Interview: Giovanna Grossi, (August 2019)

[ Giovanna at The Landmark Hotel. She loves this hotel for many reasons. Giovanna went there for Champagne on her first date with husband-to-be Mario and they stayed there together on their last trip to London before he passed away 20 years later. She has also worked closely with the hotel for many years and feels it’s come on such a journey. Beautiful hotel and amazing team.]

Giovanna’s
father came over from Italy in 1962 for six months to learn English and worked in hotels, but he met her mother, who was from
Cheshire, and didn’t go back. When she was about six, a couple who her dad had
once worked for and who owned a restaurant in Southport, were selling their
business, and offer her parents first refusal. The young Giovanna absolutely
fell in love with the whole environment and would find any excuse to be in the
restaurant doing one form of little job or another, so much so that her dad
could see her enjoyment and during the summer holidays he would take her every
week to the wholesale market in Liverpool at 4am and in the old school way, he would personally
choose all his fish, fruit and veg – being a part of that was a real adventure for
a young girl.

One day a new
property came on the market and her father was able to realise his ambition of
being proprietor of his dream Italian restaurant.  From around 1978 the new restaurant became
a prime venue, for acts and customers of Southport Theatre but also the
Liverpool FC players of the day, there was a real buzz about the place.  Meantime Giovanna passed her 11 Plus and the
exam and interview for Merchant Taylor’s School in Crosby. She chose the
latter, however was unhappy and failed to settle but was fortunate to be able
to transfer to the grammar school, when someone moved from the area and
liberated a place.  The school was within
walking distance from home, situated between Royal Birkdale and Hillside Golf
Clubs and a scene of far happier times.  Taking
a year out before going to Manchester University, where she studied accountancy,
led to Giovanna spending a year working in the business and it was during this time
that she realized that her career future post university, would be in
hospitality.

In 1993, Giovanna
had some challenges with a London based supplier and a manager travelled up to
Southport from London to resolve the problems. 
This man turned out to be the love of her life, Mario, and they clicked
from day one.  Over the following years
he spent his weekends working in the restaurant so they could spend time
together to the point where he became fully integrated into the business and
customers really loved him, too. 

Giovanna had
always wanted to be a journalist when she was younger and as she loved the
restaurant trade, writing for the Good Food Guide had always been a dream.  As it happened, in early 1999, she saw an
advert in Caterer for an AA Hotel and Restaurant Inspector.  With numerous applicants for only three positions,
Giovanna didn’t anticipate success.  She
had two interviews and for the second borrowed a laptop to type a presentation.
 Sitting behind her to be interviewed
directly after her, was someone who would become a dear friend, Paul Hackett,
who is still at the AA today.  Despite some
anxiety throughout the application process, they both found themselves employed
on the AA Hotel and Restaurant inspection team.

From
1999 to 2003 Giovanna effectively worked seven days a week as she split
her time between fulfilling her hours and responsibilities at the AA, while
also covering the important shifts at her parents’ restaurant.  This proved exceptionally hard work but gave
Giovanna the best of both worlds.  Giovanna
was fortunate to cover a number of different patches in her first few years,
the North West, the Lake District (during the challenging foot and mouth
crisis), Central & East England, and then ultimately Giovanna found herself
responsible for central London, which brought with it the biggest section of
the AA Restaurant Guide to manage.  This
enabled the building of a network of chefs, restaurateurs and hoteliers in the
capital but the schedule and workload were quite punishing, travelling from her
home in Manchester every week. 

Around January 2006,
Giovanna was promoted to a role of Key Account Executive and was responsible
for liaising with approximately fifteen major Hotel Groups and whilst this more
corporate role took her out of her comfort zone, she had the opportunity to
forge some great relationships with some major figures of the hospitality
industry.  The London and South East Area
Manager role became available some 9 months later, and her experience of London
and desire to manage a team again, led her to apply for the position. She loved
the role and strived hard to support and develop her team. Towards the end of
2007, the opportunity arose to apply for the position of Group Area Manager, a
revised version of the old Chief Hotel & Restaurant Inspector role – it
involved overseeing the inspection team and also brought responsibilities for sitting
on awards panels, including a panel with the national tourist boards with
responsibility to update shared quality standards for hotel and B&B
inspections.  Giovanna was successful in
her candidacy and over the next nine years was to make the role her own.

Giovanna was responsible
for ensuring that all restaurants nominated for three, four and five Rosettes and
hotels nominated for AA Red Stars, had the relevant confirmation inspections
and that the nominations for all the AA Hotel, Restaurant and B&B Awards
were written up for the AA Hospitality Panel to discuss at their meetings twice
a year. Giovanna soon found herself sitting on a number of judging and awards
panels on top of managing four regional managers and helping build training and
the early consulting programmes that the AA were developing.  

In Spring 2012,
Giovanna broke her leg and had to take an enforced absence from work. This
coincided with a dramatic decline in her partner, Mario’s, health.  He had crippling arthritis sadly followed by
a nasty accident in early 2013. Giovanna found strength from within she didn’t
realise she had, looking after Mario while juggling battles with hospitals,
work schedules, care schedules.  Sadly,
the love of her life passed away on 3^rd August 2013.

For the next
few years Giovanna threw herself into her work, partly as a coping mechanism, feeling
the emotional strain, she had moved out of the apartment they had shared for
sixteen years and had relocated down south, while also fighting an unwanted,
long, hard legal battle over the estate. 
In January 2016 her long-time manager Simon Numphud left the
business for pastures new. After
settling the legal battle finally in February that year, Giovanna felt it was the
right time to take some time for herself and to spend more time with family and
friends, do some travelling and pursue her passion for training and mentoring
hotel and restaurant teams; she made the tough decision in May 2016 to move on
from The AA. 

After handing
in her notice, there was an attempt to make her reconsider and finally a half-way
house in the form of a part time Special Projects and Ambassadorial role was
agreed.  The objective was to champion
The AA, based around a working arrangement of four to five days a month.  This proved a happy relationship for the next
two years and covered the void until Simon Numphud returned to the business in
a new permanent role and Giovanna’s own training business Giovanna Grossi
Hospitality was by then taking off and was taking up more of her time.

Giovanna
happily agreed to retain a voluntary role on the AA Hospitality Awards Panel
and indeed her reach in the industry was reflected in the number of bodies, panels
and committees she has contributed to and indeed continues to support.  These include The Golden Keys Concierge, The
Cateys judging panels including Menu of the Year and Chef of the Year panel,
The Hotel Catey Spa Professional panel as well as Hotelier of the Year, sitting
on the Hospitality Action fund raising and marketing committee and judging
Boutique Hotelier Awards.

It seems a
while ago, but back in September 2012, Maureen Mills had invited Giovanna out
to lunch with Amanda Afiya of The Caterer at The Corinthia, and whilst they
knew each other, and their paths had crossed a number of times, it was to be
her and Amanda’s first outing together and the rest is history…  Their friendship blossomed over the following
years and so when Amanda was approached by Jo Barnes and Nicky Hancock of Sauce
PR to potentially launch a Mystery Guest business, it seemed a natural next
step to involve Giovanna to take the idea further.

Giovanna
brought to the table extensive experience and knowledge of hotel and restaurant
inspecting from a professional guide perspective, as well as a proven developer
and provider of training and consulting programmes to the hospitality industry.  She could not only play a significant role in
aiding the development of a state of the art technology platform for the
bespoke report writing by mystery inspectors but also contribute to the
solutions provided thereafter.  This
remains an early but exciting entrepreneurial adventure and one that suits
Giovanna well.  After a career of
consistent success and achievement, Giovanna has established herself as a much
loved, admired and respected industry figure – the coming together of Jo, Nicky,
Amanda and Giovanna is surely one to watch and an opportunity certain to
deliver success to their clients while continuing to garner a high profile in
the industry.  Best of luck to her and
long may the future be bright…

from Fine Dining Guide

Interview: Amanda Afiya (August 2019)

[Above: Amanda with chef John Campbell at the Foodservice Cateys]

Amanda grew up in Surrey, attending the prestigious City of London Freemen’s School in Ashtead.  Having achieved seven O’Level (GCE) passes, Amanda was encouraged by her parents to enrol at Pitman’s Secretarial College in Wimbledon.  While it was an intensive course, with up to three hours short hand every day, plus two hours at night, Amanda enjoyed the process and passed with flying colours.  Ironically, parallel to the secretarial course was one in journalism, which Amanda possibly would not have met the qualification bar for entry.  In March 1986, when close to graduation, Amanda applied for a secretarial role to the front of house manager (advertised in the Evening Standard) at the THF Heritage Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge (now the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park).  The upside of the job was that it felt like being behind the scenes of a stage production, a role that certainly whetted the appetite for the industry. 

After a year,
Amanda moved to make her first appearance at The Caterer, which was in a
secretarial capacity on the advertising side, then after another year and followed
by a stint of traveling, she returned to Reed Business Information (RBI) publications with ‘Restaurateur’ and ‘Pub
Caterer’ again as a PA to the Advertising Director. In 1990, Amanda started at The
Caterer as secretary to the first female editor in their then 112 year history
(founded 1878), years later Amanda was to become only the second female editor
of the magazine. With her high standard of shorthand, Amanda was able to
support certain members of the 25-strong editorial team by calling people on
their behalf, asking agreed questions and making notes.  Amanda would write these up verbatim from
which the journalist could more simply write copy and hit a deadline.  This proved a skill that would stand her in
good stead later as a researcher. 

The recession
at the turn of the ‘90s meant
RBI put the brakes on graduate recruitment but they still had a first-class
graduate training programme.  As a
result, they decided to open up this training to those in-house and over the
next few years Amanda found herself effectively PTC trained having attended
courses in news reporting, sub-editing, feature writing, as well as legal
courses.  In June 1993, a sub-editing
role on the production desk became available and through a tough learning curve
she became very quick at passing through corrections to proofs from the section
heads.  There were four sub editors and
two designers, however through a variety of circumstances (such as maternity or
sickness), the business was unable to provide cover, and, as a result, Amanda
and the production editor found themselves working 7.30am to 9.30pm every working day. 

Having
slowly earned her stripes on the production desk, Amanda was able to take her
first proper writing and reporting role on the chef desk and remembers a calming
drink prior to interviewing Gary Rhodes as she thought every chef would reduce
a journalist to tears, but gratefully learned that there was a more gentle
variety.  Over the following years,
Amanda covered virtually every editorial team role. 

[Amanda with Mark Sargeant, the year he cooked for the Cateys, 2015]

In 2002, Amanda’s
work came to national attention when Simon Wright, then editor of the AA Restaurant
Guide, confided in her regarding what was to become “The Petrus Scandal”. Marcus
Wareing’s Petrus, co-owned with Gordon Ramsay, was in St James’ Street at the
time that the AA Restaurant Guide were promoting the restaurant to five rosettes.  Prior to the official announcement, Roger
Wood, MD of The AA, had booked a table for six at short notice, but when
personally checking the arrangements immediately prior to the visit, was
dis-satisfied. Mr Wood subsequently went back to The AA and personally
intervened in the awarding of the promotion. 
Simon Wright stood by the ethical decisions made by his professional
inspectors and resigned.  After significant
media pressure, The AA reversed their decision and awarded the five rosettes.  The Caterer broke the story, backed by a
significant paper trail of memos and emails that had been provided by the
resigning editor to Amanda, in what was to be the hospitality trade story of
the decade.

During her
early days, some time in 1994, Amanda had interviewed Gordon Ramsay and being of
similar age they got on well, regularly speaking, with Gordon offering
occasional tip offs of stories. She developed a similar relationship with Jason
Atherton when he had worked for Stephen Terry in Frith Street.  It was like they all grew up together during
those early times.  So when later working
on The Petrus story (for three months) she had agreed with Simon Wright that as
soon as he told Gordon Ramsay about the situation, he would effectively lose
control of the story, meaning that it would break via The Evening Standard and
then onto the nationals.  So with mutual
trust, Caterer only went to press with Simon Wright’s blessing, which was on a
Tuesday, appearing on newsstands on the Thursday and was the only publication
to be able to source verbatim internal discussions that backed the story.

Previously, in
1994,
Amanda had met chief inspector David Young of The AA at an inspectors’
conference and subsequently went on an inspection visit with him to the River
Café.  David had been at the AA for 18 years when he left in 2002 and so having known both
him and Simon Wright, Amanda was naturally a little wary of where she stood
with the guide after their departure. 
The emerging triumvirate of Gordon Cartwright, Simon Numphud and
Giovanna Grossi, who were taking the AA forward, may have offered a different
relationship.

[Above: Amanda with the late, great Andrew Fairlie, who she knew and relied upon for advice for much of her career – pictured with former Caterer colleagues Kerstin Kuhn (left) and Katherine Alano (right) and chef Matt Gillan (far left), who is currently opening his solo venture Heritage in Slaugham, West Sussex]

By 2003, Amanda
had already been with the Caterer for thirteen years when the position of
managing editor became available.  She
and Mark Lewis both went for the role and Mark was to take the position for the
next 11 years.  Amanda’s feeling was to be
indispensible to Mark.  She and Mark had complementary
skills – she had come through the magazine and had a detailed hands-on view of
editing, whereas, in his new role, Mark could afford to be more strategic.  Amanda became editor in 2014 when Mark became
publisher.  At this time, she was also
looking after the Cateys, the Hotel Cateys and Foodservice Cateys, Hotelier of
the Year, the Acorn Awards, various forums and conferences so it was a big
responsibility – Writing speeches and making public addresses became, to begin
with, a forced fit but necessarily on-going part of the role.

[Above: Amanda, third left, on a trip to Noma (February
2017, just before it closed to relocate) with several members of the
Royal Academy of Culinary Arts including Phil Howard, Brian Turner,
Martyn Nail from Claridge’s and John Williams of the Ritz]

When Amanda left Caterer in October 2017, the first person to offer her work was Michelin two-starred chef Sat Bains, who suggested that she could do his restaurant PR.  While she had known Sat since 1999 and it was true she had a number of media contacts, those contacts were in a completely different context to moving forward a client’s PR strategy.  Having always lacked a degree of self-confidence with a healthy in-built fear of failure, Amanda felt it made more sense for an established PR to be behind Sat Bains.  She had known that Jo Barnes and Nicky Hancock of Sauce Communications were long-time admirers of Sat and would be both delighted and capable of managing his account.  So, with Amanda fronting a pitch, the relationship with Sat was established. 

At the same time, Amanda had taken a non-exec directorship on the board of hospitality recruitment specialists Cartwheel, as well as a six month contract in an ambassadorial and writing role at The Caterer. She continues to write for The Caterer today. Testament to the high regard Amanda is held within the hospitality industry, she continued to represent bodies which she is proud to give back her time to support.  These included chairing the fundraising and marketing committee for Hospitality Action, sitting on the fundraising committee for Adopt a School (for which she is also a trustee), a judge for the Cateys and The Acorns (previous chef winners of the 30 under 30 Acorn Award have included Marco Pierre White, John Burton Race, Jason Atherton and Gary Rhodes).  So despite having moved with her family to Tavistock, she would continue to be doing an amount of travelling up to London as well as throughout the UK.  As Jo and Nicky were delighted to have Sat Bains as a client, they suggested that Amanda might write inspection reports on their clients’ properties, which could coincide with her visits to London. A win-win and so began the arrangement from which Sauce Intelligence was developed.

Fast forward to
the present and Sauce Intelligence has a full-function, custom-built, state-of-the-art
technology platform to facilitate client engagements, the development of which
was funded by Sauce Communications.  A client
project is a four-step process, first the consultation to fully understand the
client, their goals, brand standards and objectives.  Second is an audit to assess all areas of the
guest experience.  Third is comprehensive
reporting from multiple and on going mystery guests visits, against a bespoke
reporting structure with tailored performance analytics to understand how the
business is meeting its own objectives.  A
significant part of that is gathering emotional intelligence ‘how did
particular elements of the stay at the property make you feel’ and this can be
a key differentiator for operators.  Finally,
solutions that may range from a raft of training options to refocus the staff
on meeting brand objectives and cultural values through to recruitment, media
and PR – a one-stop-shop solution offering to the hotel and restaurant
industry.

This is
something that is very exciting to Amanda and she is thrilled to be a key part
of it going forward.  Amanda has clearly
broken boundaries in her career and set and passed standards that are to be
admired.  No doubt the current venture
will be approached with the same vigour, passion and enthusiasm that has
characterised Amanda throughout her career.  Best of luck and wishing her well into the
future…

from Fine Dining Guide