to describe their food. He expressed concern at the effect that these restaurants have on smaller, independent restaurants, and how he hopes to "win the market back for independents" by investing in the city.
He said: "It's made it very difficult for independent restaurants to do anything whereas I'm in a very lucky position where I can invest in the city and my goal now for the next few years is to show people that your money spent at independents is always pound-for-pound better because independent restaurants do actually invariably care about their diner. They're more passionate about what they deliver, whereas these multi-national chains, they don't really give a shit about their diner. It's all about extracting as much profit from each cover."
Aktar also highlighted that typically, the skills required to work in the kitchen of a chain restaurant are less than those required to work in an independent restaurant. He explained that by 'standardising' the kitchens, the labour force would be deskilled.
He said: " We have a great catering college - University College Birmingham - turning out incredible young talent here. Passionate kids, who want to make their way in the hospitality industry but if they leave college and their only option is to work at a chain restaurant, all the skills that they've learnt over the past three years will pretty much have to be thrown away. All they'll have to do is mark off boxes that have been delivered, store them in the fridge and when the order comes through, rip the seal off, put it on a plate and put it through a microwave. That's really going to have terrible implications."
Aktar added that he would like this to be part of a wider campaign, including local restaurants, chefs and consumers too. He explained that food culture is an identity and one that the city of Birmingham must preserve.
He said: "It's part of a big thing, a wider campaign that I really want to start nurturing and get some traction behind. Because my real worry is that as a city, we're going to lose it. All the work that we've put in over these years, myself, Luke (Tipping), Glynn (Purnell) and the other chefs, that's going to go by the wayside because of the amount of chains that are coming into the city."
