1. THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MARINE CATERING TECHNOLOGIES, PROVISIONS AND SERVICES
MARCH 2015
INTERVIEW:
CARNIVAL CORP’S
ROLF HENSCHE
Meet the man responsible for
sourcing all of Carnival Corp’s
F&B requirements, and discover
his priorities regarding suppliers
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ALL HANDS ON DECK:
NAVAL CATERING
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are helping cruise lines attract a younger clientele

2. H
04 • INTERVIEW: ROLF HENSCHE
March 2015 • Marine Catering International
He’s the man with the billion dollar expense
account. Well, not quite, but he is responsible
for purchasing all the food and drink consumed
on the 100 ships on the water right now that
make up the Carnival Group: “We are building so
many, it’s hard to keep up,” quips Rolf Hensche,
vice president, food and beverage sourcing,
Carnival Corporation. “On average we are
spending about US$10 million per ship per
year on food and drink; so that’s about
US$195,000 per week, per ship,” he continues.
“As a group, over a year, it can exceed a billion
dollars across the fleet.”
Purchasing on such a vast scale enables
Hensche and his surprisingly small team (just
five in total) to apply serious pressure on
suppliers to ensure the group gets the best
possible deal: “I look at the spend across all the
business and we try to apply leverage wherever
we can,” he says.
BUY THE NUMBERS
by Anthony James
Meet Rolf Hensche, vice president,
F&B sourcing at Carnival Corp –
responsible for ensuring the group gets
the best possible bang for its buck

3. Marine Catering International • March 2015
INTERVIEW: ROLF HENSCHE • 05

4. 06 • INTERVIEW: ROLF HENSCHE
March 2015 • Marine Catering International
The F&B sourcing team divide their total
spend into specific groups of provisions – for
example Hensche is able to tell me that the
corporation spent US$140m on beef alone last
year. “We have nearly 30 categories: from
canned food to coffee, dairy, dry groceries, flour
and cake mixes, fresh and frozen bread, beef,
pork, veal, seafood, to name just a few.” The team
also defines delivery schedules for each category
to individual ships throughout the year.
Software, developed internally, shoulders a
great deal of the work, enabling the team to
gather information from each operator and each
ship on the provisions required, before putting
the goods needed out to tender with suppliers in
all the regions served by the cruise line.
“We have developed our own in-house bid
system,” confirms Hensche. “Each business unit
is completely independently operated, with their
own item specifications and all their own item
numbers and descriptions. We have to go along
and make sense of that – we have to create a
specification for Carnival Corporation and then
map individual items from all the business units
to that particular specification,” he continues.
“We have thousands and thousands of line
items in food and beverage that we have mapped
to a standard item under the corporation; and
then we go out with that to the supply base and
they come back with a price based on the volume
for a specific area. We will get quotes for the east
and west coasts of the USA, a quote for Australia,
a quote for Alaska and so on. We then play that
back to each of the operating companies through
our in-house system. For example, if we need to
work on frozen groceries, we pull up all the
frozen groceries items, and send the list to the
business units. They give us their volumes and
then we go out with that at a corporate level for
suppliers to begin bidding.”
New items requested by chefs on board
eventually find their way into the system: “The
business units are required to come to us and
ask if they want to implement a new item,” he
explains. “They send that item information
through the bid system to us, we review the item,
make sure that it doesn’t already exist
somewhere else in the system, and then we
assign either a new number to it or we map it to
an existing item in the system, so that we can
keep track of it and start working with suppliers
on getting quotes.”
A barbecue on board Carnival
Breeze (above); and Carnival
Breeze’s Cucina del Capitano in
full swing (below)
“The corporation spent
$140m on beef alone
last year”

5. INTERVIEW: ROLF HENSCHE • 09
Marine Catering International • March 2015
What’s new?
As one of the industry’s most influential buyers,
Hensche is well positioned to advise on current
food and beverage trends for the sector.
“Consumers are becoming increasingly health
conscious,” he notes. “We seem to be moving
away from the idea that more is better – instead
there is greater interest in quality over quantity,
which is good to see. This is the biggest change I
have seen: we have much more discerning guests
who better understand what they eat and drink.”
Regarding the latter, Hensche and his team
have had to respond to a strong demand for more
premium beverage brands: “For example, we
may have used a white label spirit in the past, but
now we are asked for a brand name such as
Bacardi or Grey Goose. This is definitely more
and more the way that our customers – and
therefore our F&B managers – think.”
This desire for greater quality has also seen
Carnival Cruise Line invest heavily in USDA
prime beef for its for-fee steakhouses, as well as
being available as a for-fee option in its main
dining rooms: “I think Carnival is one of the only
cruise lines to offer USDA prime beef in its
restaurants and this has increasingly become a
factor for guests, who are making a decision to
pay the extra US$35 to go into our steakhouses.
Again, it just shows that quality is the issue.”
Supply chain management
This preference for better quality comes at a price,
but fortunately Hensche is in a position where he
can still drive a great bargain: “The quality of each
Hensche says
one of the
hardest items to
source is
lobster, because “it is very
seasonal. It’s a wild product, you
can’t just pick it up. It all depends
on what they catch and the price
changes sometimes on a daily
basis. You have to talk to a lot of
contacts and make sure you buy
at the right time at the right price,
as the difference can be hundreds
of thousands of dollars if we miss
an opportunity or misinterpret
information from our suppliers.
We can spend over US$150m on
beef, whereas we spend only
US$50m to US$60m on lobster,
yet it requires a lot of my time
during the season, which is
usually between May and
September. So it’s one of the
more difficult items to get right.”
A lobster entrée – Hensche says
sourcing lobster at the best price
is a particular challenge
“We may have used a
white label, but now we are
asked for a brand name”
LOBSTER TALES

6. 10 • INTERVIEW: ROLF HENSCHE
March 2015 • Marine Catering International
item is defined through the specification sheets
that are created by the business units,” he notes.
“We then try to get that at the best possible price
anywhere in the world. We can apply leverage as
we are not just buying for Princess or for Holland
America Line – we are buying for all our business
units across the whole group – so with that
volume we can put ourselves in a better place and
get a price reduction,” he continues.
However, the group’s bargaining power has
seen it start to look further up the supply chain:
“We are also about smart sourcing,” explains
Hensche. “We try to get closer along the supply
chain, where we go direct to the producers and
try to develop buying programs with them. In
the past we would have gone to distributors
because we didn’t have enough volume to really
go that step further, but now it has evolved to
where we can actually go direct to the producers
and get better pricing.”
The desire for greater quality, as well as the
need to guarantee food safety and hygiene,
requires Hensche and his team to keep close tabs
on their suppliers. “They obviously have to meet
the required national and international laws and
regulations, and they have to show us clearly
what they can provide us with, quality-wise,” he
says. “We also usually look at references, and
depending on who it is, we will also do a site visit
and check out the factory ourselves, while
assessing all the industry information and
comparing them to their peers.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been problems
in the past: “Yes, there are occasionally issues
with suppliers,” admits Hensche. “But it’s
standard stuff – getting a less well-known brand
of ketchup when we have asked for Heinz, for
example. But
these are general things
that can be sorted quickly.”
More serious problems are less to do with
individual suppliers and more to do with
logistics and international trade: “We sometimes
have problems, for example, when we buy rice
from Asia,” explains Hensche. “The rice can
sometimes be held at the border when it comes
into the USA and we can’t get it in time. Instead,
we have to source rice locally until the
containers are released. However, it still creates
problems because whenever we order
something, it is container loads or more, and you
can’t just go out and buy 20,000 lbs of rice
tomorrow morning – it’s just not possible to do
that and have it on the ship by Saturday.”
To insure itself against such problems, each
ship carries reserve supplies in case of a delay.
“The ships have some emergency inventory,
usually half a week to a week at least, so that
gives us a few days to resolve things,” says
Hensche. “We have also been able to create a
group of core suppliers who understand the
business we are in and they have usually been
able to help us when it comes to such problems,”
he adds. “We all help each other.”
It’s actually surprising that there aren’t more
problems, given the circumstances: “There is a
very short window of opportunity to supply the
ships – six hours at the most. Once that
opportunity is gone, it doesn’t easily present
itself again, particularly when the ships are away
from the main turnover port and on an island
Carnival sources USDA prime
beef for its onboard steakhouses,
with customers prepared to pay
for quality
Rolf Hensche is also a
long-serving director
of the Marine Hotel
Association (MHA), which
will celebrate its 30th
anniversary
at its annual conference and trade show,
April 12-14, 2015, Naples Grande Beach
Resort, Naples, Florida, USA.
“It’s going to be a very exciting MHA
this year,” says Hensche. “A lot of fun, but
I can’t talk too much about it!”
However, he is prepared to say that a
future show is likely to take to the water:
“We are trying to bring the show on
board a ship in the near future to allow
suppliers to get a better picture and a
better understanding of what it is we are
dealing with.
“Another big part of the MHA of course
is the education program, where we send
employees to business schools all over
the world while the MHA picks up the tab.”
MARINE HOTEL
ASSOCIATION ROLE

7. March 2015 • Marine Catering International
12 • INTERVIEW: ROLF HENSCHE
that requires flying stuff to them, which we do if
needed, but in general we have been able to sort
it directly then and there in the home port.”
All goods are delivered on fumigated pallets,
with the group adept at maximizing onboard
storage. “In most cases we try to have chilled
space that can be converted into freezer space
when needed, and this is taken into
consideration during the building of each ship.”
Great care is taken to source the ‘freshest’
items possible: “We try to get as much shelf life
as we can,” says Hensche, “so the product has to
be as fresh as possible when delivered, so that it
will stay good for a 10-day voyage.”
Inevitably some items are picked up en route.
“Depending on the area we are cruising in, we
can buy along the way from approved suppliers,
but there are a lot of areas where you don’t really
want to buy outside your scope, so that requires
us to simply get the freshest possible product at
the turnaround stage.”
Despite the temptation to make life easier by
switching to more preprepared items, Hensche
says the majority of food is still made from
scratch on board: “You won’t find precooked
sauces and you’d be amazed to see the amount of
bones we deliver to a ship for them to make the
sauces and stocks with!”
Information age
Looking forward, Hensche says technology is
increasingly integral to the onboard experience.
“Passengers can download an app to make
bookings on board direct from their cell phones,
while we can message them about an ice cream
party on pool deck four, for example, if we know
they are ice cream lovers. This technology will
only grow and make our life much easier.”
Hensche refers to Royal Caribbean’s robotic
bartenders on board its latest ship, Quantum.
Customers at its Bionic Bar can order cocktails
via tablet devices, then watch as robots mix their
drinks. “All this type of stuff is coming more to
the forefront. As technology becomes more
proven and cheaper to implement, we are
looking at what we can do next.”
However there are still hurdles to overcome:
“We have some issues with simply getting the
necessary communications bandwidth on the
ships,” he notes. “The satellite companies are
struggling to give us more bandwidth. There are a
lot of things we would like to do – guests could
book tours via a mobile app, but all of this takes
away from the bandwidth available on board and
makes it difficult for us to take advantage of
technology already proven shoreside.”
Despite all the new technology, a large part of
the business is still done face to face. “I do
believe in picking up the phone and setting up an
appointment and talking to people direct if there
are problems, rather than being behind an email
somewhere.”
It helps, of course, when a supplier is in an
exotic location. “Personally I enjoy Southeast
Asia, as I am a scuba diver and there are some
great sites for that,” remarks Hensche. “There
are so many beautiful things, the people are
incredibly friendly and open and there is
wonderful food, history, and things to do.”
No doubt bartering over the price of a good
meal among the street stalls of Bangkok or
Singapore comes naturally to someone who buys
millions of dollars of food on a weekly basis. •
Carnival Breeze off the Caribbean
island of St Thomas (above);
customers tucking in to sushi (right)
“You’d be amazed to see
the amount of bones we
deliver to a ship!”