Apprentice 5: Episode 11: Remember! You don’t need to know your Christopher’s from your Caracas: Just don’t mash - up the margin or you’ll end up fired.

In this penultimate episode the thinned out field had to start up a fast food operation and make it viable and edible. So, they set off in two teams 2 (Helen and Tom) against three (Jim, NIN, and Susan). The first team Helen’s capability was evident, although anyone who doesn’t know that Christopher Columbus isn’t British look’s silly, especially when they name a pie after him. Such ignorance among well “schooled” (not necessarily “educated”) people gives us all a cheap laugh but in a global economy its can be both career and country limiting. Spinning the word Caracas around without knowing it’s the capital of Venezuela is on a par with the cultural ignorance that was shown over the Kosher V halal issue in Marrakech a few episodes back.

It is important to know some of this stuff. Working for an oil company for example if you didn’t now Caracas form Maraca’s you might find yourself sent to Bandar Seri Begawan.  Ok, you don’t have to be Stephen Fry but you don’t have to sound like jade Goody either. Nor was the much boasted seldom seen quality of “creativity” or “innovation” much in evidence in Jim’s team.  “Creative” hospitality student NIN showed her inability to understand that lord Sugar takes blagging on the selection video seriously. She wasn’t interested in the catering bit just the creative bit. What she actually meant was she wanted to pitch ideas and do “strategy” and  “marketing”   so neither she nor Susan, nor Jim had any ideas.

They went for the lazy reflex of a Mexican complete with Sombreros, based upon Susan’s advice that “everyone eats Mexican.” Maybe the same market research that led her to ask if the “French loved their children”.   Jim the “Nacho Man” watched a proper cook slave away in the kitchen and he wrapped the ingredients. Lord Sugar thought the end product look like the time his son’s dog had been sick. Nice! The service and concept were a dog’s dinner as well with not even a back of the burrito paper, calculation made to ensure that they could serve customers and make money.   Jim’s maladroit math’s wasn’t helpful. Estimating that making £220 quid an hour when ingredients costs X and wages cost Y and overheads Z. Results in Y bother opening? NIN had her moment running the lads mag and making the dog food ad, maybe if she had employed the lad’s mag theme to a Mexican we could have had an "ironic" Mexican restaurant called “Wetbacks” with a porn theme. It could have been opened by the top gear presenters. Susan would probably have said  brilliant “We are going after the wetbacks market. It’s a big market and we know they need Sombreros!” honestly isn't too far off the horrible truth.

In the end both teams had a business but only one had a business plan. Helen and Tom worked very well, though Helen is turning out to be a bit of a control freak.  Aside from the naming of the restaurant as My Py (half of me though Tom would number the pies after iterations of pi (The 3.14 being the basic).  He generally spread that geeky gusto around though Helen was a bit too keen to take all the credit.  For sure he and Helen would have known what their margin was and what they had to sell their pies at. NIN’s inability to apply any of her hospitality degree to making the restaurant work incensed lord Sugar. Jim dodged another bullet and whatever happens someone who wishes to sell silica particles to the Saudi’s will be offering Jim a big bucks contract. Every sales conference will have Jim as a speaker. He is good value and despite Susan’s ability to survive and Sugars bias for bottom up entrepreneurs, business plans and egos will be tested to destruction by Claude and the gang on Sunday. Can’t wait. My money is on Tom though despite Jim’s perpetual patter and turbocharged selling, Helen’s cool capability and Susan’s… well dull determination. Why?  Because Sugar knows like Britain we need to make things again, not just sell make-up and make things up. That’s why I think he’ll go for Tom, the new Dyson, or i will wash my hands of him.

Loved
My Py great concept and a real reversion to the British love of stodge. The possibilities of misnaming after great British explorers “Vasco da Gammon”, “Marco Porko”, “Magellan Mince”.

Loathed
Susan utilising her “hard won” degree in economics and Philosophy to know nothing, and NIN doing a disservice to her hospitality degree.

Enough already
NIN perhaps she can become  a guest speaker on how to do “strategy” and “drive creative.” But Nuts magazine would benefit from her irony free drivel.