The Mayonnaise Doesn’t Make Itself

Many moons ago, Ben would occasionally decide, a couple of hours before service, that he no longer fancied what was on the day’s menu.

This was a more substantial announcement than it might sound. There was already a menu. Preparations had been made. We were expecting to serve it.

Then inspiration arrived, with very little consideration for the rest of us.

Fortunately, these announcements are considerably rarer now. But they tell you something about the man in the kitchen. After decades of cooking, Ben still gets ideas he wants to follow. Sometimes those ideas make a lovely dish. They always make a remarkable amount of work.

I have spent enough years alongside him to appreciate both consequences.

His relationship with the price of that work is rather more complicated. He has always wanted people to eat well, and good food to be accessible. The difficulty comes when we try to translate that wish into a price. We can calculate what a dish needs to earn, look at the resulting figure and find ourselves asking whether it sounds too much. Often, we have charged less.

Yet he also looks at other professions with a certain envy. People charge for their time, their knowledge and the judgement acquired through years of doing a job. Their expertise has an acknowledged place on the invoice.

Ben’s is included in the price of a fish dish.

The buying, preparing, tasting and adjusting—and the experience that guides all of it—are gathered into a few words on the blackboard. We know they belong in the price. Somehow, when it comes to writing down the number, we become less certain.

It was out of this frustration that Ben proposed a different kind of restaurant bill.

Ingredients. Working time. Running costs. VAT.

Something closer to a builder’s invoice, making visible the work that a conventional restaurant bill quietly absorbs. He wanted to hold an evening explaining it all.

He was entirely serious. I had reservations about how much accounting people might welcome with their dinner.

But the question stayed with me. What would that bill actually contain?

Under ingredients, we could begin with the eggs, oil and seasoning for the mayonnaise. Under working time, we would account for somebody making it. A contribution towards the kitchen in which it was made would belong somewhere too.

Already, a modest spoonful has become an administrative exercise.

Repeat the calculation for the bread, sauces and four or five preparations accompanying each dish, and Ben’s proposed invoice begins to look rather substantial. These are small things individually, but each requires ingredients, attention and time. Together, they determine what arrives on the plate.

The mayonnaise, despite its regular appearances, has yet to show any initiative.

Our ingredients column would have complications of its own. We spend time choosing suppliers, understanding their produce and deciding what belongs in our kitchen. Good local ingredients have a cost before we have done anything to them.

Fresh fish adds an element of uncertainty. Bad weather can mean fewer boats out, less fish available and a higher price for what comes ashore. We buy several different species most days, making decisions according to availability, quality and what Ben wants to cook.

The sea does not consult our costing sheets.

An invoice listing ingredients might make those costs clearer. Putting a value on the knowledge used to prepare them would be more difficult. Knowing how to handle a fish, what to pair it with and when it is cooked comes from years of practice. Much of that judgement happens without any visible deliberation.

This creates a problem for the hourly rate. Experience can make someone quicker. We would hardly want a system that rewarded taking longer.

Then we would have to decide when to start the clock.

When we served Sunday roasts, preparation began on Tuesday with stock for the gravy and purée, followed by braised cabbage on Wednesday and marinating the joints on Thursday. Sunday lunch occupied a fair part of the working week before Sunday itself arrived.

After years of working with Ben, I tend to leave the philosophy and precise sequence of cooking to him. My expertise lies in judging the finished result. I consider myself an excellent judge of good food, although I should disclose that I awarded myself the qualification.

So, talking to a friend about how much preparation went into our Sunday roasts, I confidently explained that Ben started the potatoes on Tuesday. It sounded right. Good roast potatoes take work; Tuesday was when the work began. My mind had joined the two together and considered the matter settled.

Then I checked with Ben.

Stock for the gravy. Purée. Braised cabbage. Marinating the joints. Over the following days, quite a lot had been happening, and I had assigned most of the credit to a potato.

Perhaps age and autopilot had played their part. Either way, I had delivered my account with considerably more confidence than accuracy.

An internal communications issue. We have a few.

Our departments include kitchen, maintenance, cleaning, HR, social media, decorating, gardening and bookkeeping. Most are occupied by the same two people. This ought to make arranging a management meeting straightforward.

The difficulty is that the chef is preparing dinner, maintenance has spotted something leaking, and accounts would like a quick word with both of them. HR has concerns about the tone of the discussion.

An external accountant might bring some order, but our usual meeting venue presents confidentiality issues. Financial discussions in the kitchen have a larger potential audience than accounts would prefer.

Meetings consequently happen in passing, often without either of us formally knowing we are attending one. I ask a question on my way through. Ben answers while doing something else. Service intervenes. Later, one of us believes a decision has been made, while the other has no recollection of the item being on the agenda.

Having fewer people involved does not necessarily improve communication. Sometimes it simply allows a misunderstanding to travel faster.

We would benefit from sitting down regularly to discuss opening hours, finances and repairs. Getting all the departments seated at once remains an ambition. First, we have to agree who is preparing the agenda and what takes priority. Then there is usually something in the oven.

Our labour column, then, would extend well beyond cooking and serving dinner. It would also reveal why adding another service or a special event requires more thought than it might appear.

A fish curry evening, for example, sounds pleasantly manageable. First, though, there is a menu to devise, produce to buy, preparation to organise, an event to promote and enough places to sell. Those hours must fit around the work already under way. An evening with only half the places filled can leave a considerable amount of effort uncovered.

Sunday roasts taught us something similar. Preparation was taking time from services that were already generating income. Eventually, we stopped doing them. We had added work without making the operation more worthwhile.

Our small plates at lunchtime fit more naturally into the kitchen’s routine, offering a way to eat our food for less than in the evening. The preparations still matter, and smaller plates do not reduce every task in proportion. But they allow Ben to offer variety within the cooking we are already doing.

Making these decisions is part of running a small kitchen: working out what we can prepare well, what we can realistically manage and what each service needs to contribute.

Which brings us to running costs—the least appetising section of Ben’s proposed bill.

Our building is more than three hundred years old and stands by the sea. Geriatric care is expensive, particularly when the patient is exposed to salt air and Cornish weather.

Somewhere, there must be an allowance for maintaining it, replacing equipment and scheduling repairs before something becomes urgent. The expert reckons the roof has around eight useful years left. That sounds comfortably distant until you consider how many dinners need to contribute towards its replacement.

Seasonality complicates the calculation. The number of people coming through the door changes considerably across the year. The building remains the same size, and its maintenance requirements display little interest in the booking diary. A busy period has work to do beyond paying for itself.

The price of dinner therefore needs to support today’s service and leave something for the future.

There is, of course, another regular participant in our pricing discussions. VAT attends every meeting, requires no chair and has never been distracted by something in the oven.

A quotation addressed to a business will often show a price “plus VAT”.

On our blackboard, VAT is already inside the number. When we ask ourselves whether a dish sounds too expensive, we are considering a total that was never entirely ours.

At the standard rate of 20%, a £40 dish includes £6.67 in VAT. That leaves £33.33 to begin paying for everything we have been discussing.

Many of our basic food ingredients are zero-rated. There is no VAT on those purchases to reclaim against the VAT charged on the finished meal. We can reclaim eligible VAT on other business expenses, but the fish, vegetables and much of what we turn into dinner provide no such offset.

To make our calculations work, we need to establish a price that properly covers the food, the work and the running of the business, then add VAT. In practice, we often work backwards from a total we feel comfortable putting on the menu. VAT takes its prescribed share; everything else must fit into what remains.

This makes it a formidable presence in our debates. We consider what people can afford, what feels reasonable and what we can manage. Our old friend VAT contributes no such uncertainty.

Perhaps, instead of redesigning the entire bill, we should simply add a message at the bottom:

“Your total includes VAT. Questions about that particular contribution may be addressed to our ever-present colleague at HMRC.”

I suspect HR would wish to review the wording.

Behind the joke is a serious point. I believe a 10% hospitality VAT rate would make a meaningful difference. With the same menu prices, more of each bill would remain in the business before costs, giving us room to support the work and plan ahead.

Small independent businesses employ people, buy from suppliers and keep buildings and local places in use. We are expected to provide a good deal of the country’s everyday economic backbone. It seems reasonable to want a tax system that leaves us enough strength to keep doing it.

We understand the need to contribute. We would also like the contribution of the small business itself to receive some consideration.

Meanwhile, our own negotiations continue.

Ben thinks about making good cooking accessible. I look at the setting, the building and everything I would like to improve before feeling comfortable charging more. I am responsible for drinks pricing and can negotiate with myself just as effectively there.

Of course, the improvements I would like to make need the income I hesitate to ask for. Between us, we can make a persuasive case against our own arithmetic. Accounts recommends one price; the kitchen worries about accessibility; the department responsible for appearances would like the place looking smarter first.

The motion to reconsider is carried by both people present.

I still have reservations about presenting an actual bill Ben’s way. By the time we had apportioned the fish stock that seems to be forever reducing on the stove, the window cleaning and a contribution towards a future repair, we might need a second page. VAT, naturally, would require its own line.

But I understand why Ben wanted to write it.

Cooking is something he loves and something he has spent decades learning to do well. That love supplies plenty of reasons to make the extra preparation, follow an idea and keep improving a dish. Giving those hours and that knowledge their proper place in the price has proved a more difficult skill to acquire.

I shall put it on the agenda for our next management meeting. Ideally, both of us will know we are having one.

The mayonnaise can manage without us for ten minutes. Once somebody has made it.

Kinga.