LATEST JOBS Executive, Industry Liaison
19 December 2024 3:04 GMT By Julian Bray in London
There is more to Idan Ofer than just money and ships.
As is often the case with brothers and sisters, while the first-born child has the heavy burden of responsibility thrust upon them, the second child can indulge in creativity.
After Sammy Ofer’s death in 2011, elder son Eyal stepped up to become the family patriarch, while his younger brother, Idan, as able to nourish his interestin the original and new.
Alongside wife Batia, they are noted collectors of contemporary art. As a prominent philanthropist, she was appointed chair of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2023.
In business, Idan has invested with impact in the mainstream — energy, shipping and even football —although sometimes with less success in the innovative — electric cars and harging, both of which were arguably ahead of their time.
But his personal encouragement of a trusted staffer has spawned a start-up venture that appears to be winning support to have the power to change lives at sea.
Not through money, nor cutting-edge technology, but through food; improving the meals, nutrition and well-being of seafarers.
A little over three years ago, Ofer was encouraging his private chef, Patrick Alban, to look for new opportunities. Patrick had been working for Ofer, including on board his yacht, for around half his 30- year career as a chef.
It was cooking afloat that sparked an idea to help chief cooks and galley teams on commercial ships prepare more sophisticated and appetising food not only to offer seafarers better nutrition — often one of their few comforts — but also to lift spirits by making the galley a social hub.
The idea came after Ofer visited a ship where despite the cook’s best effort to please the boss the meal was inedible. It was a defining moment for him. So he asked his chef to devise a plan that would make an impactful change for Eastern Pacific Shipping crews, taking into consideration the diverse nationalities and palates. It was a big challenge Patrick was ready for.
Ofer saw in Patrick a person with both human skill and culinary passion. As Patrick says today: “I can honestly say, revolutionizing the way food is prepared and served on board has become my life’s mission.”
Chef Patrick’s approach focuses on introducing a culture of excellence and passion for good food, by consistently engaging galley teams to push the envelope with creativity and care. This happens by creating online professional communities for galley teams, in which they can support and inspire each other, assisted by Chef Patrick’s dedicated chefs and community managers.
His core competency as a chef is “to bring people together around great food”, he said. “That’s easy to do when you cook from your heart and bring your passion.”
Studying ways to help chief cooks he soon learned they were not only under the pressure of a heavy workload but also had little training, no ongoing professional support and often attracted social pressure from the rest of crew. Further, they were often working with limited ingredients and primitive equipment.
Of course, one solution would be to throw money at the problem. But that could never be a commercially viable option.
The company he founded, “Chef Patrick” has grown dramatically, embraced by many other shipowners and ship managers. Owner costs are minimal — just cents per head — but the impact on the onboard dining experience is ransformative.
Key clients are companies in the Ofer orbit, Eastern Pacific Shipping, ASM, XT Group, Zim and Cool Company. Other subscribers include Capital Ship Management, Seaspan, GoldenPort, Oceangold, TMS, Eastaway, Anglo Eastern and MTM, among others. He is also collaborating with catering companies such as Oceanic Services and BSM Catering, covering in total around 600 ships.
Chef Patrick started by emailing recipes to the ship’s master to share with the chief cooks. “But I realised that something was not working because I needed a connection between me and the galley teams.”
They decided to change tack and create an online community for the cooks and crews. The engagement of the crew commenting on their cook’s efforts was transformative, creating a dynamic relationship never experienced before on the company’s ships. Crews would share ideas, post pictures and offer constructive feedback.
Ofer’s Eastern Pacific Shipping has its own social media streams, where the galley stream is by far the most popular. “It consistently creates excitement and engagement. Chief cooks become like the stars, they can show off their skills, their creativity, and the effort that they put in. It makes a very creative and supportive environment,” says Patrick.
The social channels also advertise specials, such as Pizza Thursdays with Idan Ofer making a new Eastern Pacific tradition at the oven, and Souvlaki Sundays on Capital Ship Management ships in tribute to owner Evangelos Marinakis’ own family memories.
Yet the benefits of the programme have gone beyond food. “We can feel the sense of bonding of the crew and their commitment to work has increased. Socialising around good food can create such strong bonds and good mental health,” Patrick says.
Eastern Pacific has also developed a career path for chief cooks by creating a “sous chef” scheme, where an experienced cook is promoted to work under Chef Patrick, visiting ships to help educate others.
Chef Patrick speaks with a gentle voice but with deep passion, a passion Ofer has harnessed to great effect, inviting his trusted employee to look for new ways to improve culinary services on his fleet.
It has even led to a project to completely overhaul the galleys and equipment in newbuildings, in addition to gradually retrofitting the rest of the fleet. As Chef Patrick says, “for some reason the approach to galley designs has been ‘copy/paste’… We have amazing new technologies that can make the cooking on board a much more easy and efficient endeavour”.
“I’m proud we’ve created a beautiful programme,” said Chef Patrick. “It’s about how to improve life at sea, how to improve the career of the chief cook, how to put food at the centre of the amazing community in shipping.
“But it’s not just about the food. It’s about bringing people together.”
