Welcome to our new staff!

The Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company Where your food is really ours.

Petronella F. Wilson
Personnel and Catering Manager
The Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company
The Cottage
15430 Stolen Moments Way
Refrigerator Door NSW 2167
15th August 2005

Mr Sherlock Aloysius Haughton
742 Middle Street
Nowhere NSW 2167

Dear Sir,

Welcome to the Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company. Congratulations on obtaining your position with our dynamic and forward-thinking team.

This package has been mailed to you as part of your orientation and contains all you need to know about the company’s origins, goals, location and staffing. We will be pleased to meet you this coming Thursday at 9 a.m. at The Cottage, the address listed above.

In anticipation,

Petronella F. Wilson Personnel

History of the Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company

In 1432, the HMS Muffy was launched from the shores of the Thames amid a hail of cheering and fist shaking on the part of one Lord Wallingfeather. The Muffy’s charter was “to explore brave new oceans and to remove captain Beryl Haughton from the sight of Lord Euphemia Wallingfeather, whom he has resoundingly beaten at tic-tac-toe, for fear that the good captain should be hung, drawn and quartered if he remains on these shores”.

Piffle C. Wilson, chief cook and sock airer, would while away the shipboard hours between brunch and lunch playing jacks with his captain, and was continually vexed by the constant theft of the ship’s provisions by the ship’s cat, Rex.

Disgraced by said feline on the ship’s return, Piffle (as he is affectionately known), was forced into early retirement from His Majesty’s Service at the tender age of twenty-seven. Early in 1434 he took up residence on the estates of Lord Wallingfeather, who welcomed any and all who had discomfited his arch nemesis Captain Haughton. The sting of Piffle’s disgrace never left him, and once his beard was a respectable but not feral length he made a virtue of his infamy.

It was a difficult time in history for the average peasant. Provisions set by for the winter, or indeed any time of the year, would often be sequestered by the landed gentry, because they could. Burning with the injustice of this virtual food theft, Piffle began waylaying the prosperous and relieving them of any foodstuffs on their person or in their baggage train. He would then pass it on to the poorer members of the community.

Naturally, he became notorious for his work and struck fear into the hearts of the gluttonous and just plain mean. He soon had a price on his head, but his talent for acting the simpleton meant that the authorities never connected the wily highwaymen with the bearded and disgraced ex-sock airer. Documents surviving from the one and only detention and questioning of Piffle give an account thus: “yon one is able to breathe and walk in a straight line simultaneously; he does not appear to possess any other apparatus for thought. We can therefore neither detain him further, nor execute him as the one popularly known as Robin Food.”

The pressure of having a price on his head (six shiny beads or equivalent in turnips) certainly made things difficult for the young Piffle. More so for the peasants to whom he was passing foodstuffs. Many were accosted by the local Sheriff and roughly relieved of their ill-gotten gains: most went home with a smarting backside from the flat of a carving knife (decrying the loss of their creations, many a chef joined the Sheriff’s cause).

To maintain the loyalty of his beneficiaries, Piffle soon invented ingenious methods for concealment of food. The most popular was the friar’s tuck, a cunningly wrought pocket hidden within the folds of voluminous habits that were the fashion at the time. In this way, the recipients of Piffle’s munificence were able to continue at liberty, masticating their way through strip searches where necessary.

Working largely on his own, Piffle did attract a number of supporters who flocked to his standard as his infamy increased. In the early 1440’s he formed the Tawdry Desperadoes, who tripled the plunder of the well fed, but alas the trio did not last. The group split in early 1447 citing “creative differences”.

Piffle continued until his death in 1492, and although he slowed considerably in his later years, his reputation was such that he was as eminently successful at food theft at eighty-five as he was when he was thirty-five. After his death the legend of Robin Food remained, although it became significantly distorted as the centuries passed.

In much the same way, the Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company was born.

Corporate Mission

The mission of the DFTCC is threefold:
∞ to use ill-gotten foodstuffs to feed the hungry,
∞ to stamp out food theft by the gluttonous,
∞ to allow customers to express their more kleptomaniac visions.

Main Business

The main business of the DFTCC is to provide eating areas with imaginative menu choices culled from only the most select tidbits of our ill-gotten gains. As such, we employ the largest kitchen staff in the entire world and represent the forefront of technology and innovation in menu creation.

We also provide a diversion service in each eating area for those patrons wishing to abscond without paying or with other patrons’ food. Our diversion service is our finest achievement and possibly the most successful group within the DFTCC. As such, our catering arm would run at a loss in any scenario where we paid for our foodstuffs.

We have recently diversified into Theatre, and are pleased to welcome Bemused Production Absurdities into our fold. Bemused Production Absurdities and the DFTCC have shared a fruitful association with that famous production “The Cafeteria of the Mind” and the one-poem spoof “A Midsummer Night’s Scream”.

Location and Staffing

Located in leafy Stolen Moments Way, the DFTCC is housed within a six-hectare complex boasting the most modern skyscrapers and a quaint streetcar service for travel between buildings. A feat of architectural engineering, the compound fits nicely on the refrigerator door.

The DFTCC employs a staff of over 7000 internationally, with a core staff of 600 located at the main compound. Although we are a large company, we like to maintain a family feel. To that end, our core staff all work from “The Cottage”, a two-room thatched construction with whitewashed walls and colourful rugs.

Contacting Us

For any interested in contacting the DFT the following addresses are provided.

Petronella F. Wilson (Ms.)
Personnel and Catering Manager
The Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company
The Cottage
15430 Stolen Moments Way
Refrigerator Door NSW 2167

Dennis Wallingfeather (Ms.)
The Managing Director
Bemused Production Absurdities
Level 642 Building F,
D Wing Piffle C. Wilson Annexe
The Desperate Food Thieves Catering Company Building
15432 Stolen Moments Way
Refrigerator Door NSW 2167