The theme for this year's Country Range Group Conference was "realising our potential" and several of the speakers offered their thoughts on the year.

As we write, newspapers and magazines are devoting column inches to Marcus Wareing and some of his opinions regarding his former boss and mentor Gordon Ramsey. We were brought to thinking just what do we want from our celebrity chefs in the pursuit of what is great and good in the foodservice market?

Any point of customer contact has the potential to be business critical, and at a time when business is tough to predict and hold on to, every point of contact is worthy of review.

Christmas comes early in foodservice. For suppliers to the catering industry, like Brakes, it comes even earlier.