EPCAS Summer General Assembly 2014 Management Summary

EPCAS MANAGEMENT SUMMARY

28th-30th July 2014 BUCHAREST - ROMANIA

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Index 3

PREFACE

14 Results and conclusions QEM 15 Finance update

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ATTENDEES

16 Membership fees 16 Sales kit

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MONDAY JULY 28TH

17 Company presentation: Pellegrini SPA

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Welcome

17 Working groups

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Authenticity: A Strategy for Change

19 Best Practices

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Presentation Intercatering

19 “Lessons learned” - Fruy Finest Food Catering

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Presentation Christ Party & Catering

20 “From Food Waste to Green Energy” - BioTrans Nordic

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Presentation SD Trading

21 “Smart catering anywhere” - Tuck-tuck

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Food Waste update

22 “Responsible Business” - Kai Thor Catering

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Chefs Forum

24 “Bilfinger Profimiet goes Brasil” - Bilfinger Profimiet

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Evening programme

25 Chefs Programme 25 Afternoon & evening programme

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TUESDAY JULY 29TH

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WEDNESDAY JULY 30TH

9

Official EPCAS meeting executives

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Update board matters

26 Interactive session by Alberto Sanna

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Member update

26 Lunch & evaluation

10 Winter General Assembly & FXE 12 Visits & Events 13 Quarterly EPCAS Monitor

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28 SAVE THE DATE

Preface Dear (potential) EPCAS member, We are happy to present the Management Summary of the EPCAS Summer General Assembly 2014, which took place from July 28th until July 30th in Bucharest, Romania. With 50 participants representing 27 companies from 13 different countries, we look back on a successful edition with a lot of opportunities to share knowledge and experiences. It was great to see so many new faces, who blended in perfectly. The programme, and the city of Bucharest in general, made for three unforgettable and inspiring days with a lot of take-home value.

A very special thanks goes out to Anca, Calin & Ileana Mitu from Privileg Catering, who hosted this Assembly. Besides co-creating the programme, they showed us a glimpse of their culture and have opened our eyes about Bucharest and Romania.

and Petra Schönfelder – Bilfinger Profimiet. Simultaneously, the chefs attended the Chefs Programme hosted by METRO Cash & Carry Romania at their Gastronomy Competence Center for a tour and master class. This gave the chefs insight in traditional Romanian Cuisine, as they had to prepare a 3-course menu containing local specialities.

After a short exploration of the city of Bucharest and its history, a bus took the attendees to Club Cortina, venue of our hosts Anca & Calin Mitu from Privileg Catering, where a 4-course menu in new Romanian style was presented to us, including a wine tasting, a barbecue and a party as ultimate highlight of the evening.

The programme started on Monday July 28th with a welcome lunch at the Radisson Blu Hotel, which was followed by an introduction round, where the attendees were paired up in duo’s and everyone had to introduce the other person. Afterwards, presentations on the theme ‘Authenticity: A Strategy for Change’ were given, and the Chefs Forum took place, and the Bronze level Food Waste Certificates were handed out to the members who actively participated in the EPCAS Food Waste Initiative. The first day ended in style with a traditional Romanian dinner at Crama Domneasca.

The last day, Wednesday July 30th, a visit was paid to Pantelimon Cattle farm, followed by a presentation of Alberto Sanna about the development of a new platform about health and food. The Assembly ended with a lunch, prepared by the chefs, at Readers Café (a location of Privileg Catering).

On Tuesday July 29th, the executives started the day with the Official EPCAS Meeting, where an update was given on EPCAS matters such as the Quarterly EPCAS Monitor, past and upcoming events and visits, the plan for the membership fees as per 2015 and the presentation of the EPCAS Saleskit. Also, part of the official EPCAS meeting was an interactive session, where the attendees discussed the challenges that they are facing and how to counter attack these challenges.

Don’t forget to block February 8th to 10th 2015 in your agenda’s for the EPCAS Winter General Assembly, which will be hosted again alongside the 2-day programme of Food Executive Europe in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

With this Management Summary, we provide you the opportunity to look back on the events during the Summer General Assembly and give the members that were not able to attend an opportunity to catch up.

With kind regards, On behalf of the EPCAS Board, Advisory Council and Secretariat,

Thereafter, it was time for the Best Pratices given by some of our (potential) members; Stephan Di Gallo – tuck-tuck, Tina & Martin Færgemann – Kai Thor Catering, Ann Verduyn & Xavier Fruy – Fruy Finest Food Catering, Søren Jeberg – BioTrans Nordic, Ruedi Bachmann EPCAS President

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Attendees CATERERS (INCLUDING POTENTIALS) Anca Mitu - Privileg Catering

Stephan Di Gallo - tuck-tuck – food on the move

Andreas Toutziaridis - Intercatering

Tina Færgemann - Kai Thor Catering

Ann Verduyn - Fruy Finest Food Catering

Tom Steffen - Steffen Traiteur

Brigitte van den Boer - Koninklijke Van den Boer Groep

Xavier Fruy - Fruy Finest Food Catering

Calin Mitu - Privileg Catering Frank Steffen - Steffen Traiteur

COMMITTEE OF RELATED BRANCHES (INCLUDING POTENTIALS)

Georg Broich - Broich Catering & Locations

Charles Smith - At Your Service

Marco Christ - Christ Party & Catering

Dorrie Eilers - Neptunus

Marie-Theres Eschweiler - Culpepper Event

Eric Miete - Koppert Cress

Markus Spengler - FPS Catering

Fritz Schneider - BioTrans AG

Martin Færgemann - Kai Thor Catering

Niels Vugs - Mise en Place

Oscar Alsina - Food & Mambo

Peter Kandels - Ecolab

Raj Somaiya - Mumbai Street Food

Petra Schönfelder - Bilfinger Profimiet

Roberto Lion - Pellegrini

Søren Jeberg - BioTrans Nordic

Sheetal Somaiya - Mumbai Street Food

Thomas Kascha - SD Trading Tom Ambaum - Neptunus

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CHEFS Alaide Azevedo Di Gallo - tuck-tuck – food on the move

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION Hélène Baud - Traiteurs de France

Christian Willrich - Broich Catering & Locations Eric Miete - Koppert Cress Eugène Swalen - Koninklijke Van den Boer Groep

SPECIAL GUEST Alberto Sanna - Fondazione Centro San Raffaele

Jochem Sneep - Cuise John Konstantineas - Intercatering

BOARD AND SECRETARIAT

Sandu Pestritu - Privileg Catering

Ruedi Bachmann - EPCAS President

Ulrich Brock - Culpepper Event

Charles van Goch - EPCAS Board Georg Broich - EPCAS Board

ADVISORY COUNCIL Frank Steffen - Steffen Traiteur

Stephanie Cleven - EPCAS Secretariat Stephanie van Oorschot - EPCAS Secretariat

Peter Kandels - Ecolab Ullrich Eckert - Durhamer Alm

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Monday July 28th WELCOME

The Summer General Assembly started off with a welcome lunch, after which EPCAS President Ruedi Bachmann officially opened the General Assembly. On behalf of our hosts Calin & Anca Mitu from Privileg Catering, their daughter Ileana Mitu addressed the members to welcome them in Bucharest. Afterwards the introduction round took place, where all attendees were paired up in duo’s and had to present one another to the rest of the group. Lastly, Bert Fol, General Manager from the Radisson Blu Hotel, expressed his joy about hosting the Assembly in his hotel and elaborated on hospitality in Romania.

AUTHENTICITY: A STRATEGY FOR CHANGE

Based on pre-determined questions, Andreas Toutziaridis from Intercatering, Marco Christ from Christ Party & Catering and Thomas Kascha from SD Trading shared their vision on how their company’s business model changed from before the crisis, and now, to the future and how they managed to stay authentic through all this.

PRESENTATION - Intercatering - by Andreas Toutziaridis

Andreas started off by telling that authenticity is a Greek word, meaning something that is original and not fake and that in order to value authenticity, you have to compare the past with the present.

He walked the attendees through his company’s evolution, because of the financial crisis. His company went from being a market leader in Greece in 2009, to losing employees, customers, suppliers, events, guests and as a result having 50% less turnover in 2012. But even with the declination in turnover, it was the most profitable year in the last decade for them. By 2013 his business was stable again – after 5 years of continuous drop. 2014 started with a 20% increase in the first half, and the second half looks promising.

How did they do it?

By being honest, sharing their problems and holding on to their values.

And, because they supported their principals of value for money; asking for more money, but offering more services.

So, for Andreas and his company, authenticity means: • Being flexible • Being innovative • Being daring But changing the values that made their business successful? NO. Some things are not for sale!

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Welcome speech - by Ileana Mitu I am delighted to welcome you today in Bucharest for this Summer General Assembly. It is a great honour to have you here and participate in the EPCAS meeting. Thank you for coming. And thank you to the EPCAS organisation for taking the challenge of organizing this Summer General Assembly in Bucharest.

My parents and myself hope that you will enjoy your stay and that the meetings will inspire you. This year’s theme is ‘Authenticity – A Strategy for Change’. We are all unique and let’s have the courage and pride to say this out loud!

I am Romanian, the first generation of kids born after the fall of Communism in the 90’ies, a generation called “free” – FREE from the beginning, FREE from birth. Freedom in this context meant political freedom but also consumption freedom, typical for a liberal economy and of course the freedom of travelling, a free border country. All this moves us towards change and innovations and a lot of creative ideas. People from my generation often leave Romania for studying abroad, what I also did myself. We searched new roads, new ideas, a modern and cosmopolite life and that inspired us. Now, we want to bring all this back home and to mix it with Romania’s identity and to build a healthy beautiful country. For me, this is authenticity. Let the city surprise you, let Bucharest’s authenticity, a very eclectic one indeed, conquer you!

You took the road! Roads… everything is about roads, they connect us, they create links and when I’m talking about links it’s not material ones I refer to… we create links between our cultures, between our countries, between our know-how, our experience and identities. EPCAS is about that, give strength to the links between us.

My parents asked me to do this opening speech. They wanted you to listen to a young Romanian voice, a young vibe… future, change, innovation!! They see in me the future of their business and a good dynamic for Romania’s next development level. I truly believe that my dreams can merge in harmony with my parents business.

It’s an honour for me to have the chance to meet you here and be inspired by your successful stories. I once more wish you a warm welcome and a very pleasant stay in Bucharest.

PRESENTATION - Christ Party & Catering - by Marco Christ

From 1990 until 2008 Christ Party & Catering was just a normal, and one of 50 “normal” party service companies in the area, but that did not feel right for Marco. Marco explained where they came from; being the biggest caterer in the region with over 1500 events per year, having a very high revenue (from their point of view) without much profit, and having no marketing concept or corporate identity.

He continued to speak about the actions they undertook, f.e. changing the company logo three times, modernising their catalogue, setting up their own events and opening up the business to the public by inviting their partners, guests and relations to dine at their pop-up venue, showing them directly what the possibilities are. Since a few years Christ Party & Catering is doing a lot less events per year, but the events that they do are a lot cooler. They are happy to be one of the smallest companies in the region.

Marco Christ, Markus Spengler & Frank Steffen

So what Marco and his company have learned, thanks to the crisis, is that: “It’s not important to be the biggest. It’s cool to be important but it’s more important to be cool! Sometimes you have to say NO to a client, even if you think you have to say yes to get the revenue. Be different, go the extra mile to impress your clients, and HAVE FUN!”

PRESENTATION - SD Trading - by Thomas Kascha

Thomas initiated his presentation by the following statement: “Crisis? I hate the word crisis. For me it is a period of change.” In 2001, he founded his first venture, a mystery shopping company, which grew out to be a multimillion dollar firm with 5 offices worldwide. After 9,5 years, Thomas decided that this was not the direction that he had foreseen for himself, sold his shares and started a new company the next day, selling plates. SD Trading was started behind a desk all by himself, with a container with 150.000 euro of disposables coming from Japan.

He no longer wanted to react anymore, but he wanted to direct. Advised by a befriended entrepreneur, he read the book ‘Mastering the Rockefeller habits’. In the middle of the book there is a one page strategy. Thomas started to make the one page strategic plan and determined where he wanted to be in 3 years from now.

Introduction Round

“To get there, you need to start now! If you want to achieve something this year, you have to start this quarter. To get that done, you need to start this month… or start this day.” As part of his plan, Thomas has a concrete ideology: “Directing your future also means not directing people anymore. I manage activities, and the people work on them. I lead the people. It’s always better, faster or cheaper. If it’s not one of these three, I don’t do it.”

Thomas’ biggest learning, which Marco also mentioned, was that you should be different and dare to be different, and let other people do the talking for you. Let others tell your story, and as a result your company will grow!

Introduction Round

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FOOD WASTE UPDATE – by Ruedi Bachmann and Peter Kandels

Ruedi and Peter started off with a movie by Intermarché, showing great initiatives to prevent food from going to waste. In 2012, a working committee, consisting out of 4 to 5 members of EPCAS, started and decided to find ways to tackle this matter within our association, providing our members with tips & tricks to reduce the food waste.

The EPCAS food waste steering committee created the EPCAS Food Waste Initiative, and a toolkit to help achieve the three levels in the initiative: We provided this in 2013 (available on the EPCAS website). During the last Winter General Assembly in February 2014, all members agreed that they would reach the Bronze Level and be Food Waste Sensitive by the Summer General Assembly in Bucharest.

The following companies have received their Bronze Food Waste Certifications; Culpepper Event Steffen Traiteur Broich Catering & Locations Intercatering Privileg Catering Fruy Finest Food Catering

FPS Catering Christ Party & Catering Mumbai Street Food Kai Thor Catering Koninklijke Van den Boer Groep Food & Mambo

BRONZE LEVEL - FOOD WASTE SENSITIVITY What do you need to do to achieve this?

• Brief staff yearly concerning food waste • Sign EPCAS Code of Conduct SILVER LEVEL – FOOD WASTE AWARENESS What do you need to do to achieve this?

• Measure food waste • Show figures in Quarterly EPCAS Monitor GOLD LEVEL – FOOD WASTE PREVENTION What do you need to do to achieve this?

• Written plan on implementing measures • Integrated procedures

The new goal for the EPCAS members concerning Food Waste: All members must reach the next level in the Food Waste Initiative before the upcoming Winter General Assembly in Maastricht, February 2015.

CHEFS FORUM – by Charles van Goch

Charles called all chefs to the stage, to tell the other attendees about their expectations for the Assembly and their motivation for attending. All chefs were very enthusiastic to be in Bucharest in order to experience the Romanian culture and cuisine, and to get the chance to interact and exchange knowledge with likeminded people. They were also very curious as to what the Chefs Programme on Tuesday entailed.

EVENING PROGRAMME - dinner at Crama Domneasca

The first day ended with a typical Romanian dinner at Crama Domneasca. After a short walk from the hotel, the attendees arrived at this traditional Romanian restaurant, right in the heart of Bucharest’s historic centre. After welcome drinks on the terrace, the whole group moved to the old cellars, where we were welcomed by Dan Cantaragiu, business partner at LMI Romania, who shared his inspiring vision on the past, present and future of Romania. While enjoying traditional Romanian music, a true feast with local specialties was presented to the table.

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Tuesday July 29th OFFICIAL EPCAS MEETING - EXECUTIVES

The Official EPCAS Meeting for the executives took place at the Radisson Blu Hotel, whereas the Chefs Programme took place simultaneously at the Gastronomy Competence Center of METRO Cash & Carry Romania.

UPDATE BOARD MATTERS – by Ruedi Bachmann

Ruedi welcomed the attendees and started off the meeting with an update on the EPCAS Board Matters.

Oscar Alsina receiving his Bronze Food Waste Certificate by Peter Kandels

Addition to the secretariat As per April 2014, Stephanie Cleven is officially part of the EPCAS Secretariat. EPCAS is her main project and she takes on the daily secretarial tasks for the association, as well as the planning of the General Assemblies and company visits.

New president As was decided during the Winter General Assembly last February, Ruedi Bachmann took on his responsibilities as President of EPCAS. Part of Ruedi’s presidential tasks are regular meetings in Maastricht to discuss and maintain the course of EPCAS.

MEMBER UPDATE – by Stephanie van Oorschot Member off: Diamond Catering – December 2014 Arena One – December 2014 Fauchon Réceptions – June 2014 Traiteur de Paris – June 2014 Gourmet Invent – June 2014 Potential members – hot prospects: Tuck-tuck BioTrans Nordic – CoRB RAI Catering METRO Cash & Carry – CoRB Pellegrini SpA Groupe Arom Stockheim

New members: Culpepper Event Intercatering Food & Mambo

Dinner at Crama Domneasca

Dinner at Crama Domneasca

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WINTER GENERAL ASSEMBLY & FXE – by Charles van Goch

Charles gave an update about the upcoming Winter General Assembly and the second edition of Food Executive Europe (FXE). “Before we look forward to the upcoming Winter General Assembly and FXE, we must first look at the last edition, in order for it to grow and improve compared to last year”, was Charles’ first comment. Looking back on last February, FXE got a 4,2 out of 5 as rating. With regards to the past Winter General Assembly, there were some points of attention, on which will be worked for the next edition.

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Points of attention + Branding EPCAS & FXE was a 10+ + Good mix of sessions (speakers) & great variety in programme + Diversity (with regards to functions) and number of guests -

Not enough focus on EPCAS; Integrate more points in FXE that are interesting for the members Lost (family) feeling of EPCAS Culinary tour; keep EPCAS together Better overall organisation & routing of Culinary Tour Link between theme and speakers missed

In 2015, the EMCup (competition amongst European Hotel Management Schools) will also be joining FXE to further improve the international atmosphere and networking possibilities for the attendees. By adding the EMCup, we are really providing the young people the opportunity to network and be a part of our world of hospitality. The link between executives and future executives will be a very positive aspect of FXE in the future.

Other ideas for improvement with regards to the EPCAS members: • FXE is a platform in order for EPCAS to grow • Programme: ¼ FXE & ¾ EPCAS • Tailor made programme for EPCAS incl. 1 exclusive EPCAS evening • Create EPCAS corner in FXE Experience Center where members can show their skills

Working Groups

Remarks Xavier Fruy: “We should eat what we preach – healthy foods are important to us and at FXE we should show that.”

Charles van Goch: “The EPCAS members could provide their signature dishes and show some sort of ‘EPCAS corner’.”

Ullrich Eckert: “Great idea and very important to showcase the EPCAS members’ specialities.”

Chefs Programme at the Gastronomy Competence Center of METRO Cash & Carry Romania

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Tour

PAST VISITS

Visit with Josef Voithofer from Kongress Gastronomie (potential member), Salzburg

Visit with Horst Gallbauer from Gallbauer Catering (potential member), Salzburg

Charles Smith biked to to Maastricht for charity

Hotelympia, London

Pre-trip Bucharest for the SGA 2014

Presentation Mark Lewis (Caterer and Hotelkeeper) at Hotelympia, London

Meeting with Alberto Sanna and his team for the SGA 2015

Visit with Sylvie and Alain Marcotullio from Marcotullio Traiteur (potential member), Luxembourg

Tour at Kai Thor Catering by Martin FĂŚrgemann

Pre-trip Bucharest for the SGA 2014 ICA meeting, Milan Catching up with Xavier Fruy and Ann Verduyn Lunch at the Hurlingham Club, London

Networking drink at Alimentaria, Barcelona

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VISITS & EVENTS – by Stephanie Van Oorschot Stephanie informed the attendees about the visits that have been made by the EPCAS Board and Advisory Council in the past months, visiting (potential) EPCAS members and attending hospitality tradeshows and events.

London was visited twice. The first time, Maartje Beijsens visited Hotelympia (international event for the foodservice and hospitality market), where she saw many inspiring concepts and met up with Mark Lewis from magazine ‘Caterer and Hotelkeeper’, who also took the stage at ‘The Big Hospitality Conversation’ on how to tackle youth employment.

For the second London visit, Charles van Goch and Charles Smith organised a lunch for London hospitality and catering professionals at The Hurlingham Club (from host Hector Ross), where they discussed the next edition of Food Executive Europe. The attendees were Laurence McCarthy (The Russell Partnership), Mark Lewis (Caterer and Hotelkeeper), Marina Souter (Cinnamon Candy – D&D London), Richard Groves (Smart Group Ltd.), Zoltan Fox & Sanjeev Dole (Hotel Management International), Julian Saipe (Zafferano) and Raj Somaiya (Mumbai Street Food (Payal Catering)).

Board Member of the EPCAS Foundation, Maartje Beijsens, visited Denmark. In a threeday-race against the clock, Maartje had dinner with Frank Lantz (former EPCAS member) and Jacob Kocemba (Columbus Trophy finalist with his product ‘Kocemba’s’), had a tour from Martin Faergemann at Kai Thor Catering (EPCAS member), met with Lone Ricks from Skål International, and had a very fruitful meeting with Carl Johan Paulsen from Meyers Køkken (potential EPCAS member).

also met with Edwin Deurloo from Metro Cash & Carry, for the Chef’s Programme and the Summer General Assembly in general.

From March 31st to April 3rd, Alimentaria took place in Barcelona; an international business centre for all food and beverage professionals. Of course EPCAS was well accounted for by president Ruedi Bachmann, EPCAS Member Oscar Alsina from Food & Mambo, and Bouwe Metz from Mise en Place.

On the first of April, EPCAS organized a networking drink for local caterers at restaurant NUCLO, to inform them about EPCAS and to offer them the opportunity to network with colleagues in an informal setting. About 30 professionals from the catering industry attended, representing companies like Esther Conde, Semon, Catering Sensacions, CoCo Catering, Airolo, Sagardi, Martín Berasategui catering, Gastro Fira, Joker Catering, Gourmet Paradis, Semon and Prats Fatjó. Of course, the day was ended with a visit to the exhibition floor of Alimentaria.

A visit was also made to potential member Marcutullio in Luxembourg at the end of March by Charles van Goch and Maartje Beijsens.

During Charles’ visit to Fruy Finest Food Catering in the first week of April, he persuaded Xavier Fruy and Ann Verduyn to present a Best Practice in Bucharest.

Stephanie ended this part of the programme with an overview of the upcoming trips and events; an overview was sent to all attendees via mail and can be found on the EPCAS website.

Charles van Goch and Georg Broich went to Schalke for the ICA (Institute of Culinary Art) meeting and Maartje Beijsens visited Milan for an ICA meeting, but also to meet with potential member Roberto Lion from Pellegrini.

Maartje also met up with Alberto Sanna (Director e-Services for Life & Health Research at the Scientific Institute San Raffaele) to discuss the plans for the Summer General Assembly 2015.

Stephanie van Oorschot visited Bucharest in April to work out the details for the Summer General Assembly. Together with Calin and Anca Mitu from Privileg Catering, Stephanie explored the city of Bucharest, visited hotels, restaurants, and meeting locations. They Working Groups

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Official EPCAS Meeting - Executives

QUARTERLY EPCAS MONITOR – by Ruedi Bachmann

The Quarterly EPCAS Monitor (QEM) aims to receive the members’ facts & figures, in order to be able to benchmark and process this data, and to be able to provide insights on how the EPCAS companies are doing. For this third round of the QEM, the questionnaire was altered according to the comments received by the working groups from the Winter General Assembly 2014. It is a big asset for the association to be able to provide this service, but in order to do succeed and offer added value, input is needed. With the limited response received to this version of the QEM (only 46% of the members returned the questionnaire), it is difficult to provide a good overview.

General Information Turnover Category

HR Information Cost per hour

General Information Business Situation

Operation Food Cost

General Information Budget Outlook

General Information Corporate Business

Operation Beverage Cost

HR Information Turnover vs Fix Staff

Operation Staff Costs

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RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS QEM General Information – Turnover Category First of all, we have to come up with brackets of turnover. In two brackets, we did not get feedback. The bracket ’40 million +’ is huge so we do have to think about how we can strategize and show this data differently. We had the exact same distribution of the feedback for all these different categories. So apparently, the people who committed to filling it out, are the ones who have done so in the past 2 years.

General Information – Business Situation When we got the question about how you feel about the business situation in 2013 and the expected business situation in 2014, you can see that we have gotten much more optimistic in general.

General Information – Budget Outlook We wanted to see whether our members are growing or decreasing in their figures, turnover.

Smaller caterers have mostly double digit % increase while the market leaders (40 million + turnover) have a 2 to 3% yearly turnover increase.

General information – turnover The caterers who measure the food related turnover make approximately 50% of total turnover with this category. It came as a surprise that most of the smaller caterers do not make the distinction between the turnover category (food / beverages / tableware / etc.).

If the eggs are all in the same basket, how do you know you lose or make your money! If you will have a shift or change in your event mix or offer you will face some difficulties to manage the situation without the detailed information.

General Information – Corporate Business Turnover realized with corporate business is stagnating at a high level. With an average of 80% for Corporate Business of total turnover, this represents a vital factor to our branch!

HR Information – Turnover vs Fix Staff The country organisation is not reflected in this scatterplot. Their ratio: turnover fix employee is not fitting into this model! We heard yesterday that people are trying to bring down the number of fixed employees. The turnover per fixed employee will be almost 130.000 euro in 2014.”

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Hélène Baud: “That is almost exactly the same for our Traiteurs de France members. It is around the same with the members of Traiteurs de France: 130.000 euro turnover per fixed employee will be generated. “ Ruedi Bachmann: “The data from Traiteurs de France will definitely improve our QEM once they all start filling it out individually.“ HR Information – Cost per hour While the average cost per hour for all, fix and flex in Kitchen and Service is observed at around € 18,-, the big range and variance for the cost of fix service employees is astonishing. Unfortunately due to the little entrees we are not able to categorize the data further. i.e. by turnover size of the companies.

Regarding personnel costs per hour, the span of fixed service employees is very huge.

Almost everyone pays around the same for the flex service staff.

Operation – Food Cost There were very few questionnaires where this data was filled in. Interesting to see that the caterers budgeted the same percentage for 2014, maintaining the achieved ratio for last year. 50% of the received data showed a food cost ratio of 23% or 24%!

Operation – Beverage Cost Same general comments as for Food Cost, however range of % is higher 20% to 43% with an average of 30%.

Operation – Staff Costs 50% of the members have less than 30% Staff Cost ratio and 25% of the received data showed more than 42 (up to 44%) of staff cost. However, very little data was received and this cannot be used for statistical evidence.

Conclusions • This tool (QEM) will bring a wealth of information • Has the potential to become a strong benchmarking instrument • We are close to get real good information which will help you in our operations • Will describe your position in the Catering market • Will highlight your company’s weaknesses but also the strong sides of your performance!

Working Groups

Exploring Bucharest

Raj Somaiya receiving his Bronze Food Waste Certificate by Peter Kandels

Remarks Xavier Fruy: “We should know now, what the questions of next year will be. We cannot formulate all the answers to the questions immediately.”

Hélène Baud: “It’s the question of addressing the QEM to the right person within the company. Whether related to quality, finance or turnover, it’s normally several persons. When I refer to the person responsible for some of these items, that is really helpful. We had the same challenge with Traiteurs de France to get people to reply to the questions. But progressively, they did it better and better.”

Xavier Fruy: “How many of us know the difference between kitchen staff production / on location, service staff production / on location, etc.?”

Ruedi Bachmann: “Yes we have to grow, but also we should aim for some more simple issues where we get clear feedback. My intention is to further advance that and I will personally put effort in it. We are still far too complex in a few questions, and I’m positive that not everybody understood all the questions… we should go for a simple/stupid approach. We shouldn’t change the questionnaire every year. We have to start slow and continue to grow. It takes some time but don’t get frustrated. We will continue to improve and grow. “

FINANCE UPDATE – by Stephanie van Oorschot

Stephanie van Oorschot informed all attendees about the financial status of EPCAS. “The figures look promising so far and if we continue this way we will have a small positive result at the end of 2014.”

EPCAS MEMBERSHIP FEES – by Stephanie van Oorschot

In conversations with potential members, the reason for not becoming a member most often is that either they don’t have time or that the financial contribution is too big of a step. Therefore, a new approach for the membership fees for the caterers has been set up. As per 2015, there will be two types of membership, for a caterer to choose from:

Full Membership € 5.000,- per year Attending 2 General Assemblies per year, with 2 company representatives Basic Membership € 3.000,- per year € 795,- participation fee, per person per General Assembly

REMARKS Stephan Di Gallo: “I think it goes in the right direction but two aspects are maybe not completely covered. One is, there is no difference between huge companies and small companies. For me, the membership fee is very high. Whereas big companies look at things differently and they might also be able to profit more from it. The second is, there are active members that are in catering and suppliers.

Charles van Goch: “The Committee of Related Branches fee is non-negotiable. “ Ruedi Bachmann: “We will take your feedback into consideration and make a decision with the board. “ Ann Verduyn: “The 5.000 is a lot of money, but it’s definitely worth it. You have to put effort in it though. Just coming here is not enough. You have to share, ask for information, visit others… you have to do something with it and take action by yourself!”

EPCAS SALES KIT – by Stephanie Cleven

In order to be able to present EPCAS to potential members in a clear manner, a new brochure has been developed. The brochures contains all aspects of EPCAS, like the mission & vision, the goals, the assemblies, the benefits of being an EPCAS member and of course many quotes of the current members about their reasons for being involved. All attendees received the EPCAS brochure, which accompanied by a folder with additional information such as resumes of the Board & Advisory Council, an overview of upcoming exhibitions and invitations, can be handed to any potential members in their network.

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COMPANY PRESENTATION - Pellegrini - by Roberto Lion

Robert Lion from Pellegrini, potential EPCAS member, gave a short sneak peak into his company. The company has a history of 50 years. Since 1965, this collective catering company has been working in canteens, housekeeping and facilities. Besides that they started with the production of meat 20 years ago, which is being used in their restaurants. Furthermore, the meat is being sold outside their company; Pellegrini is the main supplier of meat for METRO Cash & Carry in Italy, as well as main supplier for a large highway & mall caterer in Italy.

Roberto tells the attendees, that as per the beginning of this year he decided a few things. First of all, he started writing a book about the history of the company’s president, describing his life and his experiences with sports and the company.

The second thing he decided was that he had a lot of fortune in the past and he wants to share this. He created the company with money that was gifted to him by his boss, who gave him some money to manage the canteen of the company. As Roberto says: “I was lucky because I found someone who gave me this opportunity”.

Chefs at the Gastronomy Competence Center of METRO Cash & Carry Romania

Therefore, they are opening a new restaurant in September, named Ruben. Roberto explains that Ruben is the name of a poor man, a clochard, that was a friend of Mr. Pellegrini. This restaurant is very particular – it’s more or less for free. Every day Roberto and his team give 500 complete meals for €1. “It’s a social activity and it will be of great importance to the community”, Roberto states. “Like other countries, we are also still struggling with the crisis a bit. There is 15% unemployment, 50% if you look at young people. It’s a big problem and we can also help these people by starting this restaurant. They do not have money to have a hot meal every day so we started this.”

The concept is not a marketing operation. Thanks to this, they are in contact with the Vatican and managed to set in place some sort of programme to supply food to the Vatican, which is then distributed to the community. Roberto ends his story with the following statement: “We do not talk about this or market this. When you do something for someone else to help them, you don’t have to brag about it.”

Dinner at Club Cortina

WORKING GROUPS – by Ruedi Bachmann

In order to get more insights in what is on the mind of the members, the group was divided into smaller groups. Together they had to discuss the following topic “Which challenges are you facing and how are you counter attacking these challenges?”, which after a short brainstorm had to be presented to the rest of the group.

Best Practice by Stephan Di Gallo

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Group 1 – Represented by Georg Broich “The problem we are facing is the pitch culture. It means the offer we make to our clients is getting more and more time intensive; having to work out more and more concepts with only a small offer in food.

We do a lot of work for the agencies, more creative work, and we are not paid for it. Normally we would work on an offer just one day, now we have people working on presentations for days. Another thing we do additional to the offer, is tastings. We decided that if we don’t get the job, we ask money for that. What also happens is that we make concepts and the client decides not to go into business with us. Then, a few weeks later, they let a competitor execute our concept. Since there is no copywrite involved, there is nothing we can do about this. We know that it’s a problem all over Europe and all over the industry.

We discussed this issue with our German branch association. Our German association is part of a very big organisation, with 80% of its members being event companies. They also said they wanted to receive money from their customers for their creativity and that they should from a front, telling customers that they want money for their pitches. Then one of us stood up and said, how about the caterers? Will you pay us for our creative concept? They were very hesitant then. “ Group 2 – Represented by Ullrich Eckert “We found out that there are several points which will be challenging for caterers in the future. One point, the most important one, is staff. The problem is that in the future we want to have enough, and well trained, staff in service, the kitchen, logistics, etcetera. The wages are rising and your client will not be willing to pay that amount. You won’t get enough staff for your parties, you won’t get enough fixed staff. So the solution we talked about will be that you start very early with training and bringing up your staff with your own experience, so that you will be able to have enough power to provide staff for the events. On the other hand, all the legal directions you are given by the government will be another issue we have to compare.

The other challenges are the type of catering you have to provide in the future. We think that the type of catering will be changed as well. Nowadays, on average we have 80% buffets, which we are offering to our clients. We think that this will change because you have to save money in order to reduce food waste as well. So switching from a buffet to a menu will save you at least 30% on your materials. Another thing is that we have to go back to our roots. Local food, which is probably more expensive than ‘normal’ food. There are allergy issues, more vegetarians, more healthy food, and so on. This will only continue to grow in the future and as a result the cost of food items will rise dramatically.

The next problem, which is a challenge for the caterers, is to control costs more than we do nowadays. We heard today that many caterers don’t know where their costs are and what type of costs they have. If you don’t know what your costs are, you don’t know your position. Then at the end of the year, you might be shocked because you worked the whole year and nothing is arranged. All caterers need proper cost control in order to make profit!

You have to tell stories about your product. That means, if you are selling food, you must tell a story about your food. We think it’s worth much more if you have stories about where your food is coming from, how it should be prepared, where your wines are from, which speciality in wine you are offering, etcetera. Especially on your staff, people with a story behind their resume, that makes it interesting to your potential clients.”

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Group 3 – Represented by Roberto Lion & Marie-Theres Eschweiler “The topic of our group is healthy. Healthy is a clear trend and we have a clear objective, which is: making profit. The challenge is to connect the topic, the trend, with the objective. Health is a trend that everybody speaks about, but in reality not so many people are actually able to eat healthy for about 80% of the time. We think that this is an objective that could be linked in a very interesting way.

Think about the food cost per kilogram for food & vegetables. Eating vegetables makes you more full than eating proteins. It is also healthier. That makes it clear that we have a great opportunity to make more business and profit, while reducing costs and following the consumer trend of health food. It is important to be consistent, clear and believable. We have to promote it and talk about it! So if we share this proposition, we have to map our consumers in the right way. Then, you have to decide on the proposition you are making to your professional customers. If you map it the right way, it’s clear that you will have an excellent proposition. You have to know where there are plenty of potential consumers.“

Working Groups

Ruedi concluded this part of the programme by thanking everyone for bringing interesting topics to the table, which will certainly return in EPCAS.

BEST PRACTICE “LESSONS LEARNED”

by Xavier Fruy & Ann Verduyn from Fruy Finest Food Catering

At the request of Charles van Goch, Ann and Xavier agreed to present the implementation of their food waste process within their company.

They started by improving their kitchen process, by weighing everything up to the gram when leaving the kitchen, and when the food in question returns to the kitchen. Every gram represents money and by continuing to improve this process, they are now profitable again.

Chefs Programme at the Gastronomy Competence Center of METRO Cash & Carry Romania

All the fish, meat, vegetables, are vacuum packed and transported to the event in ice packages; If it is not being used at that time, there is no waste, because they just take it back and it still usable up to three weeks after. Xavier mentions that of course the seasoning is done fresh, on site.

Ann & Xavier don’t consider the 12 tonnes of green waste each year as actual waste, but as a resource for their garden. They only need 3 m2 of garden and get around 500 to 700 kilogram of mulch out of it. The initial idea was to make money out of waste. That didn’t work though – it takes too much effort and time! But it gives a good customer relationship. It gives us a prestige status, it’s a hot item nowadays.

Additionally Ann and Xavier spoke about the reason for them to be involved in EPCAS. Originally Xavier started out as a butcher, same as the rest of his family, until someone asked them to actually come and prepare the meat for them. Then they asked for receptions, and the demand kept growing and growing.

Best Practice by Xavier Fruy & Ann Verduyn

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They started from scratch and suddenly had a thousand square meters working space, they had staff, and continued to grow. Then they joined EPCAS and started visiting the companies of their colleagues like Marco Christ, Frank & Tom Steffen and Georg Broich.

Ann concludes their storey by saying: “We have learnt tremendous things about the other companies and combine our ideas with the ones we get from different colleagues.

Their added value; • Better and faster installation of professional structure • Hospitality across European borders • Turnover 2014 was +21% Official EPCAS Meeting - Executives

BEST PRACTICE “FROM FOOD WASTE TO GREEN ENERGY”

by Søren Jeberg from BioTrans Nordic

Søren works for a company named BioTrans Nordic and they have a variety of customers from hotels to caterers to amusement parks, etcetera. A few months ago, the company was nominated for the Sustainia100; an annual guide to 100 innovative sustainability solutions from around the world. Søren admitted to have changed his presentation after the inspiration he got from the presentations from the day before. He was especially inspired by the love food, hate waste slogan.

According to Søren, there is a difference between foodWASTE and foodwaste. It is not possible to have no waste at all, since there are items that nobody wants to eat. His company came up with a solution to speed up the composting process. Everyone knows the bins that are used momentarily, but these have several disadvantages: •

Landfill

•

Heavy lifting

•

Bad smell

•

Rats and other pests

•

A cooled storage room is needed for foodwaste

Best Practice by Søren Jeberg

BioTrans is about recycling food waste into eco-friendly energy. The food waste from their machine is very pure, it is used for energy.

Compared to burning, you get twice as much energy out of it. It has a very high concentration of phosphor.

Søren then expands on the company’s approach to recycle food waste into eco-friendly energy: • CO2 neutral production of renewable energy. Twice as much energy compared to incinerators.

• Fermentation is the most ecologically sustainable method of recycling biomass from food waste.

• High quality “fuel” for biogas plants: biomass is semi-liquid (optimal for hygienisation, storage and conveying) and pure (foreign matter < 1%) – less treatment at AD plant.

• Rats and other pests • Reduction of carbon emissions by largely reducing number of truckings – up to 90% As conclusion to his presentation, Søren emphasizes the benefits of the system. One being that the guest is sensitized for environmental issues and that eco-friendly solutions become more and more an element in contemporary hospitality.

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Ullrich Eckert, Peter Kandels, Tom Ambaum & Tom Steffen

Remarks Marco Christ: “What are the costs?”

Søren Jeberg: “The small system starts at around € 20.000 including the piping, installation, etcetera.”

Ruedi Bachmann: “Markus Spengler is already using the system in his company. What is your opinion?”

Markus Spengler:“The system is perfect. Before, we would pay € 3.000 or € 4.000 per month and we had to keep the food waste chilled. Now the food waste is put in the machine and BioTrans empties our tanks one time a year. It saves us € 4.000 per month! I have been working with it for one year and would definitely do it again.”

BEST PRACTICE “SMART CATERING ANYWHERE” - by Stephan Di Gallo from tuck-tuck

Stephan’s roots are in supply chain management; having worked at the Swissair Group, Gategourmet, and being director of restaurants on the boats on lake Zürich.

Then, during a journey to Bali, he saw a street kitchen and within a few moments the idea for tuck-tuck was born. What is very important at tuck-tuck, are logistics. In their case, each item has its place in the car like in an airplane. They use all the space the cars have, always doing the same handling, no matter what type of food is being served.

Upon arrival at the location, it takes Stephan and his team about one hour to build up the infrastructure and to cook, and after that the employees have all the time for the guests.

Tuck-tuck’s website includes detailed menus, including prices, which results in the guest receiving a custom-made proposal within minutes after having chosen their menu options.

Regarding procurement and production; they use a lot of similar products in the Asian, Mexican and Italian foods they produce. Simplicity and ease are at the base. The products are built up the same way as well, for example with fingerfood, there are always 2 to 3 items going into the steamer, 1 under the salamander, making it very easy for the staff to handle this product.

This structured product, makes for a perfect base for franchising; • The whole process in one hand • High added value • Low complexity • One person: cook, driver, waiter • One person can make events up to 80 guests • The tuck-tuck academy includes recipes, explanations and instruction videos

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Remarks Marie-Theres Eschweiler: “Why did you choose for a Smart?”

Stephan Di Gallo: “I already had a smart and at that time, their slogan was ‘use to the max’. That linked my idea to the car. It has more space than you would think. “ Thomas Kascha: “I saw a lot of porcelain, I did not see any disposables. Is that a deliberate choice?”

Stephan Di Gallo: “We have in our production up to 200 persons cutlery, glasses, etc. – but it depends on the customer. We do offer the palm leave trays, or porcelain,whatever the guest wants.”

Raj Somaiya: “If we would look at doing something similar in London. What would the business model look like? In Switzerland, street food does not really work so that would be difficult. But how does the franchisee work? Is it expensive?”

Stephan Di Gallo: “You have to differentiate between franchising abroad, where I would prefer to find a master franchisee who is then giving the franchise to others in that country. Because I don’t have the insight of one specific country. In Switzerland, they pay an entry fee which is 30.000 Swiss francs, and afterwards 10% of their revenue. “ Ruedi Bachmann: “I was impressed by two issues. He is a smart, hardworking guy, he controls the other franchisees via his business system. Because everything is set, they can start working and operating from day one.”

Arrival at Club Cortina

BEST PRACTICE “RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS”

by Tina & Martin Færgemann from Kai Thor Catering

The presentation of Tina and Martin revolved about their company lunch programme, which was launched 10 years ago. They had an event company, which they found challenging. Their main problem at that time was that they couldn’t hire qualified chefs.

It was their goal to do business every day instead of 2, 3, 4 times a week. That’s why they started with a canteen / lunch service. It started with one customer and evolved into 50% events and 50% company lunches.

Today Kai Thor Catering’s lunch programme is more than just an easy solution on how to maintain qualified chefs. For the chefs it is more attractive, because it changes their working hours. It has gone from a quick fix, to a business.

Anca Mitu & Ruedi Bachmann

The main concept is offering a healthy lunch, providing a flexible solution in the market, high customer service and dialogue with the guests, under safe circumstances.

The healthy part is where one can distinguish oneself; in Denmark there are 76 types of quality marks / certificates regarding healthy foods. The most recognised mark is the green keyhole, and Kai Thor Catering is one of the first companies in Denmark who offer lunches with this certification. The mark means less fat, less sugar, less salt and more fibres. The companies that choose for Tina and Martin’s lunch solution are the types of companies that really care about the health of their customers. It are the type of companies that provide 30 minutes of exercise during working hours.

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Dinner at Club Cortina

The concept, as explained by Tina and Martin, works as follows: Each guest chooses his own lunch and it can be different every day. No two customers are offered the same solution. Every course is prepared with grams, set standards regarding the amounts and knowing exactly what is going out of the kitchen. Everything is measured and weighed; a typical company lunch consists of 400 to 650 grams, is custom made for each company and the menu varies from classic to modern Nordic cuisine.

Since the implementation, the company’s gross profit is 28%, 40% on goods consumption and 32% on salary costs. It’s not as profitable as the event business but it’s an interesting business.

Tina and Martin’s philosophy is: “You need the right knowledge to be able to react every day!”

With the help of dashboards they involve all their staff’s KPI’s, how the company is doing and performing and what the targets are, into the system (which also helps them with the filling out of the QEM).

Looking at the results; The event market is going down, but the lunch market is going up, growing about 8% per year. Kai Thor Catering’s lunch service is growing with about 15% per year. They have longterm contracts with their customers, which gives them more synergy within the organisation, makes events a lot more profitable and creates a good opportunity to gain a larger market share.

Remarks In conclusion: “Health and quality is the key to success”, states Martin.

Xavier Fruy: “How do you get it to your customer?”

Martin Færgemann: “We bring it with our own trucks, every day. Regardsless if it is for a company with 10 or 100 people. Some are almost 100km away from us.“ Marco Christ: “How does it work with the numbers?”

Tina Færgemann: “They need to let us know a week in advance and the numbers can vary every day.”

Hélène Baud: “Do you send staff as well, to prepare it?”

Tina Færgemann: “We do that sometimes, but sometimes we also just deliver. So we provide the choice between delivery and the full service. We don’t produce anything at our customers kitchens, all is prepared in our company.”

Georg Broich: “So they order the same food for all the people, or can they order individually?”

Martin Færgemann: “They order the same food but we have 900 different recipes.”

Ullrich Eckert: “Is the food chilled or heated when you deliver it?”

Martin Færgemann: “Both” Ullrich Eckert: “When do you take it back?”

Tina Færgemann: “With the next delivery” Marco Christ: “What’s the average price per person per day?”

Tina Færgemann: “Around € 6 per person per day.”

Thomas Kascha: “Where are you serving the dishes on? On porcelain, do you get It back? Is it their own porcelain? Or disposables?”

Tina Færgemann: “It’s our own porcelain.”

Martin Færgemann: “We have tried the disposables, but it’s too expensive and our customers prefer the porcelain over disposables.”

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BEST PRACTICE “BILFINGER PROFIMIET GOES BRASIL” - by Petra Schönfelder from Bilfinger Profimiet

Coming up with the topic for her Best Practice was an easy choice for Petra Schönfelder from Bilfinger Profimiet. Petra spoke about a very big project which finished only two weeks ago; the World Championship in Brazil. Before elaborating on the project, Petra explained a bit more about the company. Bilfinger Profimiet rents everything for catering, but food and drinks. They offer it clean and take it back dirty, send logistical staff to events (their best practices shows that it’s much better to handle the equipment their selves). Since the company’s foundation in 1988 by Konstantin Brovot, the company has acted as pioneer of rental services for catering companies. Nowadays the company has 8 locations in Germany and Austria with over 300 employees and € 30 million sales volume.

Petra continues by explaining that this wasn’t the first time they were involved in international sports events; in 2006 they did all the non-food catering in all the stadiums and all the hospitality areas in Germany for FIFA 2006. This resulted in a good contact with the FIFA organisation, following them to South-Africa (including the logistical staff) and then to the Ukraine.

The logical next step would be Brazil, which was up for discussion for almost 2 years, while waiting for a sign that they could actually do it. That sign finally came in February. The world championship started in June so the Bilfinger Profimiet team had a quite short time to prepare everything, having to find a separate unit based in Brazil because no outside companies were allowed in Brazil. Since the programme was signed only in February, it would have been impossible to find that company in such short time. But luckily for them, the Bilfinger Group had a company situated there, which was reorganized to Bilfinger ProfiMiet do Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro.

They signed a contract for 12 football stadiums, 64 matches, 400.000 hospitality guests, 60 stewarding areas, and 200 satellite kitchens. Time was of the essence, since they had to send 80 German overhead and logistic staff members to Brazil, arrange flights, accommodation, transportation… and on top of that they recruited 600 domestic hands in less than 3 months.

Fortunately most of their staff had already been following Portuguese lessons since the year before due to the confederation cup.

Another aspect of this enormous project was that they had to purchase equipment for millions of euro’s, which then had to be cleaned, repacked and loaded onto one of 60 shipping containers, all before the end of April, since the shipments would take about 6 to 8 weeks to arrive at its destination. In total 1,2 million pieces were shipped; 260.000 pc chinaware, 438.000 pc cutlery 392.000 glasses, 40.000 pc kitchen equipment.

Both the team and the containers arrived in the first week of June, and then the hard worked started. A different country means a different culture, and a different work style: • Container delivery up to 6 days late (2 days before the first game) due to customs • Deliveries in general: supply and demand • Faulty equipment • No water and power in almost all stadiums • Back office elevators were not finished • Language skills, problems with communication • Work attitude of Brazilian hands was not very reliable Despite many difficulties, the team successfully completed the project. And the story doesn’t end there, one of the staff members decided to stay there and will continue to manage Bilfinger ProfiMiet do Brazil.

“If we ever get the chance, we would do it again at any time!”, Petra says to finish her presentation.

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Remarks Peter Kandels: “You mentioned such big investments! How can you manage to redeploy and use it in Germany or on other projects? Sounds very difficult to me, to make sure that the assets remain in a shape so you can use it for a few years?”

Petra Schönfelder: “The timing is quite well with the world championships, because we can use the championship to create new stock.”

CHEFS PROGRAMME

METRO Cash & Carry Romania supported this assembly by hosting the Chefs Programme at their Gastronomy Competence Center in METRO Militari, a symbol of high standard culinary training. At the Gastronomy Competence Center, the chefs got acquainted with traditional Romanian cuisine through a tasting session and by creating their own authentic menu.

Tanja Eckert & Petra Schönfelder

Throughout the programme, the international chefs shared culinary experiences with the Gastronomy Competence Center team of specialized chefs, having a vast expertise in Romania and abroad. In its 6 years of existence in Romania, this team has offered culinary training to more than 6.000 professional customers and is formed of: •

Patrick Guibet, Executive Chef METRO Cash & Carry Romania – French Chef, coordinator of the Gastronomy Competence Center, with an expertise of over 25 years in culinary field (10 years on the local market)

•

Silvia Ailincăi, Pastry Chef METRO Cash & Carry Romania – coordinator of pastry segment at the Gastronomy Competence Center, with an expertise of over 15 years of cooking in luxury hotels and restaurants as pastry expert

•

Lonut Constantin, Executive Chef Assistant METRO Cash & Carry Romania - Over 8 years of experience in the cooking field, in renowned hotels, restaurants, on 5-star events and international menus

•

Romeo Dunăreanu, Bartending and winery specialist METRO Cash & Carry Romania, Coordinator of the Gastronomy Competence Center

Dinner at Club Cortina

AFTERNOON & EVENING PROGRAMME – Exploration of Bucharest & dinner at Club Cortina

After the lunch, all attendees had the opportunity to explore the city of Bucharest by themselves or in groups guided by Ileana Mitu, showing them some cultural, historical and gastronomical highlights of this authentic city. The second day in Bucharest ended with a 4-course new Romanian style dinner, music, wine tasting and barbecue, organised by hosts Anca & Calin Mitu from Privileg Catering at their venue Club Cortina.

Dinner at Club Cortina

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Wednesday July 30th INTERACTIVE SESSION – by Alberto Sanna

The final day in Bucharest started with a company visit to Pantelimon Cattle Farm, followed by an interactive session by Alberto Sanna from Fondazione Centro San Raffaele, at Readers Café (a location from Privileg Catering).

Alberto has the idea to develop a new platform to promote healthy food and a healthy lifestyle, and to reduce foodwaste, named Healthy & Tasty Mise en Platform. In order for the platform to be able to have significant value, Alberto wants to set up collaborations with various partners, amongst which he would like EPCAS to act as representative of the catering industry. The platform will include recipes, in the form of a video, which don’t only show the process, but also the nutritional information behind the dishes. The goal of the platform is to create transparency and provide insights, and storytelling about food. The platform can eventually act as a portfolio for the caterers. So the real value is that it is a viral marketing tool.

Remarks Fritz Schneider: “We have a good connection with one another on the topic of food waste.”

Xavier Fruy: “Healthy food made cool! Fantastic topic to further expand on as EPCAS.” In collaboration with Alberto Sanna, the EPCAS board and secretariat will expand on the ideas of Alberto. This will be a returning topic during the Winter General Assembly and the next Summer General Assembly.

LUNCH & EVALUATION AT READERS CAFÉ

The lunch at Readers Café was prepared by the EPCAS chefs with typical Romanian recipes they learned and developed the day before at the Gastronomy Competence Center of METRO Cash & Carry Romania.

Final part of this EPCAS Summer General Assembly was a short evaluation on the experiences of the attendees during the past three days in Bucharest. Ruedi gives a special thanks to the chefs for attending and states his hope that in the future even more chefs will join.

Remarks Alberto Sanna: “There is a gigantic power in this community! A lot of quality, competence & enthusiasm here.”

Eric Miete: “A lot of people around us are scared to share inside company information, but we are not. The strength of the people here is unbelievable. I was blown away and I am very grateful to have experienced this.”

Stephan Di Gallo: “Even as potential member, I had a really warm welcome here and felt involved.”

Peter Kandels: “I am an ambassador of Romania as of now. Business is still going down, some companies will not survive, but we have learned so much from each other again.”

Charles Smith: “I always feel very welcome and comfortable. You come here and your eyes are opened again.”

Frank Steffen: “The atmosphere was fantastic; everyone talked to everyone. Best assembly ever.”

Jochem Sneep: “Ask everyone to bring their chefs to the next Summer General Assembly. We had such great chemistry, this can only grow when even more chefs attend.”

Charles van Goch: “I am very happy to see that all the new and potential members felt at home. The foundation of EPCAS is perfect now and we need all of you to spread the word.”

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M

Visit Pantelimon Cattle Farm

Jochem Sneep, Ann Verduyn & Xavier Fruy

Eric Miete explains the lunch prepared by the chefs at Readers CafĂŠ

Musical entertainment at Club Cortina

Peter Kandels, Dolly Bachmann, Ruedi Bachmann, Alaide Azevedo Di Gallo, Stephan Di Gallo, Eugène Swalen & Christian Willrich

Attendees Summer General Assembly 2014

Stephan Di Gallo & Alaide Azevedo Di Gallo

Visit Pantelimon Cattle Farm

27 Exploring Bucharest

Ulrich Brock, Jochem Sneep & Sandu Pestritu

See you in Maastricht!

SAVE THE DATE WINTER GENERAL ASSEMBLY FEBRUARY 8TH - 10TH 2015 DURING

Organisation EPCAS Secretariat | P.O. Box 4260 | 6202 WC Maastricht | The Netherlands ofямБce@epcas.eu | www.epcas.eu | @epcas1 #EPCAS T: +31 43 356 1091 | F: +31 43 326 4263