Production Manager
Vestey Holdings
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My name is Simon.
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I’m the production manager at the new site at Albion Fine Foods here at Dartford.
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Every sort of ingredient that a chef would want to use on a daily basis,
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we will supply them here.
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For my role as production manager,
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we’ve started with a very small department and I’m building that department up now
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and I’ve got two new areas which are due to start very soon.
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So the reason for the dry prep area
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is really to make a chef’s life easier.
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Chefs need as much help as they can.
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You need the skill level to put the food together
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but the ingredients,
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if they are made easier for them, that’s the easier part of the job.
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We would take a 25 kilo bag of something and break it down into one kilo
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bags, purely because a lot of restaurants, hotels, kitchens, establishments
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don’t have the room to have 20, 25 kilo bags of different products,
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but they do have shelf space for one kilo tubs,
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one kilo bags, 500 gram tubs.
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So for the wet prep area,
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people don’t like to peel onions, they don’t like to grate carrots.
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We will be doing all of these jobs for them.
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We can produce fresh products every day,
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so that the customer will get a fresh ingredient every day,
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so we’ve made their job a lot easier.
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With food, I’ve been very lucky because I’ve been a chef.
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Before I came here, I was a chef for 47 years,
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so I understand food and food ingredients.
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so that to start with I was in a good place.
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I’ve always worked with production managers, so I understand their role.
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So coming here, it was quite a nice
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role change for me.
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I was already ready for the job.
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I left school at the age of 16
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with the view to working in hotels.
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I knew that I needed to work in London
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with a view to getting myself a really good career.
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I started at the White House Hotel as a trainee chef.
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I knew that I had to go to college
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and I wanted to go to the best college that I could possibly go to,
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which happened to be Westminster Catering College.
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So I went there and I was there for four years.
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I worked my way up to what would be called a Chef de Partie
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which was in charge of a section in the kitchen.
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I feel that I’ve been very lucky in my career to do some fantastic things.
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I’ve been lucky enough to cook for the Queen and the rest of the royal family
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at St James’s Palace in London
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and also at their private residence at Horsted Place in Uckfield, West Sussex.
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And my job before I came here,
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I worked with Raymond Blanc for nearly ten years.
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We worked very closely together and I’ve been very lucky to
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go and work with him at his restaurant, at Le Manoir
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at Brasserie Blanc, go to working with him in Burgundy.
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For my last two jobs Albion Fine Foods has been a supplier of ours.
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I got talking to somebody who knew that Toby was looking for this new venture here
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at Albion Fine Foods.
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They were going to be building this site and they were looking
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for somebody who would come in and be a production manager.
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Always look
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to push yourself to move on more in your career,
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just progression.
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Look for the next role.
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You can look at your boss and think, You know what?
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with the right experience, I could do that job and work for it.
“I feel that I’ve been very lucky in my career to do some fantastic things.” Simon had a great career as a chef, working for Raymond Blanc and cooking for the royal family. He now heads up production at Albion Fine Foods, a company which supplies restaurants with ingredients.
More information about Production managers and directors in manufacturing
The UK average salary is £29,813
There are 37.5 hours in the average working week
The UK workforce is 47% female and 53% male
Future employment
- Liaises with other managers to plan overall production activity and daily manufacturing activity, sets quality standards and estimates timescales and costs;
- Manages production to ensure that orders are completed to an agreed date and conform to customer and other requirements;
- Monitors production and production costs and undertakes or arranges for the preparation of reports and records;
- Oversees supervision of the production line and its staff, ensures targets are met.
