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.