ESS Regional Executive Chef, Matt Lord, took home the Development Chef of the Year Award at this year’s Contract Catering Awards!
Last year, Matt was seconded into a menu development role to lead the creation of recipes for an innovative new Defence dining offer, as part of the most significant change to military catering in almost 20 years.
Under Matt’s leadership, a team including a menu manager, senior chefs, nutritionists and marketeers created a series of new concepts and over 400 new recipes in the first three months of the year, ready for the offer to launch in over 200 messes on 1st May.
The concepts and dishes were created to meet the requirements of specific military cohorts including trainees, serving personnel and the wider Defence community.
The menus are compliant with a range of MOD standards, have military performance choice labelling to support customer decision-making and sustainability was a key consideration throughout the process.
On top of a demanding day-job, Matt has remained committed to developing his team and engaging with the wider industry and local communities.
He has created meaningful development plans for his direct reports, leading to numerous success stories, and dedicated many hours of his own time to coaching younger chefs early in their careers and senior chefs seeking development.
He promotes hospitality careers as a judge and mentor for Springboard Future Chef, coaches apprentices through annual guest chef dinner nights at City of Bristol College, delivers our Junior Chef Academy in partnership with local schools and has built a relationship with Horizons College to provide work experience placements for students who have severe or profound learning difficulties.
