Recently in staffing Category

Former MasterChef winner James Nathan has joined the Michelin-starred Bath Priory as junior sous chef, Kitchen Rat can reveal.

The 2008 winner of the BBC show, which gives amateur cooks the chance to make the jump to becoming professional chefs, will be working under the guidance of the property's new executive head chef Michael Caines.

Caines has taken over the reins at the Bath Priory following the departure of Chris Horridge, who left in January to join von Essen's Cliveden hotel.

Head chef is James Sheridan, who joins from Caines' two-Michelin-starred restaurant at Gidleigh Park, where he was sous chef. It's his first role as head chef.

The Bath Priory will reopen Monday week (16 March) after a six-week refurbishment programme, which included a complete revamp of the kitchen.

Look out for a Minute on the Clock interview with general manager Sue Williams in next week's issue of Caterer and Hotelkeeper out on 12 March. 

 You sometimes hear managers talking about their staff as if they're criminals - 'all that pilfering that goes on, nothing I can do about it'. Hands in the till, they're all at it, apparently.

Well, now guests can be served by real-life criminals - convicted juveniles at the Neudeck jail in Munich.

The £11.5m conversion of the prison building into a four-star hotel will involve the recruitment of "teenagers and young people who have only otherwise known violence, crime, drugs and a lack of orientation", according to Hildegard Denninger of one of the project's sponsors, Biss magazine.

In echoes of a certain person's restaurant training project, 15 youngsters will be trained by full-time staff. Some of those involved in running the programme will include social workers.

Our advice? Probably best not order a Bloody Mary.

European hotels suffer a dismal August of plunging profitability >>

Jamie Oliver backed Fifteen Leeds takes step closer to reality >>

While the nation battles obesity, it seems that our industry is bucking the trend and actually getting slimmer - presumably because we're all working so damned hard.

According to one uniform supplier in Edinburgh, increasing numbers of female staff are needing uniforms in the elusive (well to some of us anyway) size 0. Around 50% of the women's trousers it supplies are now size 8 and under, while men are also slimming down and are needing smaller chest sizes.

Gill Eastgate, MD of NKD clothing  said the company now supply sizes 4 and 6 as standard and frequently have to supply more size 6s than 12s. This flies in the face of the national norm, where women's average size is 16.

Eastgate attributed the anomaly to the fact that hospitality workers spend so much time running around on their feet and also the inlflux of Eastern Europeans who tend to have a tall thin build.

Although the skills shortage is the much spoken about thorn in the hospitality industry's side it seems for event caterers a shortage of beautiful people can be just as crippling.

There's no point after all in putting together a fabulous party with the cutest canapes and most darling design aesthetic, if Doris the 20-year employee with the weird eye from the staff restaurant is the one offering up the grub on the night.

A recent meeting with an event caterer confirmed Kitchen Rat's suspicions that at most fancy events there are a disproportionate amount of good looking girls and boys waiting on clients than is entirely plausible. Random chance it is not.

Suede's "Oh, hear they come, the beautiful ones, the beautiful ones", could have been playing in the background as the caterer in question conceded sourcing fine looking young things from recruiters was almost as important as sourcing great grub.

Although hospitality's sector skills council is called People 1st, we're not certain this was the thinking behind the name, but it seems for some in the events market the face really does have to fit.