Function Catering Feature - Part 1
Festive celebrations fill up pub market calendar

With the festive season fast approaching, Foodservice Rep takes a look at the changing customer expectations and presentation styles in function catering today. In part one we interview GARY JOHNSON, Group Executive Chef for ALH Group which operates more than 300 licensed venues across Australia including iconic hotels and neighbourhood pubs, from Young and Jackson’s in Melbourne and the Crows Nest Hotel in Sydney to Breakfast Creek Hotel, the Hamilton, the Newmarket and the Prince of Wales in Brisbane.

With 127 hotels in Queensland alone, ALH Group does a big trade in function catering – and at this time of year, bookings for festive season celebrations are fast filling up the calendar. Perhaps surprisingly, about 90 per cent of ALH Group’s pubs are open Christmas Day – “very few actually close and our trading on those days is enormous,” Gary tells us. “Wages are high but prices generally compensate for that – most places around town you’re probably looking at around $80-$100 for a Christmas Day function, whereas you’d normally pay half that because of the penalty rates. But customers understand that and are happy to pay the premium so it all works out.”

“We look at a 5km radius around each hotel as our market area. We believe in offering trusted value, so we’re very conscious of maintaining our prices year on year and keeping the quality and consistency of our food. We do look for double digit growth year on year which we have been able to achieve only the last three years and we’re continuing to grow.”

Most pubs don’t have dedicated function spaces but instead zone off certain areas for cocktail parties, sit down events and so on. “Most of our pubs are older, well established local hotels that have undergone refurbishment. The facades evoke the 40s, 50s or 60s but inside they have all modern facilities. And at this time of the year the climate is particularly conducive to outdoor functions, so we also take advantage of our outdoor areas – on a nice 22 degree night when the stars are out, these are wonderful spaces and are usually still private enough for people to make announcements and speeches.

“We’ll do a walkaround in the venue to identify which zones we can use – this area can seat 40, this courtyard is good for 100 standing – then we put parameters around what we have to sell and try to fill those areas, especially on our quieter times. So from Monday to Thursday we offer some great deals for work parties and end of year events.”

The style of function customers are looking for depends not only on the venue but the time of day. “We find at lunchtime people prefer sit down meals, but in the evenings I would say eight out of ten functions are stand up cocktail style events that go for a couple of hours – snacks on arrival, canapes passed around and then a substantial buffet where guests can help themselves. It’s like a grazing event – people get the opportunity to mingle and network and possibly have conversations with those they wouldn’t normally interact with during the day.

Balancing creativity with customer expectations

“We offer a variety of service options in this area – it’s really a case of customising three to six canapes and three or four more substantial items – perhaps a whole tuna carved by one of our chefs and served with sashimi, or whole sides of smoked salmon. Seafood buffets are very big at this time of year and the quality we’re able to source is fantastic. From Moreton Bay Bugs to Tasmanian salmon, lobsters from off the WA coast … supply is abundant and the prices are pretty competitive, and that gives our chefs plenty of opportunities to shine and put together a really interactive festive event.”

While Gary encourages his chefs to be as creative as possible, he concedes that at this time of year, customers’ expectations range towards traditional Christmas fare and this has to be borne in mind. “What we try to do is put a contemporary spin on the traditional – we’ll do little Christmas Pudding balls served on spoons with a dollop of brandy custard, or White Christmas icecreams. Or we’ll do little mini pizzas in the colour of Christmas. There’s still a nod to the Christmas tradition but we try to present it in a surprising way.

“There’s now a lot more demand to fulfil specific dietary requirements – not so much because of allergies or intolerances, but simply customer preferences. So we try to weave a lot of vegan, gluten free, low fat and low sodium choices into the menu – we don’t call them out, but we might for example have a beautiful chocolate and date brownie with crunched honeycomb on top, which happens to be vegan.

“I’ve done that on several occasions and asked customers what they thought, and then said ‘did you realise it was vegan?’ The aim is not to embarrass or alienate customers by putting them in the position of having to ask ‘is there anything on the menu I can eat?’ So we always talk to the function organisers to make sure we know what the dietary requirements of the guests will be.

From a logistics perspective, efficient function catering is always about balancing labour costs with meal budgets – and this is being made easier thanks to the quality of readymade products from foodservice suppliers, which, Gary says, “keeps on getting better year after year. As much as our egos would like for us to make everything from scratch, one has to look at it from a commercial perspective and say, ‘we can’t afford to have chefs working at $30 to $50 an hour making these items when there are readymade products of comparable quality on the market which we can use for half the price.

“So we look for products which we can use as ingredients and which our chefs can add their signature to – whether through further processing or simply garnishing. That way, we own the finished product, we can put our stamp on it for customers to enjoy, and we can also offer it at the right price without blowing our customers’ budgets out of the water. As I said earlier, it’s about being able to deliver trusted value.” 

NEXT: Part 2 – We interview NICHOLAS KALOGEROPOULOS of function caterer Calibre Feasts.