MCTC of Cyprus reports that it is now providing catering management services to approximately 600 vessels, including Hafnia Tankers, BW and Columbia Shipmanagement, twice as many vessels at it served 3 years ago.
In February 2020, the company announced a new contract to provide catering and training programmes with the Döhle Group, operating over 100 vessels.
MCTC has a unique business model, combining being a supplier of food to ships, training shipboard cooks, and providing consultancy on how companies should put their menus together.
Having a bigger scale makes it easier for the company to source food, getting better quality and prices and deliveries to more ports around the world.
Where some shipping companies might leave it to the procurement department and shipboard cooks to make decisions about what to buy and how to go about it, MCTC makes a comprehensive program.
Consider it similar to how many restaurant chains have a schedule for the food they order, the menus and recipes, and the processes for how food is prepared.
In the Covid-19 period, MCTC was advising companies to increase stock levels, so cooks can make nutritious meals in the event vessels are at sea longer than expected. Vessels were typically stocked up for 4-5 months to ensure they have enough food if there any delays with the next delivery.
Training
MCTC provides training to its customers, as part of the catering management service, not charged additionally.
The company reports “hundreds of crew” signing up to its webinars on COVID-19 and food safety management onboard.
It saw an increase in galley crew signing up to its 10 week distance coaching program “Safe Food Handling and Nutrition” – covering food safety management and hazard management.
Crew can take the courses from onboard the vessel. It has a distance learning course certified by the Cyprus Department of Merchant Shipping.
With physical training centres closed or inaccessible due to Covid-19, the online training is becoming more popular.
The company’s consultants also visit vessels and review practices in defrosting food, storing leftovers, preparing meals and basic hygiene, and give advice to cooks about their choices and health approaches.
Good food onboard
Ship crew can choose from 100 weekly menus, or 2000 individual recipes, all of which can be cooked from food they have onboard. They can plan a new weekly menu for each week. They can order the food to be delivered from MCTC’s website.
This includes menus catering to European, Indian, Philippine and many more national tastes and cultures.
A core rationale is that good food does not need to be expensive.
For example, cakes can be made onboard with better quality ingredients than you might find in pre-made cakes. The same for soups. And buying ingredients can be less expensive than buying packaged food.
Conversely, spending a lot of money on food does not mean that crew have a good eating experience.
“Expensive items can be treated very badly onboard,” says Christian Ioannou, managing director. “It is important to handle food properly.”
The quality of shipboard cooking can come down to how motivated shipboard cooks are – but also how well supported they are to do a good job – just as with any restaurant cooks.
It is useful for cooks to get feedback from the captain and a ‘steering committee’ onboard – including so they can get praise for particularly good efforts.
To improve motivation, every year, MCTC runs a cooking competition for shipboard cooks, with a winner chosen from each company fleet. The food is judged based on photographs of it, a consideration of the innovation which went into it, and evaluations from the captain and crew.
Mr Ioannou believes that younger generation crew often rate healthy food more highly than older crew. Also 40 per cent of young people are either reducing meat intake or have gone vegetarian, he says. So they seek out employers able to provide proper wholesome vegetarian meals.
Customer testimonials
An Janssens, crew training co-ordinator with Exmar Ship Management, said “MCTC helps us to further develop our cooks’ catering competencies, both via supported e-learning onboard and through the Maritime Catering Development Programme ashore. We are happy with their smooth organisation and communication.”
Dennis Svane Hansen, VP and head of global manning with BW Fleet Management, said, “the positive feedback and appreciation that we commonly receive from our Shipboard Management Teams following a visit onboard by MCTC is proof of the professional and high quality service that they deliver. MCTC consultants has a very practical approach and a genuine interest in further developing competencies and practises onboard.”
Captain Faouzi Fradi, crew training manager with Columbia Shipmanagement, said “I needed to find a competent catering training provider to help us improve our standards in selecting and fine tuning the competencies for various positions onboard our managed cruise ships. I am happy to have come across MCTC and started working together since Jan 2016. Their hard work professionalism, patience to meet all our high requirements and general approach to this project was admired by all involved.”
Björn Borbe, senior manager crewing with John T Essberger, said “the training concept of MTCT with its sustainable, practical and personal approaches has been proven to be a convincing method to improve the competence and skills of our catering personnel onboard our fleet. What makes the concept of MTCT unique is not only the different types of training, such as e-learning, onboard visits and tailor made courses, but also the personal dedication of the MCTCT team which served to develop personal relationships with our crew.”
Uta Steffen of JPC Shipmanagement (Cyprus) said “JPC started the MCTC Safe Food Handling and Nutrition Course on a few vessels mid 2016 and extended the program to the whole fleet 6 months later. Their unique consultancy service with clearly defined targets of each training module is very hands on and does not only contain practical theoretical modules, but also onboard visits which we find very useful.”