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Following the informal tea with the Polish President, the TT SuperBurger executives, staying at the Podewils, met for dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. A party of eight was unusual for the hotel, and the staff fussed around, putting four tables for two together to accommodate them. Jinnie watched the table manoeuvres, noting that the new arrangement placed the group well apart from other diners, giving them the privacy to discuss business.
With the orders taken, Jinnie told the party of her conversation with President Thomas Dobiecki. Obviously, she carefully edited the report of the conversation to exclude details of her previous meeting and the military reports. Instead, she talked about her pitch for the company’s various divisions and how the President had promised her his every assistance. She added her idea for a mid-market traditional Polish food restaurant chain for the Polish market. Monica asked which division the new chain would fall under. Jinnie replied, “I think Mamuhska would replace our Sybaritic offering in Poland, so it would fall under Brooke’s fast-food division. She is staying at a different hotel, so I will phone her this evening and tell her what is happening, so when she is out and about over the next few days, she is looking for the right thing.”
“Now, Belinda, your division is going to be under huge pressure. If you need anything, don’t hesitate in coming to me,” said Jinnie. “Andrew, the same applies to you. You have both obviously started work here already, otherwise work at the Ennios Gdańsk wouldn’t be starting tomorrow.” Belinda smiled and said, “Thank you, I will bear that in mind. We are OK at the moment. Andrew’s team have rushed through a design, and my people priced it as they got areas. But the whole process has been made easy by the Polish contractor we have found. They are a fairly big company, and I have seen some of their work, and it is not bad at all. Mr Woźniak, the owner of Wozniak Renowacja, their word for ‘refurbishment’, has been amazing, and I am delighted that refurbishment costs seem to be about 25% less than in the U.K., although there seems to be a national shortage of plasterboard. It was all supplied from the state factory in Germany. I have organised a 40-foot trailer load from Denmark to arrive on tomorrow’s ferry, but it could be a problem in future, so I have been talking to our British manufacturer about selling into Poland. It seems it is something they had never considered.”
Rick added, “Belinda, Andrew and I are off to visit the site in the morning, just to make sure everything is happening as planned and the workers are not sitting doing nothing. We are up against a huge deadline here. We simply must have decent accommodation available in a fraction over three weeks’ time. You are welcome to come along with us.” Brian explained he had a series of meetings arranged with various Polish banks about a central group account and multiple accounts for divisions. He said, “I have every intention of playing them off against each other for the best deal.” Monica explained she and Ro were off to look at premises for Aunty JoJo’s outlets in Gdańsk and Gdynia, and tomorrow they were looking at office space and suppliers. “Well,” said Jinnie, “we are all going to be busy, so let’s have dinner together again tomorrow and review progress.”
***
Rick sat in the front of the Mercedes limo with the chauffeur, with Jinnie and Simone in the back. Belinda and Andrew were in a second car. Jinnie was interested in the streets they passed down. Lots of small shops and a lack of supermarkets reminded her of England before liberalisation and the influx of American ideas, but it was the predominance of cobbles and trams that she found fascinating. In her childhood, trams had been non-existent in Britain. Her grandmother had talked of a tram running from Barnet Church to Archway, and it later being replaced by trolleybuses. In her youth, that route had been operated by double-decker buses or the Northern line of the Underground. To Jinnie, Gdańsk was a living museum.
The limo pulled into the car park of what was now the Ennios Gdańsk, and a temporary sign announced the new name. A notice in Polish was by the entrance to the car park, and Simone explained to Jinnie it said the hotel was being refurbished but was open for business as usual, and the management apologised for any inconvenience. About a third of the large car park had been fenced off, and the contractor’s compound was already full of portable buildings and several of what Jinnie guessed passed for pick-up trucks in the Germanic world.
Jinnie, Rick and Simone pulled on their TT SuperBurger hi-vis jackets and hard hats and walked over to the main gate into the compound. Simone explained to the guard who they were and that they were there to meet Mr Woźniak. The guard grunted and shouted to a colleague, who instructed a youth who ran to a large portable building and disappeared inside. Woźniak came out and beckoned them over, and the guard reluctantly let them into the compound. They all shook hands, and Simone introduced Jinnie.
Jinnie remembered being told that many Poles spoke German, so she spoke to Woźniak in German. The company owner replied in German, saying, “This is good, we all have a language in common. I know that Rick and Simone speak German, as we met several times during contract negotiations. But, Dame Jinnie, I must congratulate you on your German. If I did not know better, I would say you came from Berlin.” Jinnie said, “Thank you, Mr Woźniak, I did spend some time at university in Berlin, but please call me Jinnie. The title Dame is for formal occasions.” “And I am Piotr,” said Woźniak.
The group moved into the portable building, where a meeting was going on around a table covered in Wright Refurbishment drawings and Andrew’s design sketches. Piotr introduced Jinnie to the site manager, three site foremen, one for each shift, and the company’s head designer. On one wall was a planning chart, and on another a flow chart. Jinnie noted that several items had been crossed through in pink highlighter. It was Jinnie’s first look at the design, and it seemed to concentrate on remodelling the bedrooms and kitchen and refreshing most other areas.
Belinda explained that the programme worked on several parallel streams. The bedroom refurbishment was one stream, the kitchens another, the large conference room and restaurant another, while the general redecoration of public rooms and corridors was a fourth stream. Belinda talked about material shortages in Poland and how the first bathroom and bedroom fittings were already on the way from the U.K. via a convoluted route involving trucks through the Channel Tunnel, a drive across France, Belgium and the Netherlands, a ferry to Denmark, a further drive across Denmark and finally a ferry to Gdańsk. The kitchen was to be totally modernised, but that was a much later stage and would be done in two parts to not stop it working. The Swedish kitchen equipment was on a long lead time.
***
The site manager led Jinnie, Rick and Simone into the hotel via an open fire exit door, and Jinnie was astounded by the number of workers busily working. About a third of the hotel had already been partitioned off with green-tinted PVC sheeting. There were scaffold towers everywhere, giving access to the high ceilings and lighting. The carpets had gone, and Jinnie saw a pile waiting by a fire exit. Jakub, the site manager, saw where Jinnie was looking and said, “We are waiting for more skips, we have already filled two with old carpet, and we are expecting rain, so it is indoors.”
“You seem to have done a lot this morning,” said Jinnie. Jakub smiled and said, “We jumped the gun. We set up the compound yesterday. We had everything set up to start at midnight with the first shift. We tried to do quiet jobs overnight, assemble the towers, put up the PVC screens, lift a lot of carpet, strip the bathrooms and bedrooms of things we could unscrew. When the shift changed at eight o’clock, we were ahead of programme. Now we can make more noise. The chute from the top floor has been installed, and the old bathroom suites are coming down it into skips. The first truckload of plasterboard is scheduled for late afternoon. The builder’s hoist should be installed by then. I will show you in a minute.”
The group went up the back stairs to the top floor, where Rick said, “These are going to be our ‘executive’ rooms. Eventually it will be the whole floor, but initially it will be just 10 made from 20 of the existing rooms. So, bedroom, sitting room, luxury bathroom and mini-kitchen. This is why we need lots of plasterboard. The timber for the revised partitions is easy to get, it is all home-grown.” “So, you will finally have 30 executive rooms on the top floor,” said Jinnie. “That is the idea,” said Belinda, “60 premium rooms on both the two floors below and 60 standard rooms on the other three floors. That is 330 rooms on six floors and all the facilities on the ground floor.”
“That is a big investment,” said Jinnie, “will it make money?” “I certainly hope so,” replied Rick, “the spreadsheet says it will be breaking even by the end of the first year and making a decent profit in the second, but it is our first hotel in Poland, and I do not really know if the spreadsheet works here.” “Have you any reason to doubt it?” asked Jinnie. “I just do not know if it will work here,” replied Rick, “I hope it does, but until the hotel is up and running, I can only hope. Then, of course, there are the costings for the refurbishments. The labour and some of the things like plumbing fittings, paint and timber are cheap, but the imported kitchen equipment is ridiculously expensive, but totally necessary.”
***
Having finished the tour of the site, the SuperBurger executives made their way into the working part of the Ennios Gdańsk, where Rick introduced them to the general manager. They all sat in the lounge, and a waitress brought coffee. Jinnie tried hers and pulled a face. Rick noticed and said, “I am afraid that decent coffee is hard to find in Poland at the moment. It is another thing that was supplied from Germany and is in short supply. We are looking to supply the hotel from the UK until importers get their act together on what are considered luxury items. The basics are readily available, most meats, vegetables, beer, vodka and local wine are in all the markets, but if you want a gin and tonic or a whisky, forget it.”
Jinnie thought for a moment and said, “In the UK, we have our own warehouses, which the big suppliers deliver to, and then we distribute to our own businesses using our own transport. No one from TT SuperBurger Distribution is on this trip, I wonder if there is a business for them here. Maybe I should talk to them.” “I think that could be a good idea,” replied Rick, “in most countries we use trip-wire replenishment, so that when stock of a particular item drops to a specified level, the computer initiates a fresh delivery.”
The hotel general manager said, “But we have warehousemen and clerks for that.” “As an Ennios hotel, that will not be for much longer,” said Rick. “A modern computer system is essential, and it is on the list for here in the next few weeks. It will link you into our worldwide reservation system and do away with the manual card system you have now. As soon as possible, it will join you to our accounting software and our credit card payment system. It will run your HR, and it will talk to head office in Southampton so that I know exactly how many rooms are occupied and booked in advance. It will tell me how many guests have had breakfast and which rooms have been cleaned.”
“Won’t all that mean losing jobs?” asked the general manager. “Maybe in the very long term,” answered Rick, “but in the short term we will not lose jobs. People may find they are doing a different job, but everyone will be trained in the new way of working. But a luxury hotel needs a lot of people, because guests demand more. From a daily paper delivered to their room, to room service meals, to an evening turn-down service, all these things are labour-intensive. I fully expect to be hiring, not firing.”
Belinda and Andrew opted not to join in the tour of the occupied portion of the hotel, they had seen it before. Instead, they were to visit a second hotel that Rick was considering in nearby Gdynia. Following that, they were meeting Nigel at an office building which Property had identified as a strong possibility for offices and a computer centre.
The tour of the remainder of the Ennios Gdańsk was mainly for Jinnie’s benefit, to show her just how much work was necessary in a very short period. Jinnie had seen many hotel and restaurant kitchens, but this was one of the worst. It was clean, but the equipment looked like a museum. The chefs toiled without the modern, gleaming stainless steel appliances she was used to seeing. There were none of the digitally controlled ovens and hygienic wall coverings and ceiling tiles she was used to, and no machines to do the washing up, it was all done by hand. Yes, everywhere was clean, but it was old and in desperate need of replacement. The laundry was no better, the industrial washing machines were ancient, and there was a team of girls hand-ironing sheets and pillowcases.
Everywhere they toured was clean but old-fashioned, and the decorations were dark, the carpets dingy and the lighting dull. The bedrooms were adequate, a decent size, but had nothing to recommend them. Even the TV looked like something from the 1960s, huge deep boxes, unlike anything in modern Britain. Jinnie said to Rick, “I have an idea, I want publicity to document this in a before and after series for our in-house magazine. Do you mind if I get Caroline over as soon as possible to write the story of the refurbishment? I suspect it could make the British and the Polish press, the free advertising could do us some good.” “I have no objections,” said Rick, “in fact, I have some pictures on my phone of some of the rooms, like the conference room, before we started work.”
Jinnie stood in the restaurant and asked, “How do you propose to keep this open while you refurbish the room?” “We plan to move the tables and chairs into the refurbished conference hall while we work in here. It is much simpler and quicker than trying to do the restaurant in stages. In any case, there is direct access from the kitchen to the conference room, it was set up for weddings and Nazi Party events. It is a pity we must do the kitchen in stages. We cannot stop producing meals.”
***
Jinnie was driven to the office block being considered, and her first thoughts were, “Gosh, another grey building in a city of grey buildings. At least it looks solid.” Nigel and a man from Property, whom she had met before but whose name she could not remember, were waiting in reception. Nigel said, “Good afternoon, Jinnie. The agent is on his way with the keys to the floors we are to view. Belinda just rang, she and Andrew are minutes away. Ron here tells me that he had a look around yesterday morning and put it on his shortlist, as this block has most of the things we require. But everywhere I have seen so far has a couple of problems I have not encountered anywhere for many years, an inadequate power supply and no broadband. If we are to set up a computer hub in the city, we need both.”
Jinnie smiled and said, “I know the government recognises the power problem, but it is not a quick fix. It takes years to build a power station and to build a grid. They are looking at SMRs, and Rolls-Royce are over in a few weeks.” “Even if they get an order while over here,” said Rick, “it is going to be three or four years before an SMR is providing power to the grid.” “That is the President’s long-term plan,” said Jinnie, “but we cannot wait three years to get power for our computer centre. Have you looked at having our own diesel generators?” “Not yet,” replied Rick, “but if we settle on a building without a decent power supply, then we will have to investigate that solution.”
The agent showed the party the top three floors of the ten-storey building, and Jinnie whispered to Belinda, “This seems to be in decent condition.” “It is,” said Belinda, “we would have to do a lot of decorating, new carpets, new partitions and a new computer centre.” Turning to Rick, Belinda asked, “What would you think of having your computer centre on the top floor of this building, with the TT SuperBurger Poland offices below?” “It could work,” replied Rick, “but as I was telling Jinnie before you arrived, there seems to be a shortage of power coming into the building, and there is only very slow internet. What is the point of having 7G around the offices if it is only 2G to the outside world?”
“I think I have an answer to those problems,” said Belinda. “From my enquiries, I understand that the coal-fired power stations are more than capable of supplying all the country’s power, the SMRs are for the long term. What this building needs is a new, bigger substation, and it is at the bottom of the electricity suppliers’ priorities list. In fact, the priority is government buildings. If Jinnie could get her friend, the President, to move us up the list of priorities, that is problem number one solved. As for the internet, a dish on the roof will connect us to Starlink, which gets us into our worldwide network. As for local distribution, this is just about the tallest building in the city, and I think that we have line of sight from the roof to almost any building, so we resort to old-fashioned microwave links until Telecoms Polska gets its act together.”
“In effect,” continued Belinda, “we could run our own private network between any buildings in the city that have line of sight to this one. We might need permission, but that is a job for Jinnie and Mr President.” “OK, supposing that works in Gdańsk,” said Jinnie, “how does it work when we move on to other cities and towns?” “Remember, this is only a temporary solution until high-speed internet cables are installed,” replied Belinda. “We put microwave dishes on the tallest buildings and link to the local businesses and back to the Gdańsk centre, hopping from town to town.”
“That might just work,” said Rick. “I remember when all trunk calls between London and Birmingham went via the Post Office microwave towers in the cities, so the principle is sound. It is just a matter of cost. If they could do it in the 1960s, it must be a piece of cake with modern technology.”
***
Jinnie sat in her office, telling Alberto how the fledgling business in Poland was going. In just two weeks, they had two Ennios hotels, one in Gdańsk and one in Gdynia. They had signed for three floors of the tallest building in Gdańsk, and Belinda was in negotiations to purchase Wozniak Renowacja, who were proving highly capable, and the executive rooms at the Ennios Gdańsk were ahead of programme. Monica and Ro had found the first two company-owned Aunty JoJo’s sites in Gdańsk, were close to selling two more franchises and one in Gdynia, and were recruiting office staff. Nigel’s team had a design for the computer room and equipment on order from the U.K. for installation as soon as the room and offices were ready. The permissions for a microwave network had proved easier to obtain than expected, but the power company had not been happy to divert one of the substations on order to supply the offices. However, President Dobiecki had told them it was to be done and just to increase their equipment order from Sweden by one set.
SuperBurger were in a similar position to Aunty JoJo’s, with a company-owned restaurant being readied in both Gdańsk and Gdynia and several franchises being negotiated. Distribution had secured a large warehouse on the edge of the city that had been a German distribution hub for the region. It was far bigger than the group currently needed, but had been cheap, and Jinnie was certain they would grow into it. The warehouse staff had been employed by the German state and were delighted to be offered re-employment, so when trucks started arriving with goods to build up a buffer, they had known what to do. Nigel had more computers on order, and the warehouse was to become another node on the microwave network.
Brooke had been quick off the mark and had snapped up two restaurants that were struggling, as they had specialised in serving the Germans who had been in every position of authority in the city and had simply melted away. The restaurants were already trading as “Mamuhska”. Now the restaurants were running as stand-alone businesses, doing their own procurement and menus, but Brooke had left them in no doubt that they would be converted into the equivalent of a sandwich shop by day and a restaurant by night just as soon as the corporate design and offices were set up. But to cap it all, President Dobiecki had agreed to take ten franchises. He could not be seen to own them, but his family trust was the ultimate owner. The plan was to open them in cities other than Gdańsk and Gdynia just as soon as the corporate design was ready and the infrastructure was available to supply them.
Alberto asked, “Tell me, are you happy with progress in Poland?” “I am,” replied Jinnie, “I think in just a few weeks we have made remarkable progress. But I have saved the best to last. Bearcat Catering have agreed deals that, when we announce them, will shake the British contract catering world. Instead of heading to Poland with the rest of us, Jorja and Sebastian decided to target the British companies I had talked about setting up in Poland here in the U.K. I understand Jorja just turned up at Babcock’s HQ in London and asked to talk to the procurement director. Instead, she got to talk to a procurement manager who had no idea how she knew a party was going to Poland to discuss setting up a warship yard in Gdynia. It was when she explained she represented the contract catering division of TT SuperBurger and they were already in Poland that he started to really listen to her pitch.”
“She proposed joining with Babcock and doing all the on-site catering for them,” continued Jinnie. “Well, she quickly found herself talking to the procurement director and saying Bearcat Catering could run all on-site catering, from the workers’ canteen to the executive dining room, via snack and drink vending machines. To cut a long story short, Bearcat Catering is now included in the Babcock proposal, which I know President Dobiecki has already decided to go with, even if Babcock do not.”
Jinnie added, “Sebastian took on INEOS, whom the President told me are his favourites to build a vast oil refinery, a titanium oxide plant, a hydrochloric acid plant and several polymer plants. Well, I understand he also blagged his way in with similar results, but this time they are working with INEOS on the catering for six plants during their construction and then as the permanent caterer.”
“So, we are looking at a bigger catering business in Poland than the rest of the world combined,” said Alberto. “Well, I have not finished yet,” replied Jinnie. “The third pitch was to Rolls-Royce, who are out in Poland next week and are the first guests in the executive wing of the Ennios Gdańsk, so I only hope it is ready. They both went to Derby together on this one, and they are looking at a similar deal to INEOS, on-site catering for four sites while they are being built, that is over a four-year period with about 1,000 people on each site, and then transitioning to a permanent facility. Rolls-Royce will be working three shifts on site and want 24-hour catering, so even the midnight to 8 am shift gets hot food. But it does not stop there, Rolls-Royce are looking at SMRs in Slovenia and want to include Bearcat in the final negotiations.”
“What Rolls-Royce do not know,” continued Jinnie, “is that I have an in with the government, and I am already setting up Bearcat Catering (Slovenia), with my contact having the 2% holding needed by foreign companies in Slovenia. She is already our sleeping partner in Aunty JoJo’s and SuperBurger in the country.” “Now that is unexpectedly good news,” said Alberto. “Do Bearcat have the finances to handle such a big expansion?” “It is not that huge an investment,” replied Jinnie, “the deal with all of them is that we take on all the catering side, but they supply the kitchen and canteen. We supply the staff and the raw food, we cook it, sell it and clean up, and we pay them a 7.5% royalty on profit. Yes, they have to set up an office in Poland, but the group is ready for them with core offices and a distribution warehouse in Gdańsk. Mind you, as I am briefing you, I am wondering if we need another floor or two of office space and who the group should put in place to be the local boss. They will have to speak Polish, English and probably even German.”
Chapter 32, South America
© WorthingGooner 2026
