In The Apprentice UK Series 4 Episode 2, Jenny was obnoxious. Then she was obnoxious some more. Then she added a side of obnoxiousness to this. Despite her miserable leadership skills, though, she survived the boardroom, and Shazia was fired for her mistake on the task.
The task is to boost pub business by putting on a food service. Unlike Donald Trump, who makes a “suggestion” in cases like this, Sir Alan comes right out and tells teams he’s picking the team leaders. Ian and Sara are the project managers.
Sara says she’ll be a strong leader but is worried that she may be too strong, so she tells her team to tell her if they’re having problems. The first thing she needs to do is switch to decaf and slow down a bit.
Now that they’ve won, the boys seem to be united as a group. Ian refuses to say the word that’s opposite of winners that begins with l. They agree on an Italian theme.
Sara decides to do a Bollywood night because “everyone loves a good curry.” I’m gonna have to take her word for that. They take a vote, and the traditional English food idea gets shot down. Claire, who came up with the English theme, is most vocal against the Bollywood theme because of the cost involved and the lack of a wide appeal. They head to an Indian restaurant to get an idea of how to set everything up.
Both teams get a kitchen advisor who won’t cook but is there “so they don’t poison anyone.”
Kevin’s the head chef for the boys but doesn’t really know what makes for an Italian menu. Once they figure it out, half the team heads to buy supplies. Lee expresses a concern about the pricing, but he can’t have an answer right now because they don’t really know.
The boys go for expensive printed menus; the girls make a deal and get them for free in exchange for advertising. Alex does manage to cut the price in half to £1 per menu, though.
Sara believes that Claire is creating drama because they ignored her English food idea.
Sir Alan’s given the teams a list of cut price wholesale dealers, but the guys opt instead to just buy vegetables locally. While they’re shopping, Michael calls to complain about the soup pricing, which they agree to lower to £2.95. Kevin says the £4.25 is what he would pay, and Lee doesn’t understand the reasoning behind the call.
The guys are giving away their pamphlets, but the girls have come up with the idea to sell theirs for £5, which will be given as a discount on the meal, a concept that will ensure that the people that are getting these are actually interested.
More bad news for the boys. They’ll have to pay supermarket prices since they were unable to get to the wholesalers. Despite the massive expenses, though, they forgot something and must stop food prep until they’re able to go shopping again. Kevin wants Ian to know that if they don’t have the food ready, it’s his fault for not insisting that the other group go and get what they need.
The girls have bought meat locally for less than 1/4th what the guys spent, but Sara bought the wrong spices and not enough to begin with. She’s unconcerned when the advisor tells her this.
Bollywood’s going about as well as could have been expected. Nobody knows how to cook Indian food, and they don’t have the right ingredients even if they did.
An hour into lunch, the boys are starting to run out of key ingredients, meaning another trip to the supermarket. Those who are eating already are unimpressed. Lee brings this information back to Kevin, who’s not happy with the feedback.
5 hours late, the girls finally have their food ready to go. Claire was concerned that lunch customers wouldn’t be interested in curry. The good news in that regard is that they were unable to get the lunch crowd anyway.
By this time, the boys have their act together better. Kevin wants to take the time for a pep talk. The others aren’t thrilled with this. Just get on with it already. They run low on supplies again, but Ian’s got the solution for this: cut the pizzas in half. That doesn’t go over well for one of the customers, who expects to receive a whole pizza.
This is an interesting one. The boys had trouble controlling their costs. The girls had trouble controlling… everything else. A win will come in spite of their performance, rather than because of it.
Nobody answers when asked how Ian was as a team leader. Sara gets more support from her team than he does.
Renaissance took £844.97 but spent £543, for a profit of £301.97. Alpha took £795 and spent only £170.93, for a profit of £624.07. They realize that they would have lost if the boys were better at controlling costs.
Sir Alan wants to know who was in charge of pricing. Ian points the finger at Kevin. His response is he never wanted the responsibility of being head chef. Margaret questions why they set the prices before they even knew what it was even going to cost. Ian also blames Simon’s difficult communication style, who says he didn’t stay positive because he had nothing to stay positive about.
In addition to buying too much food, they spent £272 on marketing, for margins that weren’t good enough to begin with. Michael steps in and says he made decisions on pricing because they had to get the menus done.
Ian brings back Kevin and Simon. Not sure why he wouldn’t bring back Michael, who’s a much better target than Simon. He explains that Simon’s too much about problems and not enough about solutions. Simon makes a point that the two people who are brought back are the two people under his direct control. Kevin blames the others who aren’t in the boardroom for railroading Ian into changing the pricing.
Ian is fired for losing control of the task. Kevin talks a good game but needs to do something more to survive. Sir Alan is disappointed that Simon seems to be nothing more than a physical worker.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of The Apprentice UK Series 4 episode 4.
