to develop at risk by providing a product that they don’t know its contents or its provenance.

In recruitment I hear the word provenance a lot, mainly as I deal with good quality contract caterers who although in it for a profit, are happy to produce a product that they are proud in, and in turn expect the people they employ to share this belief.  This almost always means producing the dish on site from fresh ingredients, and although the costs may be up, the long term take up of school meals usually goes up, which in effect eradicates the cost, and overall provides the children with good quality fresh food.  

Fresh food is on the whole is healthy food, you know what is going into a dish and obviously this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ingredients that we don’t know about.  I realise that a trip to your local butcher or an organic farmer is going to be more expensive, but you at least know where the food has come from, you can trace right back to the original source, and know that the meat on your plate is 100% beef etc.  There are a number of ways to counter the cost that seems to be creeping up, in order to facilitate this extra cost, meat free monday’s was something championed by Paul McCartney in recent years and this makes good sense as the cost difference help. 

So lets hope that this scare over the past 6 weeks has given the major food producers and suppliers a jolt in the right direction and that they will now be a little more careful about what goes into their products, lets also hope that councils like Lancashire start to put the health and well being of their pupils ahead of cost and maybe even look into producing on site, like they used to, without fear of not knowing what they are serving.  Overall only good can come from this and hopefully will provide us with a better offering next time we go to the supermarket or order online or more importantly what our children eat at school.

The view from the Pod: No1, Rick Steins Fish, Falmouth

The Peapod review: No1, Rick SteinsFish, Falmouth

So whilst down in the South West recently I decided it would be remiss of me not to have some lunch at one of the regions great restaurants, and as we were in Falmouth, the obvious choice was the Rick Stein Fish & Chip Restaurant down on Maritime Quay, and as we had our children, The princess aged 2 and the boy aged 4 with us, it seemed a sensible choice.

In the past I have eaten at the original Padstow restaurant which was an enjoyable experience, however here there is a much more defined menu, so it was a good chance to experience a fuller menu, as well as plated service(Padstow served all food in cardboard containers).

The Restaurant in Falmouth which is in a newer part of town with a variety of other branded and independent restaurants as well as the Maritime Museum which is well worth a visit.  It is an open restaurant with plenty of space and a good feeling of not being sat on top of each other like the original can often give.  The service here is friendly and the children were made welcome and entertained by a well thought out colouring/games sheet with every colour crayon you could need.

As for the menu, there are a variety of options ranging from the a la carte, to a selection of 2 and 3 course options.  We both plumped for the 3 course which at £19.95 was very good value.  To start we chose the Salt & Pepper Prawns and the fishcake.  It would be fair to say that this was the weakest part of the meal, still not shabby though.  The prawns were lovely and fresh, however most of the Salt and pepper flavour remained on the outer shell and so it amounted to more of Prawns with garnish.  The fishcake was more of a hit, and was extremely tasty, as you would expect, homemade and with a lovely sweet chilli sauce to complement it.

At this point it would be good to mention the service, during the course of the meal we were served by two of the staff, who were excellent in their interaction and conversation, they were attentive and informative and we felt very well catered for throughout the meal, engaging with the boy as he likes to tell them about everything in his life, and making their experience very enjoyable.  The childrens menu is very good it should be mentioned and ours both emptied their plates of the Fish with new potatoes (They don't like chips! ...Yes I know?) and peas followed by ice cream.

On to the main, which for both of us was the Cod and Chips, this as you would expect was delicious, coming in a lovely beer batter, not to thick, but nice and crunchy on the outside and falling away inside and cooked to perfection, the chips were good chip shop style chips however slightly on the drier side which was good.  The homemade tartare sauce was exceptional and the mushy peas were, well mushy peas, washed down with some mild ginger beer the main course was very good and what you would expect from this tried and tested dish.

Finally the desserts, we decided to chose differently here, and so ordered Apple Pie and Treacle Tart.  The Apple Pie came with vanilla ice cream and was delicious, the pastry was short and complemented the apples well, however we were both taken by the treacle tart which was amazing, the taste of the tart, combined with the clotted cream that accompanied it was declared by my colleague as the best they have ever had, some praise from a dessert connoisseur.  In seriousness, the tart was rich but not sickly, it had a lovely consistency and provided a great way to end a very good, reasonably priced meal, which I believe you would struggle to match for price and quality.

Service: 4.5/5

Price:     5/5

Food Quality:  4/5

Cleanliness: 5/5

Overall experience: 18.5/20

Research Research Research!!!

Research, Research, Research !!!

I often get asked by candidates “What is the client like?” or “What areas should I concentrate on to impress?” Questions that are good and show that they want to make sure they make the right impression, but I also sometimes hear from clients that the candidate came into the interview and knew nothing about them or the role even though as a consultant I had pointed them in the right direction.  These are obviously the poles apart elements of research that you should do before going to interview, but the amount of research you do is critical to success and failure and in my opinion shows your level of passion for wanting a job.

By the time you get to interview stage it is highly probable that you are on an equal skill level with the other interviewees, and so research is a key area to make an impact.  So below are some points on what you should look to do to get the best preparation for that interview:

1. Learn about the company - Knowing about the company nowadays is a free and simple thing to do with the internet showing you everything about the company, what its achieved and even who you are meeting (especially with Linkedin).  

2. Visit the site - Other elements of research which are easier in public operations like hotels, restaurants and bars is to visit the operation, experience the service, pre sales where possible and get a feel for the general atmosphere, what the staff were like and how your overall experience was.  Go to the interview with constructive and honest views as these will show for your eye for detail, and shouldn’t offend then.

3.  Use your consultant - This may be merely talking to your recruitment consultant if you are going via a consultancy, they will probably know the client and their style of management, or areas that they focus on in interviews, it is good to have a sounding board when running ideas past them on how to approach the interview as well.  

4.  Questions - Although you are being interviewed, don’t forget, the interviewer will always ask you for your questions at the end of the meeting, make them useful, creative and of a level that shows you are interested, not “how many days holiday do I get”.

5.  Your career - Go through your CV prior to your interview, even with friends or family and think about times in your career when have come up against difficulty, or created something that has saved the company money, or something else where you have made a difference, the client needs you to be able to throw scenarios back at them, it shows that you are decisive in your thought process and capable of doing the job.

Overall good research can be the difference between getting a job and being one of the nearly candidates.  Make sure next time you have an interview you do your research and the job you are looking for could be yours.