Recently in Harbour & Jones Category

If you're going to have a Lean & Green campaign, as in the case of caterer Harbour & Jones (H&J), it goes without saying that you have to walk-the-walk and not just talk (a lot).

To this end Kevin Harrison, H&J's ever so slightly scarily-named compliance director, has e-mailed all staff to inform them they will be receiving their very own pedometers.

H&J staff are being challenged to record each mode of transport they use in their working week, and to see if they can get anywhere near a recommended 10,000 steps a day, which should make them both healthier and "greener", albeit in quite a few steps.

Although there's a quarterly prize to be won, Kitchen Rat has not yet confirmed if it is indeed a night out with H&J co-founder Nathan Jones, or whether the runner-up gets two nights out with Jones for their troubles.

However, Harrison does warn in his e-mail that anyone caught cheating by shaking their pedometers, getting creative with cab reciepts or doctoring other people's scores, will, without doubt, win three nights out with Jones. Consider yourself warned.

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Kitchen Rat fears contract caterer Harbour & Jones may be making the most of an unfair, other-worldly, advantage over rivals when it comes to picking up new business.

A recent visit to London landmark St Paul's Cathedral to meet some of the new Harbour & Jones team, suggested something more than a strong offer and charisma might have come into play when the caterer was competing for the contract.

Apparently when H&J was invited to pitch for the deal last year they arrived at St Paul's only to be told that one of their rivals was running late.

The knock-on effect was that the caterer was asked to present in a chamber away from the main dining area of the Crypt.

This, H&J co-founder Patrick Harbour conceded, suited his team down to the ground as they had a "Best of British" selection of produce with them to showcase, which they were then able to arrange fetchingly on a stone shelf inside.

This was all good, but better still, as the cathedral's top brass walked in to hear the pitch, a shaft of golden sunlight, as if on demand, shone through from the window above, illuminating the produce and creating a bucolic harvest scene. Divine intervention?

It's hard to say, but H&J co-founder Nathan Jones was apparently sighted later in the cathedral lighting a candle, which one imagines was in reverence but could have been in gratitude.

Well, in these tough times it pays to keep the supreme being on side, after all.

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