Even though we’ve been complaining about Stuart Baggs these past few weeks, we are glad he’s still a contestant on the show, even if for the only purpose of contrasting his optimism and motivation against Laura’s sourness and negativity.

This week the challenge was all about crisps. The teams had to create two new flavours of crisps and sell them to the German market. In order to successfully complete a challenge such as this, market research is imperative, both in terms of crisp flavours and the German market.

At the start of the task the project managers remained in England to manage the production of the crisps while the teams went to Germany for market research and to set up meetings with suppliers. It seems that both teams had already set their flavours before even thinking about market research, at least that’s what the editing on Stella’s team led us to believe.

The show featured a heated phone call between Joanna and Stella, where Joanna had just finished interviewing Germans in shops and asking them what kind of crisps they would like, and what kind of food they enjoy. At this point Stella and her team had already chosen to proceed with a “British Foods” theme, and Stella seemed to be upset that Joanna was telling her that they were proceeding in the wrong direction.

Chris’s team on the other hand decided to go into the German market with German crisp flavours. This was a great idea, until the buyers tasted the crisps and indicated that they tasted nothing like their German food counterparts.

In the end Stella’s team won and Chris’s team were sent to the boardroom. Although Chris the project manager had been in the bottom three and in the loosing team for the past few challenges, Lord sugar sent military and operations expert Christopher home. Lord Sugar said that although everyone liked Christopher, he didn’t have an entrepreneurial spark, and was sent home.

Whether the teams had any control over the situation or not, it was ridiculous for the teams to choose crisp flavours and then undertake market research. The teams communication styles was also very inconsistent, with Joanna and Laura speaking very quickly and not being sensitive whatsoever to the German buyers while Stuart actually made an effort, which resulted (much to our dismay) in his name in German, Herr Baggs, trending on Twitter during the airing.

Do you think any of the candidates that are left have an Entrepreneurial spark?

As I lay in bed last Monday morning listening to the radio, there was someone on BBC One talking to Chris Moyles about going camping with the Beckhams. I asked aloud “Who goes camping with the Beckhams? (I also meant, the Beckhams go camping?). I then heard someone say “It’s Gordon Ramsay” from the other room, and I replied that I didn’t recognise his voice because he’s not swearing.

I have had limited exposure to Gordon Ramsay outside of his “Kitchen Nightmares” franchise, where his favourite language of choice is profanity and where he displays an unwavering passion for food and cooking. On the radio, Ramsay was plugging his new book, as well as the new grill at the Savoy, where radio host Chris Moyles was very upset at the fact that they wouldn’t be serving chips. Ramsay also spent a very long time talking about his £110 truffle pizza at Maze.

After being hurt fairly badly in the recession, and even before the recession, he seems to be continuously beating his drum like the energiser bunny, who keeps going and going and going. He has been selling off restaurants and rights to telly programs to remain profitable.

What is he up to now, and how are these new ventures going to save him?

What is Ramsay’s competitive advantage? Well he’s not leading a food revolution like Jamie Oliver, no in fact he is trudging forward in the fine dining market. Even www.gordonramsay.com is pointed in the right direction, with the title reading “Fine Dining in London”. You don’t get more specific or clearly defined than that.

If the webpage is called “Fine Dining in London”, how do Ramsay’s new initiatives support that direction? Interestingly enough they do not in fact support that direction. The new Ramsay direction is in search of Ramsay’s best restaurant in England. The series on Channel 4 will follow Ramsay around the country as he tests restaurants nominated by the public, to ultimately crown the winner as Ramsay’s Best Restaurant.

I think the series is a lovely idea, and will get to showcase restaurants all over England. Is it a smart move for Ramsay? I still can’t wrap my head around how Ramsay is going to swear and pull horrible emotions out of the restaurant owners and workers in a best-of series. Where’s the conflict that Ramsay is best known for? Maybe this is all a part of his new image. Oh wait… there’s also a new book.

Ramsay’s Best Menus cookery book features 52 recipes from varied countries and is displayed in a cut-out style, where each course is in a section, so at any given time you can have a starter, a main course and a dessert open, all on one page. The webpage says that the recipe book allows for 140,000 different menu choices, but if you do buy the book, you’ll probably make 3 dishes from it and add it to your shelf of other Gordon Ramsay cookbooks.

I’m not even sure if Gordon Ramsay has a competitive advantage anymore. He obviously can’t compete with the Emmy winning, Ryan Seacrest backed Food Revolution, but it doesn’t seem like his new TV show and book are really anything new, anything different, or even anything remotely Ramsay.

Putting my cynical side away for the moment, I do hope that Ramsay does well and I do hope England embraces the new show…. but I don’t think it’s going to be the winning combination that he’s looking for.

Best Wishes Ramsay!

Yesterday saw the very successful press launch of re-plenish, the food bank charity set up in Oxford. I was proud to be part of it and witness the brand and website, created by MTD, unveiled. Last night and today we have already seen extensive TV and press coverage.

The re-plenish charity is operating an Oxford food bank, which takes unsold food from local supermarkets and suppliers and redistributes it to existing community food projects. Following a pilot phase the project is now up and running in and around Oxford taking surplus and ‘at sell by date’ food from local Sainsbury’s and Co-Operative supermarkets. This simple system provides healthy, wholesome food to people who need it and reduces the amount of unsold food that ends up in landfill. Currently approximately 20 million tonnes of food waste goes into landfill every year!

MTD got involved with this project about 18 months ago when we met Steve Moralee, the Chair of Trustees. We shared his belief, vision and infectious passion for this cause and quickly realised that our marketing expertise could help. You can read more about it in our latest news.

We have been overwhelmed by the dedication and effort that those involved have shown to get to this point, all volunteers, often holding down full time jobs. They are all to be congratulated for making this real and I hope that everyone that can, finds a way to get involved. After all, it affects every one of us.

On this day that has been gripped by the passing of two stars, namely Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, we are surrounded by a media explosion, mass public reaction – not to mention of course the loss that two families have to cope with.

But what we have to do is put all of this in perspective. Get a grip and learn from this – as so eloquently put in an e-newsletter today from the leading catering and hospitality publication, and I quote:-

“I’m starting with the man in the mirror; I’m asking him to change his ways; And no message could have been any clearer; If you wanna make the world a better place; Take a look at yourself and then make a change. As the world digests the passing of Michael Jackson, the restaurant industry is also being asked to look inwardly and make a change on the controversial issue of service charge…….” News Editor, 26 June 2009.

Phew..er, a joke, surely? Afraid not.

So, after the devastating Italian earthquake, did they make comparisons to the downfall in popularity of Italian restaurants and the need to up their game?

What utter guff.

The recent news item regarding the construction of a new dining table in the International Space Station raises some interesting points about the importance of human emotions and rituals, regardless of technological advances and it would appear – cost.

New dinner table top priority as ISS expands

“We are now going to have six people in orbit, so we will need to engineer another table, so we can all eat and chat together,” Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko said. Lunch is a ritual process in orbit,” he told journalists.

The average cost of lifting a kilogramme of anything to low earth orbit, typically where space stations and space shuttles spend their time aloft, is in the order of $100,000. Compared to this, the actual cost of food is negligible, in theory Astronauts should live on a diet of truffles and vintage champagne….and yet they crave simple foods that remind them of home, hash browns, m&m’s. They also place high levels of importance on how they eat…sharing meals together.

If we ever needed a reminder of how important such lowly matters as food and human contact are, this is a good reminder.

Brings a whole new meaning to the idea of food miles…