A student again after launching M & S pies

launch a range of five traditional pies for sale in 50 of that company's

largest foodstores in the UK -- six in Scotland, at Aberdeen, Dundee,

Edinburgh, Glasgow (in Argyle Street and in Sauchiehall Street), and

Paisley -- is a feather in the cap of 21-year-old Kirsty Gordon, of her

old school Mary Erskine in Edinburgh, and of Queen Margaret College,

where she will shortly be starting her final undergraduate year.

The sale of food now represents about 40% of Marks & Spencer's

worldwide turnover of #6 billion, and the fact that this major player on

the international commercial and retail scene has agreed to accept the

detailed pie recipe recommendations of Miss Gordon is an indication of

the professionalism with which she approached her year's secondment to

this company and of the success with which she met the considerable

challenge laid down to her by it. There are lessons for every would-be

entrepreneur in this story.

The background to the story is simple. Marks & Spencer operates a

scheme which it describes as business placement -- something akin to the

''milk-round'' of yesteryear, where the ICIs and the BPs and the Shells

and the IBMs and other large companies scoured universities for likely

new recruits from the promising store of final-year undergraduates. This

business placement scheme provides the company with the opportunity to

take on undergraduates for a year and to assess their abilities during

that period.

Miss Gordon took a year ''out'' from her three-year Applied Consumer

Studies course (involving, among other subjects, home economics,

consumer behaviour, and sociology) at Edinburgh's Queen Margaret College

to join 60 other young people at M & S's head office in London's Baker

Street (there were another 65 of these young people located at M & S's

stores up and down the country).

During the first six months of the scheme she was given the task of

learning about the M & S business in general and about the way in which

its pie department works in particular, and she also carried out general

duties for the company. For the second six months she was allocated a

specific project to select and develop a range of pies for M & S's

continuing corporate campaign to promote its foodstuffs.

Her task was to carry out initial research and development work and to

do project evaluations. This involved poring through a library of recipe

books, working with what M & S calls a ''recipe chef'' and taste panels,

and carrying out factory trials. Subsequently, she did a presentation to

Michelle Wober, the head selector in the company's pie department in

Baker Street. Her initial selected range of eight pies was then cut down

to six and these six were shown to a senior executive. Thereafter there

took place a final presentation of the selected pie recipes to M & S

divisional director William Blackburn.

The selected range of pies consists of:

Teviot Pie -- minced beef done in rich gravy and with a light crispy

suet topping; the dish initially comes from Roxburghshire and was

originally concocted by farmers in the Borders as a way of making a

little meat go a long way; needless to say, Miss Gordon's version

contains much more meat than then -- over 40%, in fact.

Filey Fish Pie -- cod, prawns, and hard-boiled eggs done in a creamy

sauce, with a shortcrust pastry base, and topped with piped potato; the

reason for the name ''Filey'' is that this type of pie was traditionally

made in this Yorkshire town for Good Friday celebrations.

Devon Pie -- roast chicken and sausage meatballs with gravy and a

shortcrust pastry on top; the ''Devon'' in this pie's title derives from

the fact that it is based on a recipe first used at Saltram House, near

Plymouth, in the early seventeenth century.

Gloucester Pie -- lamb, onion, and apple, done in a rich gravy

containing nutmeg and rosemary and topped with a butter shortcrust

pastry; the recipe for this pie dates back to medieval times and is

found in several books of that period; originally it was made with

squabs (baby pigeons) but nowadays the meat used is lamb neck fillets.

Boiled Beef and Carrot Pudding -- this pie is done in a way similar to

traditional steak and kidney pudding but includes beef and carrots.

Marks & Spencer does not make the pies. These are made by specialists

who supply the finished products, made from the company's recipes, to M

& S's regional food distribution centres (the Scottish centre being

located at Cumbernauld). The pies are kept chilled for not more than a

week and in some cases, depending on the contents (the Filey fish pie,

for example) for considerably less than that.

Outward distribution from Cumbernauld and M & S's other food centres

is automatically controlled and monitored by computer. Thus, since all

products are ''scanned'' at the till points in all of M & S's retail

foodstores, the computer constantly updates itself -- in such a way as

to direct automatically the orders from each M & S foodstore to the

relevant distribution centre. All of the software, as far as Miss

Gordon's range of pies is concerned, is now in place.

This has been a major exercise, even for a company as large and as

international as M & S. The magnitude of the project also underlines the

size of the responsibility and the challenge thrown down by M & S to

Miss Gordon.

Final-year undergraduates like Kirsty Gordon are under no obligation,

on completion of their degree course, to join the company. However, the

chances are that many of them will do so.