Pub 2610 p30-31 food f 21/10/09 09:25 Page 31
www.thepublican.com thePublican Monday 26/10/09 31
Sous Vide Cooking Pub Food
The steak and stilton
pie from the Create
Great range is
popular
can’t afford trained staff or simply do customers but you are having to offer The dishes Create Great offers
not have a good or big enough it at a lesser price to keep people include beef Bordelaise with The Morgan, Malvern
kitchen. coming back to you.” pancetta, chicken dijonnaise, and
It supplies a range of 21 sous vide The Create Great service takes all duck leg confit with sherry and Jane McGrath is licensee of the
meals and seven different deserts to the stress of running a kitchen away, ginger sauce, as well as a range of Wye Valley Brewery-owned pub,
licensees, but also offers a menu he says. pies. Chicken and Gloucestershire the Morgan in Malvern
planning service, kitchen training to “You have a core menu of a few Old Spot ham pie and steak and ale “We’ve been at the pub about eight
teach staff how to prepare the meals, well chosen dishes, to which you add go down particularly well. weeks now. We’ve come from
and support for the first couple of fresh veg or some nice garlic mash running a busy restaurant where we
weeks after the new menu is intro- on the side, and then you present it Big margins offered all home-cooked food to a
duced. well,” explains Myles. The cost of the meals for licensees pub with a kitchen that is not really
“The nice thing is that all the ranges from £1.40 for a beef chilli, set up for catering. It would be fair
Free advice dishes are the same, they’re consis- right up to £3 for a lamb shank. to say that your kitchen at home is
Myles makes his money out of tent, they’re seasoned, there’s not However, they typically sell for probably bigger. But we’ve estab-
supplying the food – but the advice one chef adding too much salt or too between £8 and £10. lished there is a demand for food in
he offers for free. much pepper. Since starting the company in the area and so we need to offer it.
“There are so many licensees that “I have about eight or nine dishes April, Myles and business partner “However, we didn’t want to take
on extra staff or take the time we
“If you’re building up a new business sometimes you can’t
did in the past to prepare food our-
selves. We heard about the sous
afford to pay the wages a chef is looking for, especially these
vide products and Myles through a
friend and I have to say I was very
days. But pubs are becoming so food-led that it’s essential to
sceptical. I’ve been disappointed
with similar products before.
have a very good food offering”
“We wanted our customers not to
be able to guess that we hadn’t
cooked the food ourselves and I
have to say it has been fantastic.
are totally overwhelmed or intimi- on my menu but I can still do fresh Stephen Barlow have watched busi- The quality is there. Having run a
dated by the thought of offering specials to take us to 12 or 13, in not ness grow quickly. They now have restaurant, we’re sticklers. The
food,” he says. the largest of kitchens. around 50 pubs on their books and chicken dijonnaise is a whole
“We’ve all been there. It’s a hard “My staff can then specialise in supply several thousand meals a breast, the meat is tender and the
demanding game, what we do. We preparing them while the other week. portions I have to say are generous.
work unsocial hours and you are dishes are quite happily cooking Both are being called upon to “We have a minute kitchen but
having to offer a lot more to your themselves in a water bath.” demonstrate their meals to potential we can cook up to 14 meals at one
As well as cutting staffing costs, new customers up to five times a time and we don’t have to pay
sous vide dishes can reduce wastage week. They are also working along- anyone to cook. Customers think
The cost of a lamb shank from as the meals can be stored in the side pub companies and breweries I’ve been working away in the
Create Great would be fridge for two to three weeks or such as Marston’s to help licensees kitchen all afternoon. Also, you can
about £3, while such a dish frozen, so little is thrown away. perfect their food offer. be flexible and change the menu
would sell for typically They can be cooked in around “It’s not about the power of sales. very easily. We have already put in
£10 10 minutes. We don’t do hard sales,” says Myles. place our Christmas menus and are
And because “I think the difference with us is that taking bookings for them.
they are we go in and show people and offer “This probably isn’t the cheapest
sealed, mul- the help without charging. option but if I had known about it
tiple meals “For me it is a pleasure to show 12 months ago in our restaurant we
can be someone the products and for them would have swapped all the cooking
cooked to take it on board and come back to for it there and then.”
at the me and say that it’s going down a
same storm.
time and “That’s where I get my kicks.” ■
there is very
little cleaning • For more information go to:
to do afterwards. www.creategreat.co.uk
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