Innovation and sustainability: What the hospitality industry can learn from Steve Jobs

The discussion was held last night by the London-Lausanne Society at the Embassy of Switzerland and moderated by Ian Millar, deputy director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Four distinguished figures from the hospitality industry debated the ways the sector can move forward – with all agreeing that hotel and restaurant companies are playing catch-up with others.

Patrick Willis, chief executive of the Marlon Abelo Restaurant Corpoeration (MARC), said: “I wish hotel and restaurant companies spent more money on developing students and on research and development so that we really take hospitality to the next level.

Research and development ​

“A person who has set great trends was the founder of Apple. Steve Jobs spent more money on research and development than any other company in the world.

“There’s very little creativity in food and beverage at the moment. We have to go back a really long time to recall the last time our industry really did something that changed the way people lived their lives.

“Most of the top companies outsource their food and beverage because they think it’s cheaper to operate and they think there’s more profitability that way. But in the long run, it will actually hurt their companies more.”

Professor Geoff Booth, director of the School of Hospitality at Westminster Kingsway College, added: “Steve Jobs dared to do what the finance director didn’t want him to do. We just don’t seem to have enough people like that in the hospitality industry.

The next innovation​

“Westminster Kingsway was visited the other day by Ferran Adrià, who came to the school and was on a tight schedule. He had a plane to catch and initially said he needed to be done in 50 minutes - but such was the size of his heart, he spent five hours with us.

“Adrià said that every now and again food innovation does happen, but it’s on a big cycle, with the last big innovation being spherification and gastronomy - that made us aware of food in a different way and changed consumers lives in an indirect way because we got to try new foods.”

David Laurence, member of the Hotel, Catering and Institutional Management Association, agreed that F&B companies are behind other sectors when it comes to innovation. “If one is looking for innovation, they could do worse than look at advertising companies,” he said.

“Advertisers are an incredible source of creativity and they live and breathe their next pitch to customers, their new idea. It’s a highly creative marketplace and food and beverage companies could learn an awful lot from the way they innovate.”

Teaching good practice​

The panel went onto discuss ways in which the sector can be more sustainable and Booth from Westminster Kingsway believes it all starts with teaching students to buy the right quality food at the right price, rather than basing the buying process on bottom-line price.

“It is vital that we embed good practice in our curriculum and education when it comes to sustainability and healthy eating,” said Booth. “Companies are looking at bottom line price, but as a college we’re looking first at quality because we absolutely want to teach the right thing to do and the right way of getting good yield out of food.

“You should be able to justify everything you buy and you have to know that the food you’re buying will. As such, we’re teaching our students that we can’t just look for short-term gains; it’s about being able to buy the right quality of food at the right price – and this involves conscious-making decisions at throughout the buying process.”

Last night’s event was the second roundtable discussion to be staged by the London-Lausanne Society, which was created in September last year with the aim of forging stronger relations between the hospitality industries of the UK and Switzerland.

The evening, which was run simultaneously and interactively with the Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL) in Switzerland, also saw the presentation of research into the future of the F&B industry by professor Christine Demen-Meier, along with an awards ceremony for the F&B Prospective Challenge Award.