These days it's a term much loved by business managers when assessing how well they're doing compared to their competitors, and benchmarking data are eagerly sought-after. There is nowhere fiercer than the hospitality industry when it comes to the cut and thrust of competition, so how fortuitous for you that Eat Out magazine's Foodservice Top 50 listing provides a ready-made measure by which a company's performance can be benchmarked.

 

Now in it's fourth year, the Top 50 is compiled by canvassing the opinions of 5,000 of the industry's leaders – owners, chief executives, managers and directors of highly successful restaurants, hotels, gastropubs, contract caterers and suppliers.

 

They rate their top five operators in the market based on criteria such as profitability, image, staff retention, innovation, sales and corporate social responsibility. In other words, the companies they most admire. Critics of the Top 50 listing could argue that this is a very subjective measure, and to an extent they're right when it comes to an individual's choices.

 

But when you achieve a critical mass of opinion among 5,000 leaders in the world of hospitality and some companies are consistently voted for more than others, then that's a very powerful endorsement.

 

Simply to make the Top 50 is an achievement, so congratulations to everyone here today. And if the list brings out the ultimate competitor in you, then perhaps it can also provide a useful benchmarking tool to help you match that performance next year – or even better it.