The Procurement team hosted Cygnet’s first Chef Development Day of the year on Friday 4th April at the Brakes Innovation Kitchen in Reading.
Jack Mills, Strategic Buyer, and Marc Tough, Procurement Manager, led the event which focused around staff meals, covering the impact food has on Cygnet colleagues, the importance of our chefs being able to cater for staff from multicultural backgrounds, and encouraging healthier eating.
Nine Cygnet Chefs attended the event, alongside key stakeholders from across the organisation.
- Zerlina Mastin – Cygnet Dietitian
- Kirti Paik-Inkar – Clinical Practice Educator/Multicultural Network Co-Deputy Chairperson & Lead
- Mandy Sellers – Operations Director
- Lois Rayner – Expert by Experience
The morning session commenced with introductions including from our Brakes Account Management Team.
Kirti Paik-Inkar, Cygnet’s Multicultural Network Lead, gave a short presentation on Culturally Diverse Staff Menus. Kirti spoke about feedback received from staff, what we currently do well as a business around diverse menus and what our chefs can do better.
Titilayo Jackson, Head Chef at Cygnet Churchill led a brilliantly executed session on “Catering for our Staff”. Titi spoke about her engagement with staff, linking in with key stakeholder groups at Churchill to gather feedback on favourite recipes from staff members from different nationalities. Titi also spoke about how she sources ingredients using Brakes, how she creates her menus based on feedback from staff, cooking methods used and challenges.
Titi lead a cooking session in which chefs were required to emulate typical recipes that Titi produces at Cygnet Churchill. These included chicken, fish and vegetarian recipes, which all looked amazing and tasted delicious. Our Cygnet dietitian supported our chefs by reviewing cooking methods, ingredients being used and nutritional content involved in each recipe.
The afternoon kicked off with a presentation on “Healthier Eating” demonstrated by Mandy Sellers and Lois Rayner. This consisted of various projects that both Mandy and Lois have been working on, including a workbook for service users which facilitates a guide to health and wellbeing. Mandy and Lois also spoke about healthier menu/snack options, including vegetable-based meals, as well as how we can reduce carbohydrates and sugar.
Brandon Scarborough-Jones, Cygnet Head Chef from Derby, followed on the discussion on “Healthier Eating”, fantastically demonstrating how our Chefs can utilise the Nutritics online recipe/menu management tool. The Nutritics tool supports our chefs with helpful guides on allergens, nutritional data, portion control, cost management, and much more. Brandon is one of our “Super Users” who utilises the Nutritics platform very well and has encouraged the group to engage with the system as much as possible to support the chefs with their everyday menu planning. Brandon had then set the group the task on how they are able to create healthy as well as unhealthy recipes using the Nutritics platform.
Everybody who attended worked extremely well together and thoroughly enjoyed the day. Each of the morning and afternoon cooking sessions involved awards for the Best Team, Best Tasting Dish and Best Presented Dish.
Lois Rayner won the “Chef Development Day” for her hard work and efforts towards the Chef Development Day. Lois is always keen to help Procurement, whether presenting or even getting involved with cooking, Lois is a true advocate with these events!
Jack and Marc extend their thanks to all who took part making the day a huge success, especially Titi and Brandon for the hard work on Cultural Diverse Menus and Healthy Eating demonstrations.
