Catering for all your needs

Whether you are outsourcing your catering for the first time or looking to review your current service provision, there’s a recipe to help the tendering process work successfully.

22 April 2010 

1. Get market aware
The contract catering market is not a huge one, but one that constantly evolves. Before you begin your search, especially if you have never outsourced before or if your incumbent has been in situ for more than 5 years, familiarise yourself with the different players in the market as this will be able to help you determine the type of service and service provider you are seeking.
 
2. Go behind the scenes
Before you finalise out your tender documents, create relationships with a range of food service providers. Investing a small portion of time early on in the process will reap enormous dividends. Take up the offers of visiting sites to see what is out there. This will have the benefit of allowing you to build a picture of best practice and it will give you a little inside knowledge into what services are on offer and how they can be adapted for your operation. You can use the knowledge gained to precisely tailor your tender document and ensure that you are provided with a service that is tailored specifically to your requirements.

3. Ask colleagues
Catering is one service everyone in your building will always have an opinion on. If you are considering altering your provision, this is your opportunity to understand what the building’s users want. Survey your teams to assess what they want from the catering service. This will help make clear where changes are required and if you manage multiple sites, will help you tailor the solution for each site.

4. Service clarity
Once you’ve had the opportunity to look around and gauge what the market offers and what is suitable for your business and what your business is asking for, make those observations clear in your tender. Specify exactly what service you will require. It is likely that you will want changes from your current provision be that remodelling of the restaurant or kitchen are, the type of foods provided, the timings for the daily delivery of service, and indeed the types of services themselves which can span hospitality, restaurant, fine dining, speciality café, grab and go and vending to name a few.
 
5. Beyond the food
Consider the wider corporate goals that FM is charged with meeting and assess how the catering service provider can assist you in meeting these targets. If the organisation is looking to promote a healthier working environment, the menus that are delivered in the staff restaurant can certainly impact on this, a requirement that three out of the five main dishes on daily offer in the restaurant should be prepared against nutritional guidelines, within calorific limits and support healthier living should be included in your tender. Where your operation is keen to promote its reputation as a responsible corporate citizen, use tactics such as insisting that wherever possible, ingredients should be sourced in the UK, supporting UK agriculture. Catering services have a significant impact on environmental performance, from food miles, to fuel usage to waste disposal. As an example, If you are looking to achieve or maintain carbon neutral status, then minimising food miles for the ingredients used on your premises can help. As an example, direct that no less than 70 per cent of all fresh ingredients should travel more than 100 miles to the site on which it is used. The further increase of landfill charges to £48 per tonne in April this year is a burden your business will undoubtedly wish to minimise. Not managed correctly, food waste can significantly increase this cost. Ensure your caterer can provide you with environmentally, economically conscious methods of food waste disposal, and perhaps even offer you the opportunity of earning a rebate on the waste by recycling the waste and selling it as green energy to power companies.

6. Be clear about responsibility
Define which of your service providers is responsible for what. Who is responsible for managing energy reduction, waste disposal, or cleaning the kitchen? Make it clear where the caterer must work alone or in tandem with another appointed service provider.

7. On your marks
Plan a realistic timeline. Once your tender is issued, the incumbent should be advised of notice terms, even if you feel you may reinstate the current service provider. A practical time frame for the review of catering services is six months from the time you begin your market research, to the point of tender and then engagement.

8. Apples or pears
While you are dealing with food services you will not always be making apples and apples comparisons, very often the range of availability within the market will throw up very different solutions. To ensure you are able to monitor tender responses to give a clear picture of what is being offered, make caterers follow a response formula that will simplify the process of making a like for like comparison. Just as the right ingredients will shape the finish of a dish, carefully preparation of your tender process will deliver delicious results.

Simon Esner is the UK sales director of business and industry catering specialist, BaxterStorey.