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.. In fact what a four years!
It's exactly a year since we launched The Staff Canteen mark 4 and what a year it has been on so many levels, our launch date was September 2011 and on the 22nd November we went live, ending one chapter whilst firmly starting another one.
It has to be said that it's beyond our wildest dreams where we are with The Staff Canteen, four years ago one Friday
afternoon we had a flash of inspiration, we can say that now at the time and being very honest we did it for the sheer hell of it and with just £300.00 launched
The Staff Canteen Forum as part of The Chef Etc Website.
30, 40, 50 people a day were logging on and chefs being chefs, we just felt that some of the debate did not sit comfortably with the Chefs Etc brand and moved The Staff Canteen to its own .com domain; registered the name and logo and ... as they say, the rest is history.
Why The Staff Canteen? Still a question we are asked often, well, because it was just that, hopefully the logo said it all, an open free and independent area to talk, debate and share, aimed directly at chefs.
Why just chefs? is the question we are asked all the time - why not? Chefs are their own tribe, they socialise with other chefs, chefs often have a siege mentally the bond of banter and comradely, in our minds, it seemed to suggest that aiming it at chefs was very much the right thing to do, plus it's an area and topic we knew quite well or we hoped we do?
As the site passed 500 members, people began to talk about us. We had a cult following and already thousands of post accumulating in the forum on a whole host of topics from serious to the outrageously funny. The forum became a huge resource with threads on careers, Michelin the guides and much more.
You could log on most nights after 10pm and find 20,30,40 people all either reading, debating or simply having banter post service, I guess this became a meeting point it was The Staff Canteen in every sense.
At this point we were contact by a hotel who asked to place a banner on our site as a number of their chefs were reading The Canteen, and they saw it as a resource to attract chefs from a recruitment point of view, I guess at that point we suddenly woke up to the commercial potential and began to build a dedicated website for chefs.
During the build, the profile of the site grew and our presence was noted in certain quarters, meetings with PR companies and the like become almost second nature, I'm sure, like me, they left meetings with the same thoughts I was having - what the hell was all that about? The world of PR is a strange one, I could write a book.
What was our on-line strategy? Could we target chefs by sector? By category? What was our projected growth? Could we tone down the language!!!!
People offered to buy us, others to be part of their website, to be exclusively sponsored by - all of which we said no to. Whilst flattered, we just felt that was not the right way to go and there was so much we wanted to do and had so much to achieve and we didn't want to be tied to any brand, which to me, is part of what makes The Canteen The Canteen.
We launched The Canteen Mark 3 - it was late, it seems we have no luck with developers. Chefs can you imagine missing a service and telling your clients "sorry folks there's no supper tonight come back in two weeks" - it just would not happen, yet it seems the norm in other industries.
Shortly after launch it appeared that even the traditional media were joining the social media bandwagon. We have always just ploughed our own furrow, but I must admit I thought it was curtains for The Canteen, but we are still here and, we think, are doing better than OK, and being honest connecting with chefs of all levels better than ever before.
We've always listened to our audience, after all who are we without our audience and members? Simple answer, we're not a lot really. They were telling us they wanted to watch chefs in their own kitchen creating a dish, rather than just read about them, even back then we featured a number of Michelin listed chefs as part of
our Featured Chef.
We filmed a pilot with
Gary Jones from Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons who has been such a support to us and we've always been so completely amazed with the time we've been offered from such an outstanding world cla
ss operation. The cherry on the cake for us was, of course, not only filming Gary but a cameo from Mr Blanc was more than we could have ever hoped for and whilst nowhere close to our filming today, this was the foundation of what would become The Featured Chef.
We owe so much to
Andrew Fairlie and his team, Andrew agreed to launch the Brand new Featured Chef and on a dull November with Gleneagles covered in Scottish mist the Feature Chef journey began.
I'm so proud of this feature. We wanted to capture chefs in their natural environment whilst not loosing that energy and live feel of a kitchen, which I hope we capture? In some quarters this feature was accused of being Michelin biased, it was we wanted chefs at t
he highest level on show, but it did set my mind in overdrive as to how we could create a more inclusive site for all chefs.
We seemed to be working incredibly hard and not making that much money, in fact, we were just covering our costs. I'm told most websites don't make money, in fact, it's around 90% that don't, so our challenge was - could we keep the ethos and ethics of the "Canteen" but make money?
We embarked on mark 4 and what was supposed to be a four month build ended being almost a year, after it had been snagged, the site was geographically centred around the members and allowed the most interactive listing for members and suppliers, our belief was that supplier databases have done their day Google had put pay to that, we wanted something that would link to all the major social networking platforms but also allow clients to link to their site via RSS and their own content images and video, our belief is people no longer search for the news and products it finds them, so through activity content reaches them.
As the site was being built an idea to celebrate those loyal lieutenants many of whom worked as wing men for many of the featured chefs began to take place as the
Heroes of the Hotplates so often the dedicated chefs behind the names.
Britain's Got Talent young talented chefs, often, just under the radar of the traditional press in our opinion needed to be celebrated and championed so we are.
The Staff Canteen Meets, a small featured chef without the video, but up close and personal interview.
Menu Watch - we wanted to understand the thought process on what went into a menu, the costing, the seasons and more.
Pastry Chefs, and here, we must say sorry - this was only every going to quarterly feature but we need to develop this still further and we will.
We've celebrated Hotel Chefs, who all too often, get overlooked in the now restaurant dominated chef arena, Chefs who have moved and built careers successfully out of the whites are also featured.
We covered 30,000 miles by road; who knows how many by air. We've visited Scotland, Wales, T'north - ever conscious not to be London-centric, as whilst it's a great city full of amazing chefs, we have an amazing country full of great chefs so let's celebrate them all.
A year where we've been invited to attend so many events, and whilst flattered we are now turning them down, not because we are ungrateful or don't want to help, but we believe the value is not in The Staff Canteen covering an event, taking images and adding them as The Staff Canteen, but encouraging those that compete to create their own profiles and add images and for them to encourage debate through the community around their content. When the end users add content their ownership of that content has a far greater value and buy-in from their peer group because there becomes a common connection, or at least that's our view.
We've turned down the opportunities to endorse products - it's not what we believe is important but what the chefs believe, that's where power lies with the end users. You can't buy your way to the top of the supplier list, but you can through being the most liked or most viewed (both driven by the users), we don't create debate or topics on The Staff Canteen for commercial gain - why would we? How can a debate be objective when you've been paid, debate is organic and driven by the members not by us.
The Ten Question Videos, well, if you don't get it now you never will! Chefs are real people; they are just very dedicated to the profession and those we feature often more so. The 10 questions was never to mock but to show them as humans as real people.
We broke the 5,000 members mark and passed 30,000 forum posts - amazing milestones, even when we launched four years ago forums were becoming an old fashion communication tool. Twitter has become such an amazing platform even Facebook is threatened, and whilst yes our forum debate may not be the central focus of the site what an information resource, and with over 1,000 visits a day, over 1,100 recipes added and over 4,000 images - we've never been busy across the site.
So what next? Well we know we can't stand still and have made a huge investment into future projects. We need to offer chefs better and quicker access to the site; we need to give them an opportunity that we hope will make The Canteen ubiquitous to every chefs daily routine.
Some of our developments should have made the site already - they haven't, but will soon and some simply have not worked, more on developments from us soon (we hope!)
There will be changes next year to some of features but again more on that later...
Trust me, when I say that just delivering 12-Featured Chefs is a full time job in itself, that's without everything else and I think it's a true testimony to where The Staff Canteen is currently with
Raymond Blanc OBE,
Rene Redzepi and Alain Roux appearing as Featured Chefs in succession - each belong to or are themselves global brands in their own right, so to afford us their valuable time, I hope, shows how far we've come but also I hope highlights how professionally done our Featured Chef is?
We have appointed a Sales Manager who we hope will drive success for us, so that we can continue to improve and deliver more great content, travel further a field with our cameras, as well as to more UK chefs.
2012 will see The Staff Canteen take to the road, so please come and say hello, we are delighted to support many great chef events, competitions and conferences and where we do we'll have a stand so please come and say hello.
There's not a day goes by where I don't want to push The Staff Canteen over a cliff, but I don't and the more chefs I meet the more I think we are doing the right thing and will continue to do so.
It's been an amazing year, to all our members' thank you, to everyone that's visited again thanks, as long as you keep coming back in your tens of thousands each month we will keep doing what we do.
Thank you from
Chef 1 and all at Cooking Towers
