| Management |
Corporate Cooking A Day in the Life of a B&I Chef // By Amelia Levin
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e caught up with ACF Chef Doug Patten Sr., CEC, CCA, AAC, a senior corporate executive chef for FLIK Hospitality (part of Compass Group) who has been with the company for the past three decades. Chef Patten oversees more than 100 accounts in the Northeast region, and he also travels around the country to oversee and train during new business openings. “A lot of my work is ensuring our accounts are following the FLIK standards and offering support in any way, whether it’s helping with sanitation logs, providing recipes and training videos,” says Chef Patten, who notes he’s worked with just about every Fortune 500 company during his tenure at FLIK, where he serves in the B&I division, though the company maintains accounts in other segments such as sports and entertainment. Chef Patten has worked with businesses of all types, including law firms, investment firms, pharmaceutical companies and others. Lately, with the advent of remote work, Chef Patten has noticed that the busier days tend to be Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so chefs need to “check the badge counts from the previous day and weeks to get a rough estimate of how many people they’re prepping for and adjust accordingly,” he says. On the menu development front, Chef Patten says FLIK maintains a strong marketing and R&D team that continually tracks industry trends and develops and tests recipes for the company’s proprietary recipe and nutrition database that he can access while helping onsite chefs plan their menus. “Our chefs have a lot of leeway to create their menus and if they need help, there are plenty of recipes in our database with all the nutritional info as well as cooking demo videos.” Lately, Chef Patten has been noticing that most of the FLIK customers are looking for classic, signature dishes and recipes without a ton of fuss, from pasta stations with plenty of ingredient add-ins
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NCR | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024
