Case Study

A Taste of Staffordshire is a public/private sector initiative managed by Staffordshire County Council and affiliated to Destination Staffordshire, the destination management partnership for Staffordshire. It is recognised by VisitBritain as having the leading food awards scheme in the country, and encourages the use and promotion of local food and drink.

No small part of the initiative is the prestigious Good Food Awards. Now in their tenth year and sponsored by Steelite International, they are designed to recognise quality and excellence in the food and drink served and produced in the county. Each year over a hundred of the county's eateries enter the competition which has the following award categories:

Other special awards are given too, such as the Best Use of Local Produce sponsored by NFU.

Every restaurant that enters is visited by a judge incognito, and a shortlist is drawn up of up to five highest scoring establishments in each category. These restaurants are then given a second anonymous inspection and places one, two and three are decided on at a judging panel meeting.

In 2004, we were invited to carry out the first round judging process working with AA Hotel Services whose inspectors carried out the second round judging to our shortlisted establishments. In 2005 we worked on the same basis but with the RAC's inspection team, and each year since 2006 we have been delighted and honoured to carry out both rounds of judging in our own right.

Back in 2004 this was the first time we had become involved in judging a competition, and recognised that, although our expertise in the hospitality industry and our mystery shopping experience stood us in good stead, the judging process required some careful thought and threw us some extra challenges.

Unlike our other clients, where for example a restaurant gets a mystery diner visit every week or month, and the average-to-date score is the all-important score, in a competition the restaurant only gets one shot. Our mystery diner programme clients want us to send a range of real customer types over a period of time, whereas in a competition the one judge's opinion is the all-important factor deciding whether a restaurant is a winner or not, and whether they get to reap the immense rewards from the publicity generated by the resultant coverage from the county's press and beyond.

Objectivity is at the core of all our measurement programmes to ensure fairness and parity, and here it is as crucial as ever. With over a hundred restaurants to be visited in a short space of time, one person could not do all the judging! So some very detailed criteria were drawn up to ensure parity between one person's judgement and another's and to ensure that this was completely fair. In addition we developed a judges' training programme to ensure the aims and objectives of A Taste of Staffordshire were met.

All our mystery customers are recruited based on two essential criteria:

For a Taste of Staffordshire judge, this was certainly no exception, but in addition we needed some professional culinary expertise, so we set about putting together a team of suitably qualified people who don't have a conflict of interest with any of the potential entrants. Often recruited from neighbouring counties, over the years this has included:

Each year we refresh the judging team by replacing between 30-50% of the judges to remove the risk of them becoming a "known face" and thus destroying the importance of anonymity in the judging process, but in addition this policy has the added benefit of introducing fresh talent and maintaining a vibrant enthusiastic team.

Every October a prestigious awards dinner is held at the County Showground in Stafford which attracts a capacity audience of over 450 people from across the county. You can see a snapshot of the 2007 event here...

Videos

The Meal

The Awards

The Closing Address

The Role of Honour

Prior to our involvement in A Taste of Staffordshire, entrants received no feedback at all from their inspection visit. Recognising the importance of feedback as a significant developmental tool, Service Science introduced this added benefit to the initiative. Each entrant that requests a report on their entry form receives a comprehensive report after the awards dinner, which benchmarks their performance against standards within the competition across a variety of criteria. As a result several entrants have set up their own regular mystery diner programme with us to help improve, or maintain already high standards, and develop their business ever forward.

We are delighted to play a key part in this nationally acclaimed initiative which not only promotes and rewards quality and excellence, but at the same time promotes the many benefits of sourcing food and drink locally.

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