Greg Ward Managing Director at (Continental Catering Rangiora)
Born into catering and raised at events, Greg has a blue-blood hospitality pedigree. With a natural love of good food, working experience of all aspects of the business and true understanding of the markets’ requirements, Greg leads an enthusiastic team in a constant drive to redefine and improve the service and products we offer.
What can be achieved in this time ? What has been achieved in this time ?
Time and speed has always been an interest of mine. Both during and out of work. Although it would be fair to say that there is a certain level of irony in this. You see, amongst close friends and family the Wards have been notorious for being late ! Yet in work life we are constantly on the clock and have a real need to be on time. So whilst my brother might invite me half an hour before any other guests to a family celebration to ensure I would not be late (the cheek of it, as he can talk !) I have represented my country four times and twice won world titles in precision flying where I need to be at any given point within plus or minus two seconds or I am in trouble.
In work we often get into great detail re time and speed calculations. We have developed systems to assist us with service of meals for example. And we are comfortable standing by our systems to service a meal for example entrée or mains for example with choices in the likes of 20 minutes if need be – regardless of whether it is for 50 people or 6000 people.
It is a relatively simple formula for ensuring we have enough resources to deliver to often very strict and demanding schedules and programmes – no more demanding than when you are working with live TV for example.
We will take a simple calculation such as we say 600 guests to service in 20 minutes. If we used four serveries, each server needs to produce 150 meals in the 20 minutes. Then it is simple, each server needs to produce a meal every 8 seconds – this is how we plan to ensure success.
For the Golden Oldies Rugby we hosted in 1995 we will have served 900 of the 6000 guests in the 3 minutes of my talk.
Some interesting facts: The average person walks at 5.0km/h or 1.39 m/s or in the 3 minutes 250 metres.
If we compared this to: A car at the open road speed limit of 100km/h = 27.78m/s or 5km in 3 minutes – Rangiora to the Fernside Hall let’s say.
An airliner: Travels at Mach speeds which are percentage of the speed of sound. This varies at altitude/temp but let’s say .858 Mach or rounded to 800 km/h or 222.22m/s or in 3 minutes = 40km. That’s here to Tai Tapu.
Some other interesting achievements in 3 minutes:
The most sugared doughnuts eaten in 3 minutes without licking his lips is 6 and is held by Lup Fan Yau who equaled the record at the Sun Offices, London on 2 May 2007.
The world record for pull ups is 100 held by Ngo Xuan Chuyen (Vietnam) in 1988in the ‘strongest soldier in Vietnam ‘ contest. The world record for chin ups is held by Jason Petzold USA at 105.
Deepak Sharma Bajagain broke two Guinness World records for the most grapes eaten in 3 minutes with a small plastic spoon – a total of 180 grapes.
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