There was a fascinating programme on TV last night about the roadside restaurant chain Little Chef calling in Heston Blumenthal to help it revamp its menu.

Heston is best known for running the world’s best restaurant, The Fat Duck in Bray, and for being particularly inventive with food.

On last night’s programme he failed to introduce a good enough new menu. In the words of one customer, it was “too poncy”. I’m looking forward to see how he changes it in tonight’s programme (and can’t help but think that Gordon Ramsey could have done a better job, with the common touch he displays in his programme Restaurant Nightmares).

From a PR point of view however, Heston won last night. The Little Chef chief exec came across as closed, unsupportive, and unwilling to compromise. At one point he put the phone down on Heston mid-call, because he refused to give him gross profit figures for their food. Was he really interested in Heston’s help, or did he just want the publicity?

Good PR must have a grounding in being real. It would have been a PR coup for Little Chef had they genuinely wanted help from a top chef updating their menu, with the resultant attention helping to drive a new era of growth. If they only got Heston in as a stunt, this was never going to work.

Will Little Chef realise this in time? Apparently the food trial is still continuing right now at a branch in Hampshire. Can’t wait to watch tonight’s episode and see how it turns out.

Tags: Heston Blumenthal, Little Chef

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 8:21 am and is filed under Bad PR, In the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.