Good Help Is Hard to Find, Even for Those Who Would Be Jeeves

Jan. 28, 2014 10:30 p.m. ET

Students practice at a butler school in Brussels. Academies for domestic staff are seeing a boom, but there is debate about what is proper service. Cedric Gerbehaye for The Wall Street Journal

BRUSSELS—The white gloves are on in the fight to serve the growing ranks of the superrich.
New academies for domestic staff are opening doors world-wide, while existing schools are busier than ever. But as the market for talent booms, some established types are fretting about the upstarts and their newfangled ways.
“I’ve been fighting against the many, many charlatans in this business forever, and I will do so for the rest of my life,” says Robert Wennekes, chief executive of The International Butler Academy. “There are too many out there who claim that they’re butlers when they’re not.”
Vincent Vermeulen, a former butler himself, sees things differently. He recently set up the School for Butlers and Hospitality in Brussels. The outfit’s four-week course, as outlined on its website, aims to “prepare students to face challenges of the modern international household.”

Students set the table at The International Butler Academy in the Netherlands. The International Butler Academy

Students stay in touch on the school’s Facebook page, instructors keep teaching notes on iPads and a postgrad butling app is in the works. Mr. Vermeulen beseeches students to be of service in a 21st-century kind of way—ready with smartphone chargers and condoms, as well as shoeshine kits and hair pomade.
Others are on a similar wavelength. “Times are changing, and we’re using technology that we weren’t using back in the ‘Downton Abbey’ days,” says Sara Vestin Rahmani, director of the London-based Bespoke Bureau. “If somebody wants a super-modern, high-tech, Mac-ified, BlackBerry-fied 25-year-old female multitasker,” her agency can provide that, she says.
Mr. Wennekes blanches at the thought. He isn’t overly impressed by technology, and he definitely doesn’t condone over familiarity.
Certain indignities bother him more than others. Mr. Wennekes recalls, for instance, one student who had been taught by another school to pull the toe of a sleeping principal if he wasn’t awake in time for his breakfast tray.

Vincent Vermeulen, the founder of School for Butlers and Hospitality in Brussels, teaches his students during a lesson at the Plaza Hotel. Cedric Gerbehaye for The Wall Street Journal

“If my butler did that to me, I’d kick him out,” says Mr. Wennekes.
After a career culminating in the role of head butler at the U.S. Embassy in Germany, Mr. Wennekes started a recruitment agency for domestic staff. Soon after, in 1999, he set up the school to train candidates himself when demand began to outpace supply.
Today, his students follow an eight-week residential course in a castle in the south of the Netherlands. Field trips include an outing to Veuve Clicquot’s Champagne house, where they learn the airs of bubbly service, and a cigar master class in Germany, so they are up to snuff on Cubans, humidors and the like.
His school is registered as a nonprofit organization, with fees covering costs and profit made through placing staff. The cost to students—which includes a traditional uniform of tailcoat, gray vest, white gloves and a butler’s tie—is €13,750, or about $18,800.
Jane Urquhart, who has been placing domestic staff since 1996 and runs a butler training agency in London, also bemoans what she views as declining standards. To her horror, “I’ve even seen a tea bag; you should never see a tea bag,” she says.

A student inspects the position of plates during a lesson in Brussels. Cedric Gerbehaye for The Wall Street Journal

Such faux pas, she insists, would never be tolerated at her school, which charges £550, or about $910, for a two-day course. “Our tutors are the very best,” she says, adding that some have served royals.
Among the basic errors some schools make, Ms. Urquhart says, is teaching potentially stifling “silver service,” not the more standard “butler service.”
Silver service requires staff to serve food directly onto diner’s plates, regularly fill glasses to the brim and to inquire as to the diner’s pleasure. It is the kind of treatment one might expect at a society wedding or a very formal restaurant.
When done right, it can be “very jolly,” Ms. Urquhart concedes. But it is a world apart from at-home butler service, where all cutlery is placed to the side, glasses aren’t filled to capacity and above all, the staff is silent. “It should be invisible, and just impeccable,” she says.
Just who is correct on such issues is in dispute. There is no globally accepted qualification for domestic staff. Unlike the wine trade, for instance, which has recognized the Master of Wine certificate since 1955, butler schools create their own curriculum and certification. That leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
One school plays out its role at a five-star hotel in Brussels. There, Mr. Vermeulen is teaching the first day at his new school, which he boasts has the field’s “most progressive” training.
The next four weeks, he says, he will show the class how to provide “seven-star service” to their principal—butler-speak for employer. The 12 students range from a former cook in a youth prison to a Ukrainian superyacht stewardess. All are in uniform—a dark red vest and cuff links engraved with the school’s logo. Each pays a fee of €6,980, excluding accommodation.

A student at the School for Butlers and Hospitality listens to advice on how to put a candelabra on a table. Cedric Gerbehaye for The Wall Street Journal

After giving an overview of what they will learn, Mr. Vermeulen lines his charges up against the wall, slipping a Mont Blanc pen behind their shoulders to check their posture as part of a deportment exercise. Using folders as they would tea trays, students then leave the wall, shoulders back, to practice gliding along with hot drinks. The remains of the day are spent rehearsing their technique. The yacht stewardess sails through, while a golf instructor’s tray skills are under par.
Though less wedded to past ways than some of his competitors, Mr. Vermeulen does bow to pedigree. The former hotel butler shows off a picture of his great-grandfather, who he says organized banquets for barons.
Methods aside, turf wars are adding a frisson of tension to the trade—with China being the latest butler battleground.
Ms. Rahmani’s company trained 600 people in China last year and sets up franchises in China to teach butling “with a modern twist,” she says. Her course includes lessons on intoning a fake British accent and tips on how to deal with paparazzi.
Mr. Vermeulen expects to place 160 butlers in China over the next 24 months.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wennekes has plans to open an academy in China later this year. He claims he was the first to make inroads in the country and others now risk tarnishing the industry’s reputation.
“I’m trying hard to protect the integrity of the profession, but right now I’m having a hard time doing so,” he says.
His latest frustration: seeing his photo used without attribution or permission on one U.S. website. “My dear wife will not allow me to visit the websites of these places because it’s not good for my heart.”
Write to Frances Robinson at frances.robinson@wsj.com

Original post: Good Help Is Hard to Find, Even for Those Who Would Be Jeeves