ABOUT DIRECTION ASSOCIATES
Judith Clarke - Judith has an HND in Hotel and Catering Administration which was followed by operational experience in Food and Beverage then focused on Front Office Management mainly with Grand Metropolitan Hotels in London. A move into Personnel and Training at The Drury Lane Hotel, London was combined with carrying out a variety of company training for Queens Moat Houses including 5 new hotel openings. Judith set up the training department at Le Meridien Piccadilly just after the takeover from Gleneagles and was Group Training Manager for Edwardian Hotels where she again set up the training department and systems for the 9 London hotels.
Judith has now been freelance for 15 years working with some larger London and nationally based companies. Recently Judith has become more involved with small to medium sized businesses where she has developed practical personnel and training systems.
Graeme Clarke - Graeme has an operational and management background in restaurants and country house hotels which led to being Executive Restaurant Manager with Ring & Brymer the specialist catering arm of the Forte empire. In a new role of Food Services and Standards Manager, Graeme oversaw the service development in a number of group one racecourses, premiership football venues, and National stadiums. He was part of the team that set up Ascot Hospitality and obtained the Investors in People Award.
Graeme has been freelance for 7 years supporting event management teams at major events such as The British Grand Prix, Festival of Speed, Goodwood Revival, The Grand National and the PGA Golf as well as building up a base of private and hospitality clients. Graeme carries out food and beverage training and has designed courses to develop large supervisory teams.
Our business - Direction Associates was set up by Judith in 1990 as a specialist Hotel and Catering Personnel and Training consultancy which is now progressing into other customer focussed businesses.
In 2001 Graeme joined the business to add training support to restaurants and event companies as well as developing Direction Hospitality, offering a range of hospitality from corporate days, private company entertaining in the UK and abroad, private hospitality and event management.
In 2005 we started Direction Design, offering businesses tailor made websites and computer advice. This developed from several requests from smaller businesses we worked with that found the cost of this prohibitive.