Hobart Equipment Division has appointed Tracy Southwell as its new Sales & Marketing Director. Tracy, who has almost 25 years’ multi-channel experience in the food and beverage industry, replaces Tim Bender, an ‘industry stalwart’ who retired during the Summer after many years of service.

On her appointment, Tracy commented: “I’m absolutely delighted to join Hobart Equipment Division at this pivotal time in the company’s evolution. Our market-leading business has successfully and skilfully navigated its way through the pandemic and is now faced with a raft of new and exciting opportunities. Our dealer partners remain an integral part of our next level growth journey, as do all our customers, as we jointly sustain the success of our core brands: Hobart, Bonnet and Ecomax.

“A key priority will be ensuring our brands continue to be the primary signpost for reliability, professionalism and performance in the catering equipment industry.”

Commercial Catering Spares has reopened its training centre for the very first time since the global pandemic began. At the end of September several engineers attended the very first Rational Training Course of 2021 with tutor, Stuart, who has over 18 years’ experience working as a field service engineer for a Rational Service Partner. The announcement of the reopening was well received and had a great attendance.

Commercial Catering Spares continue to implement hygiene and safety measures to ensure all staff and customers remain protected. More dates for the Rational Training Courses will be released in the near future. If you are interested in booking on a course or hiring our training centre for your own use you will find more information at www.ccspares.co.uk/en/training_ccs. Alternatively email sales@ccspares.co.uk.

The first ceda Catering Equipment Project Coordinator training standard certificate has been awarded!

There has been much confusion surrounding Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) Cards over the last few years, and how managers in the foodservice sector can qualify for one. After tireless work by ceda’s Technical Support Advisor Peter Kay, the Catering Equipment Project Coordinator training standard was launched back in May of this year.

Rod Wood (pictured opposite), Contracts Manager for ceda member company Keemlaw Group is delighted to be the first approved Catering Equipment Project Coordinator and is keen for others in the industry follow suit. Rod enthuses: “I’m pleased to have completed the course. A dedicated training standard like the one offered by ceda is a vital resource for the sector and I hope my peers in the sector sign-up for the course.”

The Project Coordinator training standard is one of three CSCS-specific courses available.

As Peter Kay explains, “Following on from a survey of our members’ project managers, it became apparent that there were two different roles that fell under the same title of Project Manager. Many Project Managers fulfilled a coordinator function, collating information from colleagues and suppliers whilst the other Project Managers were more knowledgeable and qualified technically. ceda therefore developed training standards for both roles, as well as a dedicated one for our Installation Engineers.”

The training standard modules are all available through the ceda E-Learning platform, free of charge to ceda members, and include:

·        Project management essentials

·        Health and safety – the basics

·        Introduction to Risk Assessments

·        Using different communication styles

·        Non-verbal communications

·        An introduction to BIM

·        The Art of Delegation and Empowerment

·        Creative Problem Solving

·        Effective Time Management

·        Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The following modules must be delivered and assessed by the employer based on templates produced by ceda:

·        Company structure including job responsibilities and levels of authority

·        Reading and understanding drawings – Employer

Once all the modules have been completed and evidence received, ceda check and verify the application and issue a ‘certificate of satisfactory completion of an industry training standard,’ which will be accepted by JIB-PMES for the application for a CSCS manager’s card.

Rod concludes, “Many of the modules are set at a beginners standard and others are more advanced. Together they make up a broad range of topics and level of detail that I feel is more than adequate for managers in our industry. Those familiar with online training courses will be well versed in the format; it’s easy and straightforward to follow and complete. I fully recommend all project managers sign up to the ceda standard to ensure their CSCS Card application is successful.”

Members can find out more about the Catering Equipment Project Coordinator training standard via the ceda E-Learning platform. Those outside of the membership can contact Peter Kay for more details. Please email peterkay@ceda.co.uk.

We are delighted to announce that the initial applications for the ceda Grand Prix Awards and ceda Rising Star Award 2021 are now open.

The Awards criteria and entry forms can be found and submitted via the Members Area of the ceda website.

The entry guides should explain, in detail, the application process for both the Grand Prix Design Projects, Project Management Excellence and Outstanding Customer Service Awards, as well as the Rising Star Award.

The deadline for the initial applications is Monday 20th September 2021.

If you have any questions about the Awards, the application or judging process then please contact Adam Mason on 01386 793911 or via email adam@ceda.co.uk.

ceda has partnered with this year’s Universal Cookery & Food Festival.

UCFF provides chefs with an opportunity to get out of the kitchen and the day-to-day of cooking and look at, meet and network with the wider industry, including farmers, growers, suppliers, speakers, demonstrators and more.

The ceda Academy has a similar ethos, and its members will be at the event at Mudwalls Farm, Warwickshire on 14th September. Academy members will be encouraged to involve themselves in the day as much as possible and use the chance to engage in the wider catering, hospitality and food industry. The event will be the Academy’s first get-together since before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020!

The aim of the ceda Academy is to take members out of their regular role, and immerse them in the wider industry, broadening their knowledge of the sector they serve. In that respect, UCFF is a great fit, providing the Academy with the opportunity to understand the bigger picture of the wider industry in which they work and see how chefs and others in the foodservice supply chain are operating and redeveloping, particularly after the pandemic.

ceda’s Adam Mason is pleased to see a return to live events like UCFF and the opportunities they offer the younger members of the industry. He said, “It’s essential that we engage the next generation as they are the future of our industry and will be the ones to develop and shape the sector in years to come. We must engage them now and allow them to experience the range of operators and end users the catering equipment industry serves. This is especially prevalent as COVID-19 restrictions are lifted and many foodservice businesses get back to some sort of normality. There’s a lot to be learnt in the coming months and years and we hope ceda Academy members will throw themselves into experiences like the Universal Cookery and Food Festival and take what they experience there back to their own roles and use what they have learned to develop themselves and their companies.”

The 2021 UCFF programme offers a varied line up including chef demos and debates, an orchid walk, farmers market, global kitchen stages, foraging and dozens of complementary food stands!

ceda Members get a 10% discount on ticket costs and are encouraged to exhibit at the event.

More information can be found at www.cookeryandfoodfestival.co.uk

ceda has been shortlisted for not one, but two, memcom membership excellence awards 2021.

memcom is the hub that connects senior leaders from membership organisations to collaborate, innovate and share best practice. ceda has been recognised in the “Best Member Support During Covid-19 (under 50 employees)” and “Best Educational Membership Event” (for The Digital Event 04.03.21.) categories.

Whilst delighted with the award nominations, it’s not lost on ceda Director General Adam Mason that both are as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that has been so detrimental to the industry in which ceda serves. “The award nominations are bittersweet,” Admits Mason. “I’m so proud of the work, support, initiatives, and training we offered our members, and the wider industry, particularly during the early stages, and throughout the entire pandemic. For a small team of 1 full time and 2 part-time employees, we achieved an awful lot.

“Similarly, The Digital Event we held in March of this year was born of the desire to engage, inspire and celebrate the membership and our industry, as we would ordinarily do at our physical annual Conference. We didn’t want the pandemic to be a reason not to do it, and so we embraced the digital conferencing platform and the new opportunities and elements it brought.

“Whilst our members, and the industry at large, will live with the effects of COVID-19 for many years to come, we felt it important to seek the positives from the crisis and demonstrate all we’ve done to support our members through these challenging times. We feel our applications and subsequent nominations in the memcom awards do just that.”

During the initial months of lockdown in the Spring of 2020, ceda were in regular contact and communication with operator sector associations, providing them with information, data and statistics to allow them to demonstrate the full facts of the economic impact on the equipment industry and to influence policy making and decisions.

ceda led a coming together of four organisations in the catering equipment distribution sector to best represent and state the case for the industry to Government. This was in addition to ceda’s own independent efforts which involved writing to Ministers, liaising with Government departments and producing template letters for Members to send to their local MPs.

From an operational point of view, those in the industry needed to understand where and how they could continue to operate at various stages of the pandemic. Very early on, ceda were able to secure key worker status for installation and maintenance engineers that were operating in essential kitchens and produced template letters for them to carry on a daily basis. ceda issued sector-specific guidance notes from the various generic documentation that came out from Government and the construction industry at various stages of the pandemic, to ensure that those who had to operate could do so in as safe a way as possible, and in line with Government guidance.

The introduction of an Emergency HR Support Service was hugely valuable to Members and something that ceda introduced at the end of March 2020. ceda engaged with an external consultant to provide direct and individual Member support and guidance, deliver webinars, as well as producing various guidance documents and template letters.

There were a number of areas where ceda’s focus was very sector-specific, particularly relating to technical support. They produced many documents, as well as circulating several more produced from other sources, all relating to technical matters with Covid-19. The most well received and widely shared document in the industry was an interactive title that ceda produced “Minimising Risk from Covid-19 when reopening a commercial kitchen”. This also worked as a sales/marketing tool for ceda members to generate business opportunities.

ceda’s future focus was also evident in ensuring the continuation of the industry apprenticeship scheme that was launched at the end of 2020. Moving all apprentices to remote learning so that they could continue the programme despite lockdown.

ceda’s focus on people during the pandemic has been significant. They moved quickly to set up communication channels between people and provide content for people. A private Linkedin group was established in March 2020, and is still used today, for members to interact with each other, and a more informal but equally important WhatsApp group was also set up. These two contained over 300 people working within Member companies the vast majority of which were furloughed and potentially feeling disconnected.

Zoom was also embraced as a communication and networking channel to bring the membership together to talk, listen, learn and communicate. ceda held its first ever Zoom webinar on the 26th March 2020 and over the course of the next four months delivered 84. In addition, probably the most valuable webinars were the weekly ‘Members Connected’ sessions where ceda updated Members on the latest information and news and discussed their individual challenges together as a group. All webinars were open to every member of staff within every Member company, even those on furlough, and attracted over 1100 attendees.

On Thursday 11th June, following the announcement of a high number of redundancies from non-member companies in the industry, ceda launched cedaRetain – an initiative to link those industry professionals who were made redundant from their current role due to the pandemic with potential future employers. The fear being that many highly skilled, talented and experienced people within the industry would be lost to other sectors. Individuals registered with cedaRetain and created a short profile of themselves and the type of work that they were looking for which were then listed and distributed to companies in the sector that were interested in recruitment. In addition, ceda opened up its webinar sessions and e-learning platform for these individuals to use in order to maintain links and knowledge. In 2020, cedaRetain had 43 people register with the scheme and 32 were retained within the industry – and people are still finding employment through the initiative even now.

ceda have held an annual, in-person conference for 47 years. In March 2021, for the first time ever, they went digital.

A one-day, virtual event that brought together an incredible line-up of speakers, exhibitors, designers, catering equipment distributors, manufacturers and suppliers, food service operators, trade media and more, and ignited optimism and positivity in the sector after the most challenging 12 months.

Of the event Mason says, “Having spent the previous 12 months fighting to save businesses, jobs and retain talent in our sector, the primary objective of our digital event was to bring together the industry, with the end of lockdown in sight, in order to network, connect and learn.”

Despite it being ceda’s first venture into the virtual event world, they were determined to create a day that best mirrored the look, feel and atmosphere of the annual ceda Conference. Not just a Zoom or Teams gathering but a professional and interactive event that the membership and wider industry would derive a huge amount of value from.

ceda worked in partnership with their longstanding event management company to build and develop the conference on the Pheedloop platform that allowed for live segment streaming, an “exhibition hall” and comprehensive networking capabilities (private, public chats; live presence detectors and group networking sessions) for exhibitors, sponsors and attendees to network together, as well as delivering the ceda Grand Prix awards ceremony.

The usual annual ceda Conference attracts circa 300 people over a two-day event. 478 people joined the one-day Digital Event, nearly 50 of which were from hospitality and food service operators!

Mason says proudly, “The Digital Event surpassed all expectations, objectives and targets and, whilst born out of necessity, has provided a blueprint to deliver future events of a similar, or hybrid, kind. We were the first association in our sector to host such an event which is innovative in itself but following the great successes that we achieved, I feel sure we won’t be the last.”

“Because of the way we conducted and adapted ourselves throughout the pandemic and the opportunities we saw in technology to still host our annual conference, we feel we have every chance of success at the awards in September,” continues Mason. “The Membership has been kind in its words of feedback, support and praise telling us that we have saved jobs, saved businesses and retained talent in the industry as a direct result of our actions, outputs and response. We hope the judges will recognise this and we’ll be victorious on the night!”

A memcom source said “The memcom excellence awards 2021 received 25% more entries than last year and the quality and standard was very high. In a year when the membership sector has really excelled, the judges had to make some incredibly difficult decisions so extra congratulations on making the shortlist!”

The award winners will be announced on Thursday 30th September.

The full shortlist can be viewed here.