UFS chef Carlos ‘Pipo’ Aluning talks food safety, the food industry, and why it’s more exciting than ever for us

With the holidays winding down to a close and the weight of Christmas pounds settled nicely into our stomachs, it might not be so easy to sit back and reflect on the nature of everything food. After all, every meeting, gift-exchange and party leading up to noche buena and through to the New Year is an exercise laden with something to gorge on.  But for Chef Carlos Aluning of Unilever Food Solutions, it’s essential to think about the rapidly developing food industry here in the Philippines, not least because he has to work as early as now to prepare for next year.

“For all food industries, not just in the Philippines but all over the world, the holiday season is the peak season,” says Chef Pipo, as he is called.

All food industries begin preparing at least around September onwards, more commonly referred to as the ber months. Before things get too busy, they put in requests for the Chefmanship modules that will prepare them for the sheer volume of the holidays.

“The most requested and most critical is the food safety,” Chef Pipo adds. Restaurants, caterers, and hotels alike have responsibilities as food operators that the Chefmanship Academy seeks to help address, through modules that are tailor fit to the operators, accounts that range from top hotels through to home-grown eateries.

Chef Pipo himself has been in the hotel industry for about eight years, and he understands something about making his way through the ranks.

“I started as cook helper,” he says, later working for Sofitel. Before leaving the luxury hotel, he was part of a team for HACCP, which stands for the highest attainment of food safety in the industry (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points), and so is no stranger to the systems of food safety, nor to the idea of needing to refresh oneself.

Spelling out food safety

Now at UFS, Chef Pipo works with the 5S method, a model simpler than that of the HACCP that had been developed in Japan. The five S’s, Chef Pipo explains, stands for “Sort”, “Systematic”, “Shine”, “Standardized”, and “Self-Discipline”. He goes on to give a brief summation of each point. Some of it sounds overly simple, like the washing of hands.

“Every activity, every handling, lalo na yung mga ready-to-eat food like salad or sandwiches, after every activity you must wash your hands. Mga every 20 or 15 minutes. Actually in some hotels, may buzzer pa sila [to tell them it’s time to wash their hands],” he explains.

Started in 2009, the Chefmanship Academy reflects the values of an organized effort from chefs across Southeast Asia to produce a model of food standards. Though the concept of food safety has certainly been around, there is now a well-studied body of knowledge to draw from.

“What we do,” says Chef Pipo, “as one of the world’s top professional food companies is go there [to restaurants] and impart our knowledge to them.”

It isn’t enough, he adds, to simply sell them the right products and teach them a few skills. 

“Food safety is very broad,” he says.

At the moment, not everyone in the food industry comes from a background schooled in culinary.

“Siguro 50 percent pa lang,” Chef speculates. “Maybe five, ten years from now… but for now, they rose from the ranks, so from stewardship to dishwashing to chefmanship. So, most of these guys really need food safety.”

He adds that the boom in our culinary schools has only cropped up in the last five or six years. So a good half of those working in the industry are not culinary graduates, and many of those currently running restaurants are business rather than culinary people. Both are valuable, but only if made aware of both sides of the process. “That’s why we have these modules.”

Sometimes the challenge, he admits, is in changing people’s minds about kitchen practices. After all, running a restaurant is different from cooking at home. At times, the difficulty is in seeing the sheer number of places where the basics are not practiced. Essentials like the position of meat in the refrigerator can become a learning experience for some, who open restaurants based on the fact that they like to cook and little else. It is part of Chefmanship Academy’s goal to change the mentality, especially given the industry’s fast pace and tough character.

“One wrong move, one food-borne illness or one food poisoning, one mistake, tapos ka,” warns Chef Pipo. “Especially here in Manila.”

Chef Pipo believes in the core philosophy that produced the models in the first place.

“It’s better to prevent than to cure,” he says, explaining how he has to emphasise the Self-Discipline aspect. The first part is teaching the good habits, and the second part is making sure they stick.

“Safety begins with you. It’s in the employees themselves. Personal hygiene, cleanliness. Because if you have it set in mind, ayos na. Kasi kung malinis mo sa sarili mo, what more pa sa paligid mo.”

Enforcing the habits is crucial, he says. “If not, if there’s no check, people will just carry on, thinking oh, wala namang mangyayari. They’ll just do the same thing everyday, the same bad habits.:

Drive to stay fresh

The need to be updated is also compelled by advancing science, and the industry has to respond in kind.

“Every two to three years, you have to update yourself,” says Chef Pipo, giving an example. The temperature danger zone, the span where bacteria grows faster, “used to be five degrees Celsius up to sixty. Ngayon tapos bumaba. Meaning bacteria has adapted.” Parameters have to adjust to accommodate, which can’t happen unless operators are properly informed.

More than this, however, is the desire to see positive growth in all accounts. UFS teaches as holistically as possible, from kitchen standards to the right training and equipment to invest in, to costing analyses, with the goal of enhancing the business. Attending the sessions means access to key studies from other countries like Singapore, and a chance to learn from different styles.

“Pinapakita sa modules as a workshop mismo yung mga case study ng different chefs,” explains Chef Pipo. “When we do these modules, kailangan up-to-date.”

He explains further how the modules are refreshed every year to keep up with new key studies and trends. Trends are important to the dedication to growth, which in turn is important to the building up of a business.

“Otherwise, walang point,” he adds.

New dream, new hurdles

With the dining environment significantly changed in past years, it has become more important than ever for UFS to see through their accounts to lasting success. With so many restaurants out there, it is not always easy to imagine reaching expansion. Yet this is always the goal UFS helps its customers strive towards — however small the account.

In the Philippines, the chain tends to be the picture of success. Many visualize their futures based on how many branches their restaurant may have by a certain number of years. This new dream, born out of the new dynamic of restaurants in recent years, also comes with some new hurdles that UFS seeks to educate about.

A part of the modules that surprises people has to do with managing their presence online. Since the restaurant dynamic has become very sensitive to online word-of-mouth, it has become vital to have strategies in place for situations on the web, such as vitriolic comments.

“Defensive manoeuvres,” Chef Pipo calls it. Bizarrely, the modules have also had to teach defences against predatory restaurant-goers who take their statements online. There have been cases of serial complainers hoping to win a free meal or more, at the expense of a restaurant’s reputation. There can be harsh consequences for following up the reports of hobby complainers, if restaurants are not prepared, such as being suspended for three months.

Food safety modules have to include teaching good restaurants about how not to become a victim of this sort of thing. Complaints about food-borne illness, for example, can be properly disproven if samples of every dish are kept for the purpose of testing. It is also important t be able to present papers for all equipment — chillers, freezers and so on. Good record-keeping is part of the system that is also meant to be defensive, for both the restaurant and its customers.

Food safety, Chef Pipo adds, isn’t just about making sure people don’t die from eating your food. It’s about maintaining the integrity of the food.

The fruits of food safety

What’s great about Chef Pipo and the rest of the Chefmanship Academy is that they work to equip them with the right skills to achieve the dream. There are several chefs, one of whom is Chef Pipo, who handle the different categories, from chains to hotel-restaurant caterers and even modern trade (big groceries). Moreover, the people at UFS adhere to what they preach — at sales they are all trained in culinary and are evaluated every year, making a team of passionate individuals who do not simply sell product but actually sit down with their customers and show them practical application. In time, the hope is for all their accounts to be enabled a level of professionalism that they are capable of.

As observers of the industry Chef Pipo has seen the number of restaurants in the Philippines climbing higher and higher — 120,000 and counting. So it may seem impossible to be able to reach them all, especially when not all are necessarily registered.

But Chef Pipo and the rest of UFS do want to reach out.

“Our modules are customised to the needs,” he says. “Apart from the core modules, you can request what you need, like banqueting or service.”

And they are open to people availing of the wealth of information they have online, at their site, where as a group they are also available to answer queries.

Further, it’s inspiring, Chef Pipo says, to see the results of their work. There’s a sense of empowerment in what they do, teaching professional skills. It’s been inspiring enough so far, he reports, to make many of the staff feel like they want to open their own restaurants.

“Seeing them grow… masarap sa feeling,” he says, eyes alight. “I mean, for you to do this kind of job and for nothing to happen, what’s the point? But it’s there.”

The reward for UFS, he adds, is really in the growing of the accounts — being able to actually see the success stories happen, listening to operators talk about how far they’ve come.

“You teach them maybe the costing, the science and the math; then they really teach you something about determination and passion,” he says.

The one general piece of advice he brings up again is the need to keep updating.

“Always refresh every year. Always remind your staff,” he encourages.

The more people work, the more jobs available, the more people eat out of home… there are definitely wider consequences, positive ones. And not just in Manila. Even more places have been opening up in Boracay and Iloilo, tourist spots that have begun to reinvent themselves, and even more recently Palawan has become the one to watch out for.

Chef Pipo believes there’s really a place for foodservice here our country. It’s a good industry to be in.