Caterers win top award

Glyn Warren, of Langford and Jeremy Dover, who lives in Biggleswade work for Elior, which was awarded the ‘Best Unusual Venue’ accolade at the UK Event Awards 2011.

Elior takes care of catering at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, running two restaurants and also putting on meals and drinks for corporate events.

Head chef Glyn, 50, of The Leys, and general manager Jeremy, 38 of Bittern Drive attended a prestigious awards ceremony at Wembley Stadium last month.

Glyn, who has worked at the Cambridgeshire museum since Elior was awarded the contract 13 years ago is very pleased about the award, which he was not expecting.

He said: “We look after corporate hospitality at the museum and we will often be catering for hundreds or even thousands of people at a time.

“The museum is located in the grounds of the former First and Second World War airfield and we have some quite unusual interiors.

“Guests here will sometimes be eating on tables set up under a real-life Concorde, for example, and I think that side of things helped us to win the award.”

Elior was put forward after an awards representative visited the museum and was impressed by the standards of service and the look and feel of the restaurants and catering facilities.

Glyn, who has lived in Chronicle Country all his life added: “They send people out to look at the various venues and they will then put forward the ones they think are outstanding in any given category.

“It’s done on a mystery customer basis so we weren’t aware that anyone had been here to check everything out.”

Jeremy, Glyn and other staff from Elior were also privileged to join more than 300 professionals from across the UK at the awards evening.

Glyn said: “It was quite lavish. There was music and entertainment and at the start of the evening we took part in a Guinness World Record attempt which we achieved!

“We were all given a glass of champagne, linked arms with the people sitting next to us and performed the world’s largest ‘saying cheers’ toast!”

IWM Duxford is home to a collection of more than 200 aircraft as well as tanks, military vehicles and boats.

The museum hosts regular air shows and is regarded as being one of the European centres of aviation history.