Minute on the clock: John Bacon, ESS, on feeding the police during the Coronation

The business director of government services for ESS tells Alice Peacock about feeding the police force over King Charles III’s Coronation weekend

Tell us a little about your job and what your day-to-day entails.

It’s very wide and varied. We provide services to a number of different government bodies, police forces and secure locations, as well as to national infrastructure projects, and all of those clients have distinct needs.

I have a lot of client meetings and I like to get out and get involved in the business as much as I possibly can, because I think that’s where you get a feel for what’s really going on.

What do you enjoy about the job?

I’m part of a very talented team. We’ve got some great chefs who develop our food and operations teams that facilitate the delivery. Above all, what I really love about it is that we are playing the role of feeding the people who keep the country going each day. Operation Golden Orb – or the Coronation – is a great example of that. We’re contributing to the smooth running of the country.

Your background is as a chef in the hotel industry – have you found that experience beneficial to you in your role today?

I think what transcends everything is that the enjoyment of food needs to be there. Whether it’s a construction worker, a policeman or someone who’s away for the weekend with their family in a four- or five-star hotel, they all want to enjoy their food.

In previous events we’ve done with the police, you can see that when people arrive in the very early morning, after having travelled to an event and there’s a cooked breakfast waiting for them, it really makes a difference. There’s also the organisational side of it as well, so I have an understanding of what it takes to make a kitchen work.

What are the challenges that come with feeding 30,000 officers during an event like King Charles III’s Coronation?

In a nutshell the challenges are around logistics, supply chain and resourcing. The Coronation is on the Saturday, however there’s an awful lot of work both from the client side and from our own side that facilitates being ready for that influx. The numbers are moving all the time. Security runs through absolutely everything that we do and that can be challenging when it comes to resourcing, because we need to ensure we have the right level of security clearance in place.

What sort of meals will police officers be fed over the course of the event?

The overriding priority is that the food and drinks meet the nutrition and hydration requirements of officers undertaking roles for long periods. There are many different activities: some of the officers will be standing for a very long period of time, which takes its toll, some will be sitting and some will be walking around, so we have tried very hard to tailor packed lunches – with items like honey and mustard chicken salad pots and coronation chicken sub rolls – to ensure officers can take food and hydration over long periods of time.

We’ve developed some slow-release energy products with a London supplier that can fit into a pocket, such as flapjacks, so that people can snack while out and about. We’re also providing welfare centres in key locations that are offering drinks and snacks around the clock as well.

Several officers policing the Queen’s funeral last year fainted. How do you tailor the food chosen for an event like this to keep the working officers going?

It was very much in the news that those events happened, and I think that has informed conversations around what goes into those packed lunches. We have introduced things like isotonic gels that can be put into a pocket – not instead of drinks and food, but in addition. You continue to learn when you do these things. A great way to do that is to be on the ground getting feedback from officers.

How will you be spending the Coronation weekend yourself?

I will be out and about on the ground with an Oyster card and a mobile phone, ready to go at a moment’s notice. I think that’s important both from the perspective of the morale of the team and supporting the team – no doubt there’ll be a surprise somewhere. If there’s one thing I got a lot of satisfaction from about Operation London Bridge [Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral], it was talking to the people about the food they’d eaten, where we could improve it and what they had enjoyed. You saw the appreciation of it as well, which was lovely.