East Midlands County Council

Montfort Catering Consultants worked with an East Midlands County Council reviewing their in-house workplace catering operation. There are circa 2,000 employees on the campus at any one time. The employee food service offering consists of a restaurant and a food court. The food court provides an extensive range of hot and cold meals along with all day snacks and beverages. The staff restaurant provides an alternative offer to the food court, with table service and choice from two menus, an A la Carte as well as a daily choice from a weekly menu. In addition, there is a hospitality service, providing beverage trays and working lunches as well as event catering for civic meetings and other events.

The Council’s aspiration was to build on existing strengths and to seek assurance that the current service was appropriately configured, defined and managed, to maximise profitability while also providing value for money and engaging with the maximum number of customers.

Montfort Catering Consultants undertook a detailed catering and operational financial review of the workplace catering services for this large East Midlands County Council facility. Our detailed recommendations have identified opportunities to realign the workplace catering offer to facilitate increased patronage and improve financial performance via improvements to the food offer, service, organisational structure and design.

Advice & support has included:

• Stakeholder engagement including undertaking focus groups
• Qualitative operational review
• Detailed financial review, benchmarking & potential
• Benchmarking of labour structure & remuneration
• Sector & wider food & beverage trends detailed
• Operational development proposals
• Management & staffing development proposals
• Food service design proposals
• Detailed report