When cutting-edge companies want to foster team spirit, relax or even entertain clients, breaking bread together is no longer enough - they now bake that bread themselves. Corporate cookery courses are the latest exercise in business bonding.
Venturi's Table claims to be the UK's only dedicated corporate cookery school. Anna Venturi, the London-based school's founder, says business is brisk as teams from companies including Abbott Mead Vickers, Merrill Lynch and Ebay head to Wandsworth to cook up a storm.
Venturi says cooking appeals to companies because it brings people together. "It's not competitive. We just want everyone to relax and have a good time. In fact, it's almost therapy. We get everyone, from directors to secretaries, from graduates to retirement dos."
The team from Cereal Products Worldwide (CPW), a joint venture between Nestlé and General Mills, making mushroom ravioli, stuffed loin of pork and caramelised oranges with profiteroles in the kitchen at Venturi's Table, appears to prove Venturi's point that cooking can build teams. The group members are of mixed culinary abilities: some are dab hands in the kitchen; others have never caramelised an orange in their lives. Yet everyone happily pitches in - and slaving over a hot stove and piping chocolate custard into a profiterole helps to break down barriers.
Masele Siatu'u, CPW's human resources vice-president, says having your elbows in flour and eggs brings together fellow employees who are dispersed across the world.
This is the reason the company chose to send the team on a cookery course, says Christi Strauss, CPW chief executive.
"We look for something that cuts across ages and backgrounds and cultures. If we [ played] golf, it would be great for good golfers, but not necessarily for anyone else."
With cookery, she says, anyone can take part and they can participate as much or little as they want - plus there's a tasty meal on offer at the end of the day.
Richard Pash, a marketing manager at Mars and another Venturi customer, says cookery feels natural compared to some team-building activities. Constructing a bridge across a stream when there is a perfectly good one 50 metres away may seem a little pointless, but cooking a three-course meal you intend to sit down and eat certainly doesn't.
"Unlike many courses we've been on, it's the opposite of contrived," says Pash.
Perhaps the most intriguing use of places like Venturi, however, is not as venues for team building but for client entertainment.
Venturi's daughter, Letizia Tufari, who worked at Pfizer before joining her mother's business, says client hospitality is a growing income stream for Venturi. She says that for cash-rich, time-poor business people, fine dining has become rather pedestrian. But cooking a three-course meal for oneself is more unusual. - (Financial Times service)
