CH&CO Education: Quarterly Business Review

Education: Quarterly Business Review

An introduction from

Matthew Brown Managing Director, Education.

“

Hopefully you will all have had a chance to see the last few webinars we have undertaken and enjoyed the discussions and updates we have had on those over the last few months.

I’m delighted to now be able to share a comprehensive review of all the goingson within our sector, what we have been working on since Christmas, and what we have in store over the coming months, all in a brand new look and feel.

It’s been a busy and fruitful start to 2024 in the Education space. From the launching of our brand-new coffee brand, HOUSE, to welcoming two new central team members, our new nutritionist Annabel Kibble and in-house events specialists, Lizzi Wood and Hannah Lewis.

We’ve covered all the main bases in this review, from people and procurement activity to operational updates, we hope you find it both informative and exciting.

I want to thank you for taking the time to review this, it is as important to us that you feel plugged into our efforts and informed about our activities as it is to understand how we can help support you to get the

most of your important role within the business and deliver an outstanding service to our customers across the sector.

I know I speak for many of us when I say it has been enjoyable and uplifting to see all the hard work you have been doing on Yapster, please do continue to share your skill and enthusiasm on there, we’re loving your work!

Finally, now that our coming together with Compass has officially gone through the competition authorities, I’m excited about all the benefits and opportunities that will bring for our teams, clients, and customers. Exciting times ahead, and I look forward to sharing more detail very soon!

HSE update from Jenny Todd

Hello! In January we launched our Safety Culture Survey, results are in and more than 75% were positive responses, areas to improve were initially identified as being communication and ease of reporting. We are working on solutions to raise awareness and make it easier to report and health and safety concerns.

This year we have also launched some new / improved processes:

Corrective action status flagging

Automatic notifications to remind sites to complete outstanding audit actions.

Ops Manager audits

Reduced content audit focussing on food, health and safety, migrated to our Maia auditing platform for ease of use. Each site will receive an audit from their ops team twice per year.

Audit failure escalation

Provides a framework of actions, responsibilities, and timelines in the event of an audit failure to rapidly rectify issues.

Coming Soon Accident Prevention Week

On the 15th of April we launched a week-long campaign around accident prevention which includes an all teams kick off session followed by a week of activities for site managers to share with their team and the launch of some new processes.

We are delighted to welcome our

THREE newest central team members, Annabel Kibble, Lizzi

Wood & Hannah Lewis

AnnabelWelcomeKibble to “

Annabel Kibble –Nutritionist update and introduction

I recently joined CH&Co Education and Healthcare as Senior Nutritionist. I am a Registered Nutritionist with the Association for Nutrition and have a degree in Nutrition from the University of Surrey.

I have over 8 years food industry and contract catering experience, with previous roles including Nutritionist for Sky for over 6 years and Junior Nutritionist for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company General Mills. I am also a mum to two little foodies, Iona and Daphne and love sharing my joy of good food with them on a daily basis.

So far, I have been busy getting a grasp of the diversity of the sector, meeting the teams and visiting sites.

I will be working with the food team to develop their knowledge of nutrition, work with each head chef on their menu development, support marketing with nutritional communications as well as deliver on site educational assemblies and pop ups to pupils. I am also involved in a project to create nutritional guidance and principles in relation to retail lines and snack ranges.

Whilst Lizzi is on maternity leave, we are delighted to welcome Hannah Lewis, who will be picking up events work in Lizzi’s absence.

Lizzi Wood & Hannah Lewis Welcome

to “

Lizzi Wood –Events update and introduction.

Joining the team in January from our Company of Cooks team, I have been tasked with supporting our Education clients with Enterprise opportunities spanning from venue hire and events. With over 15 years’ experience in a range of venues, going forward, my plan is to lead, coach, develop onsite team activity and help to drive the best possible results for event sales, assisting with profitability from the commercial section within each school.

marketing, social media, target audiences to draw the audiences.

If there is any additional support you feel your teams need or would like to introduce commercial revenue to your venue, please do get in touch.

”Hannah Lewis –Events update and introduction.

Hannah has studied Creative Events Management at University and started her career at OXO2 as a Sales & Events Assistant and continued with CH&CO working within the teams at Dartmouth House, Chiswick House & Gardens, Abbey Road Studios and Eve (central sales). She loves working with clients to see their dream events come to life from initial ideas to delivery.

A key focus for Hannah will be bringing new event and filming revenue streams to our sites. Not only will Hannah use her connections within CH&Co and external event & filming agencies but grow this database to national scale to bring opportunities to each and every site. We warmly welcome Hannah to the team.

HR update from Karl O’Brien

From a people perspective, we’ve been busy. We’ve undertaking new initiatives which have proved successful (and entertaining, I’m sure!) including launching our ‘In Conversations’, ‘Cooking with Karl’, and Education team surveys.

Since the new year we have been working to complete performance reviews and update probation periods. In addition, we have a number of exciting new recognition and benefits coming soon including recognition cards and long I look forward to overseeing these new developments as we head into the next term.

Food update from Nikki Low

As usual, I’ve been living and breathing all things food! I’m excited to share several new developments since the new years including:

A centralised menu

Marketing theme days, menu development and recipe support

Food pop-ups including street food kitchen takeover pop-ups and Hide & Seek (hidden vegetable pop ups)

Butchery day/chef training Workshops

Photoshoot support for counters and fine dining hospitality brochure

‘Brain food bakery’

I wanted to congratulate Sasho for representing Education at the chef of the year final.

A massive well done and more great examples of the excellence we strive for on the Education team.

What’s coming next?

We are working on an exciting afternoon tea spec where we can support sites which offer afternoon tea by preparing exquisite cakes, scones, and macarons, freeing up precious time to help sites focus on prepping fresh sandwiches.

We hope and intend this to be a success through furthering our afternoon tea offer and streamlining the process so our chef teams on site and our clients get the most efficient customer offer and service for afternoon tea.

What good looks like

I have created a salad bar and hot counter light equipment set up guide for you all to know what good looks like.

Please can I ask all of you to review and reach out to me if you have any questions and please click here to read through my full 2024 food plan.

Salad bar and hot counter light equipment set up guide

Food plan 2024

Please click here

Inspirations Food

Need a bit of inspiration?

We’ve created a series of recipes to get you inspired for upcoming foodie days in the calendar.

You can now find all of these recipes in ‘The Kitchen’ on our CH&CO sharepoint.

Keep an eye out here as we aim to update these periodically!

Visit The Kitchen

National Biscuit Day Recipes Vegetarian Week Recipes

“Marketing update from Jack Goodwin

I’ve been working to support sites and develop a range of promotional initiatives that will help us deliver smiles to our customers.

I’ve been proud to work with Nikki to develop a series of Spring term and Summer term theme days, centred around ‘Flavours of the World’ – a series of 5 distinct national and regional dishes from around the world which last a full term including ‘Rock’n Moroccan’ and ‘Greek Goodness’.

I will be undertaking a series of webinars at the start of the summer term to walk through optimal execution of these marketing theme days to ensure we get the most out of them at site, I will also be able to answer any questions you may have and understand what is working well and where improvements can be made.

In addition to theme day and menu promotions I am very proud and pleased to announce the launch of ‘HOUSE Coffee’ which was successfully launched at DLD College in March. This new

brand was designed to match high street competition whilst providing tray bakes and snack options which contain a fraction of the sugar, or highly processed ingredients found on the high street. Through the rebrand of the coffee offer, and strategic product offer and great customer service, sales have gone up considerably at DLD College.

We have created a HOUSE Coffee brochure which outlines the purpose and on the ground feel of the brand here:

Click me to read about HOUSE

My focus now is to rebrand our allergen posters, deliver the summer term promotional posters and menus to site and support Karl on designing the recognition cards and long service award certificates.

Sales update from Diane Rollinson

“I have been busy supporting the operations team with various accounts such as Greenbank School, where we have retained the contract and put together a plan that works with their own green credentials, supporting them throughout the year with various activities that includes CSR, nutrition and events.

I have also been working on new ideas with the team to enrich the services we provide our clients, such as a fresh pair of eyes, which then develops into an ongoing plan of innovation.

The ideas we have as part of the tenders we produce have helped us retain some valuable clients over the last few months. Overall, it has been a pleasure to be part of a team who have the right mix of skill and just pleasure for doing a great job!

Sustainability update from Clare Clark

“I’m pleased to announce that The Science Based Targets initiative has verified CH&CO’s net-zero science-based target by 2040.

The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) is a collaboration between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). The SBTi defines and promotes best practice in science-based target setting and independently assesses companies’ targets.

In January to support our net zero target and animal welfare standards, our focus was on serving less but better meat to tie in with Veganuary.

In February, we celebrated all that is seasonal and local highlighting to our teams why supporting local businesses is important and how seasonal menus can help support our sustainability targets.

In March, our focus was to progress to our target to slash food waste by 50% by 2030. We have challenged our teams to cut waste and are incentivising our sites to deliver creative solutions around waste with their team. Our winning team will be chosen by world renowned chef Douglas McMaster, owner of the worlds first zero waste restaurant.

Procurement update from Phillipa Raven

It’s fair to say that the volatility and unpredictability we’ve seen for some time continues in many categories, as well as availability challenges where demand has outstripped supply, or where extreme weather patternshave impacted crops, and we still cannot underestimate the ongoing effect of the situation in the Red Sea which will see delays and more recently the Border checks on dairy, produce and fresh flowers from the EU will all have an impact on pricing.

The outlook for kitchen-door food prices is becoming more positive as inflation will continue to ease, albeit slowly. However, a fall in prices (deflation) on the full basket of food and drink is unlikely until at least early 2025.

Producers are still grappling with the after-effects of war, adverse weather, high farm input inflation and weak consumer demand, but eyeing 2024 as the return to a semblance of normality.

The outlook remains uncertain for some commodities such as wheat. As well as weather threats, the grain may face potential restrictions on Russian exports, according to Rabobank. And while Ukraine will continue to ship supplies it will have a smaller exportable surplus in the next few years.