What’s Cooking is an update on all things related to CHEFS: the Culture, Health, Environment, Food and Society research cluster at Sheffield Hallam University. What’s been cooking since our last edition?
In this June 2020 edition, we have updates on recent CHEFS activities, including:
- research on nutrition in care homes (Lucie Nield), family business dynamics in the catering sector (Rich Telling and Philip Goulding), and agricultural shows as a value creation platform (Caroline Westwood and Phil Crowther);
- a summary of BMRC colleagues’ work with regional brewers, from Jillian Newton;
- a call for expressions of interest to get involved with ShefFood, from James Ellerby;
- a series of webinars aimed at helping the region’s hospitality industry in the context of CV19, organised by James Ellerby and Hospitality colleagues;
- a call for expressions of interest to explore future collaborative links with La Trobe University for research on socio-cultural dimensions of food and drink, from Jennifer Smith Maguire.
Plus, the usual call for content for the September 2020 edition of What’s Cooking.
Cheers, Jen
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Recent CHEFS Activities
Lucie Nield is part of a group of colleagues from SHU, UoS & NHS and Social Care partners who have successfully progressed to a Round 2 submission for an NIHR Research for Social Care bid looking at the effect of good nutrition in residential care homes. The bid is a joint venture using qualitative and quantitative methodologies and process evaluation with the aim of co-designing an intervention. If successful in the next round, work will commence in January 2021 where we will be working closely with our health and social care colleagues.
Richard Telling and Philip Goulding’s article ‘Retaining the adolescent workforce in family businesses’ has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Family Business Management. The article explored the linkage between adolescent work, parent-child relationships and offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. Findings were derived from 15 semi-structured interviews with members of five Italian families operating catering businesses in Yorkshire (UK). The findings were two-fold: first, that the ‘familiarity’ of the family business impacts on offspring decision making, on one hand providing a safety net and base from which the next generation can explore their career options, and a trapping device which can impede their exit on the other; and second, that negative experiences of adolescent work often have a detrimental impact on parent-child relationships and when this happens ‘escaping’ the family business assumes priority for offspring. The paper contributes to our understanding of the stay/go decision faced by next generation family members and suggests that parent-child relationships are instrumental in understanding this and previous stages of the socialisation process of embedding in the family business.
Phil Crowther and Caroline Westwood (along with Greg Langridge-Thomas from Powys Council) had their article ‘The Royal Welsh Show – the nations true cauldron’ accepted for publication in the Event Management journal. Using the show as a single case study to really examine the catalytic role events have in the context of networks and knowledge economy and in this case, the impact the show has throughout Wales and beyond. The show (as many UK agricultural shows), dates back to the early 1900’s, recognised as hugely influential on the development of rural areas, their role is high worth, contributing to significantly improving, husbandry techniques, stock quality and enabling the country to meet the needs for increased food production. This extensive case study included 43 interviews and 1322 questions in addition to archival research. Through this research a framework was derived entitled ‘Taxonomy of Platforms’ which demonstrates events such as the Royal Welsh Show are value creation platforms, offering a significant role in cultivating networks, across key industries (food, farming, agricultural innovations) both stakeholder and attendee focused. Future research which Caroline is undertaking focuses on how these shows are also a stage for ‘families of choice’ to convene, share best practices, educate themselves and socialise. This next stage of the research will consider partly the value of agricultural shows but also how individuals perceive the events in terms of space and place and the connection they have with certain events within the agricultural events calendar.
From Jillian Newton: Hello to all you fellow CHEFS from the Biomolecular Sciences Research arm, just to let you know what we’ve been up to during lockdown and the sheer madness of remote working. As many of you will know we have over the past 6 years been developing links with local microbrewers, running workshops and meetings helping to understand and develop this research area within the BMRC. Early on in 2020 in the heady days of pre-lockdown myself, (Dr Jillian Newton), Dr Susan Campbell, Dr Daniel Allwood and Dr Tim Nichol set up a brewing research group, which included Tim’s master student and my a final year project student. These two students have been working within the BMRC and the NCEFE looking at the beer brewing process and its effect on yeast. Since lockdown, however, we have kept ourselves productive in a written capacity. In the joyous haze of lockdown we have somehow put together:
- A capital equipment grant for kit to complement our established pilot microbrewery plant at NCEFE, to allow SHU researchers and local brewers access to scientific data about brewing processes and the beers they produce. This would contribute extensively to our engagement with local brewers.
- An application to the Brewers Research and Education Fund which is funded by the very aptly named ‘Worshipful Company of Brewers’ to help create a central hub for the communication of knowledge transfer, bespoke research, teaching and good practice between the craft ale community and researchers.
- And finally, we have also applied for a GTA PhD studentship, working with Triple Point brewery, looking at one of the ‘Holy Grails’ of brewing: the scientific basis behind yeast flocculation.
All told a very productive brewing related few weeks.
James Ellerby sits on the steering group of ShefFood, a local cross-sector food partnership. James would like to hear from anyone in CHEFS who would be interested in getting involved with the partnership. A few recent ShefFood updates on the local food system include:
- Food Works has moved their focus to meal deliveries, serving about 3500 meals to date.
- Food Banks: the need for food has increased 20%. The increase in food prices is having a big impact (e.g. S2 Food Bank currently spends £2000/week to supplement donations).
- City Farm Federation/Heeley City Farm: the main focus for local growers has been maximising food production, supporting the increased demand for food cooperatives such as Regather. With the loss of farm visits, school tours etc., city farms are needing to consider longer term solutions. There appears to be a need for improved digital infrastructure, e.g. online resources for virtual tours etc.
- Regather food cooperative: a current success story in this crisis. Household subscriptions for their veg box scheme went from 320 to 650/week in just five days. They have accelerated their own farm development to supplement this and the loss of their events business.
- Moor Market fruit and veg traders have had some great examples of pivoting businesses and moving to home delivery.
- Sustainable Food Cities have rebranded as Sustainable Food Places. Some great case studies of other food partnerships/cities and their reaction to the crisis. See: https://www.sustainablefoodplaces.org/coronavirus/
Please let James know (j.ellerby@shu.ac.uk) if anyone is interested in getting involved in/supporting any of the above issues. If anyone is currently working on anything that may be of use to the partnership/local food businesses please do let him know.
James Ellerby and colleagues from the Hospitality Business Management group in Sheffield Business School have organised a webinar series, ‘Covid-19 Support Resources for Hospitality,’ delivered through the ScaleUp 360 programme. The team have developed a series of completely free online resources, available to businesses within the Sheffield City Region. The resources will be delivered as a series of online webinars and will included a blend of taught content, panel discussions and live Q&As. The initial list of topics currently includes:
- 04/06 – Lessons from the past: restaurant recovery in a global recession
- 11/06 – The future of service in hospitality
- 17/06 – Hospitality revenue management for the Covid-19 recovery
- 25/06 – Innovation: re-think, re-visit, reinvent – Developing resilient hospitality business models 02/07 – Food supply chain challenges and solutions
- 09/07 – Food and business ethics: making the ‘right’ decisions for the future
Details of each event will be available here. For any further information about the hospitality webinars please contact James Ellerby (j.ellerby@shu.ac.uk).
Please note: in order to participate, businesses must register (free) with the ScaleUp 360 programme via an expression of interest form, and a short registration meeting via a phone call with a business growth coach at ScaleUp 360. Registered businesses are then eligible to an additional range of fully funded enterprise and entrepreneurial skills development opportunities, including Business Workshops; Mentoring; Incubation Support and Networking; Design and Prototyping; 1:1 Business Advice. ScaleUp 360 is part-financed by the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020, and is run in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University, Barnsley Business and Innovation Centre, Doncaster Chamber of Commerce, and East Midlands Chamber of Commerce.
Jennifer Smith Maguire, in collaboration with Jennifer Frost and Warwick Frost of La Trobe University (LTU), was awarded a 2020 SHU-LTU Collaborative Research Seed Grant. The bid had three objectives: (1) to progress our collaborative research on cultural institutions and wellbeing (initiated through a 2019 LTU-SHU Collaborative Research Seed Grant); (2) to scope a cross-cultural comparative project on wine tourism and the social marketing of terroir; and (3) to develop a cross-university food/drink/culture research network, by promoting CHEFS and SBS expertise to LTU colleagues, and identifying potential areas for collaborative research. The funding was to allow Jen to travel to La Trobe for an intense week of writing, research scoping and networking in June 2020. The global pandemic has put the trip temporarily on hold, but objective 3 is nevertheless underway! To that end: this is a call for expressions of interest from SHU-based CHEFS colleagues who want to develop links with LTU colleagues, with a focus on future collaborative research on the socio-cultural dimensions of food and drink. Please submit your information through this google form. As part of the SHU-LTU global partnership, there have already been two rounds (2019, 2020) of collaborative research seed grants, and there is currently a call for joint PhD proposals. The google form is intended to help with proactively building a CHEFS/SHU-LTU research network, to enhance the likelihood of success in bidding for these (and other, external) funds, and developing productive, collegial partnerships. Please get in touch with Jen if you have any questions (j.smith1@shu.ac.uk).
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Call for content for the next edition of What’s Cooking
The next edition of What’s Cooking will be September 2020. Please send content (research updates, calls for expression of interest, relevant calls for papers/conference/event announcements) to j.smith1@shu.ac.uk by Thursday 27 August.
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