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Good catering consultants trump regular procurement departments Julie Kortens
Most catering consultants understand the value proposition. In my experience, a procurement person procuring catering is cost driven. A procurement specialist monitoring catering performance can be forever trying to drive that cost down further. But once you’ve procured the service, that’s not necessarily what you want to do.
we eat with our eyes. A great facility with vibrant colours and comfortable chairs will show the food in a better light and result in a higher uptake. The environment encourages networking and communication, and recruits will notice a full restaurant. Contractors can work with clients under a single brand-banner
communication. In-house restaurants allow employees to engage face-to-face. Catering increases communications and productivity among employees. Jason Cousins, premises and facilities director, Olswang We find that in-house catering increases employee productivity. Partners are often pressed for time, so they use the restaurant. But even if it’s only for a short while, they continue communicating. It helps that we re-designed our seating so there are more areas where people can sit together in privacy. Once we were accused of having ‘Michelin star dining’, implying it was too good for a work environment. Elaine Burt, head of projects and facilities management, Societe Generale At Societe Generale we’re taking away some business space and creating more, much-needed break-out areas for staff. At one bank I worked in we encouraged people to use the restaurant space for meetings in between breakfast, lunch and evening meal times. This can be added income in slow times for the caterer. In-house catering can save money, long-term www.fm-world.co.uk
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Peter Titus, head of facilities management, Field Fisher Waterhouse A number of our partners used to entertain clients at restaurants. However, as a number of clients can’t spare the time travelling externally, the focus is now on entertaining, in-house. We’re re-modelling some of our meeting rooms so that they can be easily used for fine dining, lunch or evening. Catering can work well as part of a bundled service Wendy Cuthbert, head of CRES UK, Barclays I think catering works best as part of a bundled service, along with room-booking and reception. Visitors get a consistent service level, from arrival in the building, to being shown to the meeting room, to having lunch. As for coffee, people want the familiarity of a brand, so we have Benugo and Starbucks. And it’s convenient because they don’t have to go out. Good catering could be part of a recruitment strategy. Fiona Allen, regional account manager, EMEA The McGraw-Hill companies, UK, CB Richard Ellis Potential recruits take notice of their future working environment. As the saying goes,
Mayur Patel, facilities director, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain It’s important to have a “oneteam” ethos here. Although our caterers are contractors, they operate as part of the wider team providing a seamless service to the firm. Both parties live the brand. This year Mencap is RPC’s annual charity and the café works with us to support them. Fine dining on-site can dramatically cut entertaining costs
Julian Fris, principal consultant, Neller Davies We did some benchmarking for a client who’d just moved into prestigious offices. We found out that it cost them four times as much going out to expensive restaurants instead of dining in. And nowadays, the skills of the in-house catering department can be significantly better than the restaurants. Big name concessions aren’t always the answer Jason Cousins, premises and facilities director, Olswang Starbucks is actually a subtenant in our reception, so we considered putting a Starbucks in our coffee bar to compete. We did a staff survey and taste testing which resulted in us changing our coffee. But they were adamant that we shouldn’t do Starbucks. They actually preferred something different.
Conclusion: Alastair Storey I keep coming back to the essential idea of the business that we as caterers are in. We’re maximising the use of the company’s real estate and the investment they’ve made in the facility. Our belief, not shared by everybody, is that if you are going to do that you have to respect the customer’s judgement about quality and price and you must look at your competitor in the high street. You must get a product which is as reasonably close to the quality and price point that is acceptable. For example, why do we do fresh-tray bakes? Because if the customer perceives it as a more enjoyable product, they are more likely to buy it and we’ll sell more. It’s not rocket science.
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