Reviewing a Workplace Catering or Employee Dining Contract

Reviewing a Workplace Catering or Employee Dining Contract – Part 3

To see parts 1 and 2 of this article series visit News on our website. Following on from our first two articles focussing on how to review a workplace catering service and contract we set out some of the concluding elements.

How should we work with our caterer to realign our employee dining offer and contractual requirements?

It is also important to highlight that you should involve your caterer throughout the process of undertaking an operational and financial review of your employee catering and hospitality.

• Have you spoken to the caterer to ascertain what works well for them and if there are any issues that are stopping the service from being developed or costing more than is necessary?
• There can often be disparities between the service – style, quality of offer and amount of time an employee café or restaurant is open – with the aim of providing a fantastic service for customers, workforce etc and the commercial demands of the catering service. If you stay open late, are customers using it or is just costing the operation more money? If it’s the latter, who’s paying the cost – the caterer or the client? If you are the client and are paying it are you okay with paying more for the service. And if it’s the caterer, and not their choice, is that fair and sustainable?
• Ask the caterer what’s stopping them developing the catering service and how all parties can work together to develop a relevant and sustainable employee catering offer.

What should the outcome be or reviewing employee dining and workplace catering?

To understand what the outcome or reviewing your employee dining and workplace catering offer should be you need to have decided at the start of the catering operational and financial review what the objectives for the catering review are or what you want the outcomes to be.

These could be about a closer alignment to employees’ catering needs as well as financial improvements. They may also be about making the catering service more flexible so that it can adjust quickly to both planned as well as future unknown internal and environmental changes and impacts.

A clear catering implementation plan is also essential to make sure that the agreed outcomes are implemented in a timely manner.

How often should we review our workplace catering?

You may be asking how often you should be reviewing your employee dining and workplace catering. As specialist catering consultants, we do not believe there is a ‘one size fits all’. It really depends on your level of specialist catering skills and how you feel your catering is performing. However, as a more general rule, we believe it is usually appropriate to have an independent catering review at least once a year, although this doesn’t need to be extensive in all cases.

Workplace Catering Operational & Financial Review Consultant Advice

We hope this article gives you some insight in to how to undertake a workplace catering operational and financial review. However, it should be remembered that the details provided are an overview and there is much more to the process.

If you are looking at reviewing your employee dining or workplace catering service; need support developing a workplace catering strategy or with a catering tender, do get in touch with us at Montfort Catering Consultants so we can discuss how we could support you.

Posted on June 4th, 2020