Sir,

We would like to know how the recent gutting of the bar’s menu is to our benefit as members. The F&B claims it will help the kitchen operate efficiently and economically. How do they know when no one can trust the club’s accounting system? And even if it did save money, is this appropriate? Does it serve the Club’s members?

A Club menu offering the more restricted choice of a restaurant menu is useless; we can simply go to a restaurant if we want that. Why bother joining a club?
A club is not a restaurant. A club has a lock in. A club requires a commitment to join and a sacrifice to leave. A restaurant attracts a large number of people a few times; a club attracts a small number of people, its members, many times.

If we stick with it, our Cub is like our home; we wish to return to a table laden with a large variety of dishes that we occasionally sample. And we wish to sample at our convenience, not at the staff’s. This requires a club to have a large and varied menu from which members can choose different things.

But now the Provençal ratatouille is gone, as are the consommé, the beef Stroganoff and many others. Grilled salmon is still on the menu, so what inventory cost is being saved by taking cold salmon salad? And why take eggs off the menu? Surely we’ll always have eggs in a kitchen, so why not continue offering two eggs any style?

Paul Dodd, the new executive chef – the only person brave enough to let his name be mentioned in that patronizing F&B message – has proven he can cook. His lunch dishes are always crammed with complex flavors and often sublime. But we want our classics back. Chef Dodd knows how to cook in a restaurant, but no one has bothered to impress on him that managing a club menu is different. The F&B committee certainly failed us there.

Vincent Poirier, Kyle Murphy, Tom Brown, Jack Spillum, V.C. Lingam, Yasuo Kojima, Lawrence Cesar, Don Houk, David Young, John de Olde, Noriaki Sugimoto

(REPLY FROM PAUL DODD BELOW)

Dear Members,

Thank you for taking the time to write. It’s understandable that some members are unhappy regarding the recent streamlining of the bar menu; these items are close to the heart (and stomach!) of some members.

Our menus are huge. Over the years our menus have continued to grow and grow to the point that the kitchen cannot produce all of these items efficiently, economically and/or without loss in quality. The decision was made to remove some low-selling items in order to improve kitchen performance, reduce waste and ultimately provide our members with a better dining experience. When I came on board, within my first few days many members approached me and complained that the food quality was below their expectations and were bored with the current food offerings and they were looking forward to a new chef with fresh ideas creating an exciting new menu.
Our current board also expressed a desire to see improved food quality, new and exciting menu items and improved kitchen cost control.

However, it’s impossible to continue to keep adding and adding new dishes without first removing some old ones. Sales data was carefully analyzed, and I dispute the fact that our POS system is flawed (old and difficult to work with yes, but that’s an issue for another committee) and the decision was made to reduce the items not making at least one sale, on average, per day. In the July 2009 issue of the Number 1 Shimbun, Greg Carly wrote a fascinating letter criticizing the F&B committee for their failure to remove poor-selling menu items. One thing the club isn’t short on is diversity of opinion! Perhaps the concept of a “Billboard Top 50” is beyond the club’s means, but the rest of Mr. Carly’s letter rings true.

Food is a perishable product. If there is insufficient demand, we don’t sell it and it goes to waste (or else the member gets a less than satisfactory product.)
Wastage is money in the bin. Despite being a members club, the FCCJ is not immune to the financial perils of the world. While the club is not out to make a profit, it cannot afford to lose money. The Board and the Finance Committee have made it very clear that the club is facing serious financial challenges. It would be irresponsible not to address the issues of excess waste, poor performing products and kitchen inefficiency.

A basic law of economics states the more you produce of a particular item the more efficient and economical it becomes to produce. On average, per month, we sell around 2,000 correspondent lunches. Contrast that to, for example warm salad with feta cheese at 11 sales per month, cold salmon with salad at 17 p/m, chicken salad sandwich at 8 p/m and it starts to put things into perspective. And, dare I bring it up, tomato soup at 30 sales per month – which was removed not only due to poor sales but because members were demanding Gazpacho soup in the summer. It doesn’t make sense to have two tomato soups on the menu, especially one that doesn’t sell. The decision was made to give the tomato soup a rest for a few months in the summer and satisfy the demands of those requesting Gazpacho. Keep in mind also that because an item is removed, it doesn’t mean it won’t return in the future. It’s impractical to produce a menu that covers every taste of every member 365 days a year.

Instead the idea is we change and update the menu more frequently. We create specials and we base it on what is in season, fresh and exciting. Our hearty Beef Stroganoff (25p/m) is a great example of a dish which I’m sure will perform much better in the cooler winter months. But, in the meantime, it’s still available in the P&Q. Which leads us to another question of why do we have the same dishes appearing on different menus throughout the Club. Perhaps this goes someway to explain why the P&Q is performing poorly. Why eat in the P&Q when you can get the same dish cheaper in the bar? (But that’s a whole other debate.)

It goes without saying our kitchen always has eggs. Any kitchen worth its salt should be able to produce an omelet or two eggs any style on demand. These items are kitchen basics and, much like toast, if requested will be cheerfully prepared. But it doesn’t mean it needs to be written on the menu. In our kitchen, we have hundreds and hundreds of ingredients; it’s impractical to list all the possibilities on the menu.

On average in the bar we sell between 80-120 lunches each day. The majority of these sales take place between 12-1 p.m. During this time the kitchen is under enormous pressure to produce tasty meals quickly, efficiently and to an acceptable industry standard. When creating a menu we need to carefully consider the constraints of our working environment. The bar kitchen has no gas; it’s all electric. There is a grill, a grill plate, plate warmer, deep fryers, two ovens, microwave and three electric induction elements, which means we can have three pans on the go at one time (much like a domestic kitchen) and that means it only takes a couple of pastas and a curry or soup to fill up the stove and slow things down. The Bar kitchen was never designed to produce this many meals in such a short space of time.

Bench space is also inadequate, when you’re sending out food in this volume you need somewhere to lay all those plates. And you need room for the staff to work. In the past, the way the kitchen dealt with these problems was by cooking everything well in advance and keeping it warm. Meat, fish and vegetables were all left to stew, dry out or overcook in the plate warmer for hours. Other less popular items were kept in the fridge or freezer for weeks on end then defrosted in the microwave. Items like the Ratatouille, which should be a lively expression of fresh Provencal vegetables, were being made and forgotten in the corner of the fridge until some poor soul ordered it, at which point the kitchen staff, realizing it was past its prime, would then run around like madmen preparing a new one while our members had an unacceptably long wait. Perhaps this is why the Ratatouille, on average, sells less than 1 per day (20 p/m).

I agree that a members club is not like a restaurant. And members should have access to a large variety of dishes “at their convenience, not at the staff’s.”

Often people like to make comparisons between the FCCJ and Tokyo American Club. Although, we are completely different clubs with a different membership base and raison d’etre, we can still gain some insight from their operation.

Remember that TAC has five (food) outlets, vastly superior, bigger & modern kitchen facilities (with gas!) and a larger membership base, not to mention higher initiation fees and monthly dues. Our bar menu has been reduced from 60 items down to 50 at lunch and (a whopping) 75 items down to 62 at dinner. In TAC’s Traders Bar, they have just 23 items, seven side dishes and seven desserts. In TAC’s restaurant “Mixed Grill,” they feature 47 items (42 at lunch) plus around 10 side dishes and their pricing is more in line with those of a restaurant (e.g., Caesar Salad ¥1,200, beef sirloin ¥3,050).

Far from wanting to inconvenience members and limit their options, we simply want to increase member satisfaction by applying some true and tested principles we have accumulated in our experience from F&B operations around the world. We need to remember that many members are crying out for new dishes and an improvement in quality. It would be unfair to ignore their demands. But I’ll re-emphasize the point that we cannot keep adding new dishes to our menus without first removing some, and to improve on quality we need to reduce content.

In our opinion, a frequently changing menu increases members’ choices. Members get to experience many more dishes than they would with a stagnant, never-changing menu. Sure, it means we have to give some dishes a rest for a while, like our Tonkatsu, but with average sales at a meager 18 per month is this really an inconvenience to the majority of members?

And incidentally members didn’t have to wait long for it to reappear on the Correspondents lunch menu at ¥630 cheaper than when it was on the regular bar lunch menu (remember I mentioned that producing and selling items in large quantities makes them more economical to produce).

Implementing changes in a Club with such long-standing traditions, loyal members and long-serving staff is always going to be a challenging process. Especially as this is probably the first time in a long time, if at all, such changes have been made. In hindsight, we clearly need to improve our staff training and member communication. Again, I kindly ask for our members to be patient. Improving the club’s F&B operation requires a long-term commitment from management, staff, the board, committees and members.

We are fortunate to have members that are concerned and care enough to write; thank you. The FCCJ has a huge mix of members with many different personalities, opinions, expectations and tastes. It’s impossible to please everyone all the time. But what we strive to do is please as many people as much of the time as possible. All that we ask is for members to understand this, keeping in mind the logistical and economic constraints. And please be patient; your favorite dish hasn’t disappeared forever. It’s just having a rest.

Executive Chef Paul Dodd
F&B Committee