Did you watch Big Chef Little Chef last night? If you didn't let me summarise what the program was about.
Heston Blumenthal, dubbed the 'molecular chef' because of his research work in the field of food science, was brought into create a new menu for the Little Chef restaurants in a bid to return the ailing food chain to its former glory.
Ian Pegler, the Little Chef CEO wanted Heston Blumental to bring in the punters by freshening the menu. It makes good television but what appeared to be created was two strong and dogmatic ego's who clearly didn't understand the problem that they were dealing with and they clashed often.
First of all, let's take a look at who is heading up the Little Chef business. Ian Pegler started his career at Marks and Spencers quitting after twelve years to buy a pub and restaurant in Devon with his wife.
The restaurant got in the good food guide but disaster struck Pegler when he and his wife bought the hairdressers next door with the view that letting the attached cottage would pay the mortgage.
Pegler explains that is was the worst decision of his business career because it was 1979, Britain went into recession, and the business failed.
"It was a bad decision for my business and my family too. I hadn't done my research properly. I went there using my heart, not my head: the business I'd bought was at its maximum and there was little I could do to improve it."
Ian Pegler was also made redundant from Little Chef in 1994, ironically just after the UK had come out of the last recession.
Heston Blumenthal is a contrasting character and represents a more youthful approach to business.
He is a self taught chef having spent ten years reading, travelling and researching food with many inspirational visits to France after being taken there by his parents as a fifteen year old.
Fourteen years after his first taste of French gastronomy, Blumenthal opened the Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire.
Less than ten years later, Blumenthal received the accolade of the 'Best Restaurant in the world' by the top '50 Best' Academy' comprising of six hundred food critics, journalists and chefs from around the world.
The relationship in the show was strained from the start and, although I love watching and listening to Blumenthal in his previous TV show In Search of Perfection, I felt he was the wrong man, in the wrong place trying to do the wrong job.
The Little Chef is a previously successful business model and favourite British institution that is just a victim of a shift in market places and contributions from other roadside fare.
There is a maximum number of potential passing mouths to feed and Burger King or McDonalds take a big slice of that market now.
If the clientèle are under thirty years of age and a straw pole for Little Chef versus Burger King was conducted in a car carrying a family of four children and two adults, my guess is that the burger would win more than fifty percent of the time.
There is nothing wrong with the Little Chef food and I personally love it if I am travelling.
Blumenthal just didn't get it when it came to understanding what Little Chef needed and quite clearly, Pegler had not learned from his previous mistake of not doing his research properly. Fat Duck food will never sell at a Little Chef restaurant.
Garden designers can learn from Big Chef Little Chef
Many garden designers fail to interpret, understand or listen a client brief and through all of the current millennium have imposed too many self indulgent designs and gardens on their client.
Too much emphasis is put on the designers brand rather than the quality of their work. The designer consistently fails to 'weld' the garden to the family or persons who the garden is being designed for.
My view is that clients will no longer tolerate being dictated to and should insist on getting what they want and need from their precious space.
If it is a family garden then 'let them play' if it is to be a new garden for a retired artist who seeks peace and solace then indulge their desires.
What is clear to me, and I would urge you to see the second part of Big Chef Little Chef (Channel 4 9pm) is that when a salesman tries to sell an idea or a product against the market will, all you get is a recipe for disaster.
Do you have a view? - feel free to leave a comment.
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