Reflections - Adding Value

Adding Value

To make our offering priceless

The groceries we buy – vegetables, meats, spices, oils, butter, cheese, grains, pulses – are available at a price. When a chef de cuisine combines those ingredients into a scrumptious dish – it becomes priceless.

What did the Michelin star chef do to command 20 to 50x the ingredients’ price for the dish? 

Undoubtedly, the produce was the freshest and the best available globally. It was washed and cleaned without damage and cut in defined shapes. The mix of the ingredients used was perfected over thousands of hours of apprenticeship with reputed chefs when moving up the hierarchy to Chef de Cuisines.

The ingredients were sautéed, grilled, roasted or fried to a recognizable exactness. The sauces used were specially made for the dish. It was plated in exquisite detail and served with a flourish in an uber luxurious setting.

The value-add revolved around being the absolutely the very best, in every area of the process: from ingredient procurement, to dish preparation, and its final serving. When partaken, the expression on the guest’s face is the chef’s delight or his nightmare.  And, that of the kitchen brigade that put it all together under the supervision of the Chef de Cuisines.

How can we achieve such level of excellence in whatever we do for a living?

Anton Mosimann, OBE, DL (born 23 February 1947) is a Swiss chef and restaurateur who was Maitre Chef des Cuisines at the Dorchester Hotel for thirteen years, during which time its restaurant achieved a rating of two stars in the Michelin Guide. Very rare in those days for a hotel restaurant.

After leaving The Dorchester Mosimann, created a private dining club called Mosimann's, a cookery school, and other enterprises in the hospitality industry. He has also presented television programmes in the UK and Switzerland. 

In 2016 a museum dedicated to his life and culinary arts was opened in the César Ritz Colleges, located on the shores of Lake Geneva (lac Léman), in the town of Le Bouveret. Mosimann terms his culinary style cuisine naturelle as it emphasises healthy and natural ingredients, avoiding additions of fat and alcohol.

Seven factors account for Anton Mosimann’s continued success even at 73 as told by Anton himself in a talk to students of the Switzerland hospitality industry.

1.   Sacrifice to learn: Being talented he rose fast in the hotel restaurant hierarchy and had to demote himself with lesser perks and lower salary just to learn at a deeper level another dimension of the culinary arts to become a multifaceted chef which built and added to his reputation

2.   Be completely educated: He went where his chef advised him to go; in the hospitality industry you do not apply for a job; you are sent by the chef you apprentice with wherever he thinks your practical education will be complete

3.   Experience variety: He moved countries to understand the national taste, since the concept of fine dining dramatically changed by country, for example, butter and cheese, is hardly used in Japanese dishes, and yet the dish is expected to taste exquisite

4.   Compete to know where you stand: He participated in cooking competition every opportunity he got; the first medal he won gave him the confidence that he was as good as the best, if not the best; his current count is around 50 medals

5.   Enjoy what you do: He still wakes up every morning looking forward to the day’s work; in fact he says he once received a compliment from a young lady who had come to his restaurant and in welcoming her he introduced himself, “I am Anton Mosimann”, to which she replied, “you are still alive?”

6.   Be challenged by the best: He has been through the ultimate test of his profession, cooking for the most prestigious royal or presidential banquets and for nearly every celebrity of the day, including Margaret Thatcher, the British PM, who while complimenting Anton, two-three years later when they met on another occasion, also added that the banquet he put together for her, on the visit of the French President Francois Mitterrand, was very expensive; Anton remarked, in the talk to the students, “She does not miss a trick”

7.   Look them in the eye: The stakes were very high; every guest had to be delighted; at the start of the day Anton would greet every member of his team every day by name, looking them in the eye, and knew right away if something was wrong with any of his staff members that morning, which got corrected over coffee in his office

Anton Mosimann is where he is – among the greats – because he never forgot that he is only as good as the value that he can add every time a dish passes under his nose and his guests consider it a privilege to have dined at the work of his hands.

In the work we do for a living, where in the process or in the ultimate output, is our individual hand involved, in the collective effort, in the creation and consumption of our company's product or services, that makes the offering priceless and our reputation hallowed?