Eagle Boys has employed a new product development manager and executive chef with experience cooking for royalty, in the army and with high profile chef Neil Perry, to develop the pizza franchise’s “menu innovation”.
Stuart Gray will be responsible for improving and developing Eagle Boys’ menu, with a focus on “real taste, real size and real value,” the franchise has announced.
Eagle Boys CEO Todd Clayton said “Stuart will be in the kitchen developing new products, toppings and experimenting with daring ingredient combinations to provide the innovative, quality products Eagle Boys customers have come to expect.
“We’re delighted to have someone of Stuart’s energy and calibre on board the Eagle Boys product development team. As Eagle Boys continues to grow, we’re keen to retain and attract the right people, and Stuart will prove pivotal in continuing to satisfy our consumers’ varying tastes and preferences.”
Gray joined the army at age 16 as an apprentice chef and travelled to places like Germany, Bosnia, Kosovo and Cyprus. He’s also cooked for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles and in 2008 he moved to Australia and became the development chef for Qantas in Brisbane, where he worked with acclaimed celebrity chef Neil Perry’s team to transform restaurant recipes into meals that could be flown on board the Australian airline carrier.
Gray also has a certificate in Human Nutrition, which he says will help the franchise to introduce the new kilojoule menu display requirements that the NSW state government will impose as of February 2012.
While Gray might not be a high profile or ‘celebrity’ chef, Eagle Boys isn’t the first food-related business to employ a respected industry figure to develop and promote its brand.
Earlier in the year, chef Darren Simpson from La Scala suffered extensive criticism after developing and promoting a new range of free range chicken burgers for fast food chicken franchise, KFC.
Chefs and members of the public were angered by KFC’s latest marketing move, claiming high profile chefs shouldn’t use their notoriety to promote unhealthy food.
But Simpson released a statement saying he was simply trying to improve the quality of fast food offerings.
“I’m not sure how many of these critics have actually tried my burgers, but I think they should do that before passing judgment,” the statement read.
“People are quick to label fast food as junk so it’s a bit odd that there is now criticism of a real effort to improve the quality of it.”
Other companies who have recently employed respected chefs or industry figures to promote their brand are Woolworths (chefs Guy Grossi, Tobie Puttock and Margaret Fulton), Coles (Curtis Stone), Norsca deoderant (Pete Evans), Viva Handee Ultra paper towels (Matt Preston) and MasterFoods (Gary Mehigan).
Gray doesn’t believe that he’s another addition to this list however, saying the franchise simply wanted someone with extensive experience who can help to maintain its reputation and continue to develop and improve its menu.
“I’m far from a celebrity so people wouldn’t know who I was. I think they [Eagle Boys] just want to keep the tradition that they have a chef who’s also a development manager. That they do have someone with good catering skills, a good background of food and good knowledge of food who’s obviously going to be able to produce good quality products,” he told Franchising.