Like all good consultancies, in order to establish where a service is or should be going to in the future, we believe that you should first establish where it is now and how it got there.
A quick history;
Many years ago, all state school catering (primary and secondary) was provided by the local authority caterer through county wide service level agreements. The standard of fresh food was high albeit offering a limited choice. This situation started to fragment in the “Thatcher” years through the invention of Grant Maintained schools and then Compulsory Competitive Tendering. This led initially to individual schools (usually the larger ones) going it alone with a single contract through a contract caterer and then the remaining schools being tendered on the open market in a county wide contract.
The primary objective of both at the time was to save money by reducing catering subsidies to spend on education.
The engagement of contract catering grew as more and more schools realised that the introduction of a “commercial” service (predominately pre-prepared foods and reduced labour input) through a contract caterer increased sales to such an extent that not only was the catering subsidy reduced, there was now a financial return to the school.
There was however a hidden cost to this; the nutritional balance of the food served in this “commercial” environment was poor. Obviously, sales would only increase if caterers sold what the customers would buy; but burger and chips, fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate is not a good balanced diet for anyone, 5 days a week!
Suddenly the nations conscious was pricked by Jamie Oliver who told us what we all knew and to be fair to the catering industry, had started changing; but now it was serious and the Government decided to get involved.
We have seen the development and implementation of firstly the food and now the nutrient based standards across all schools. Initially as you would expect, sales dropped as we stopped serving the customers’ “favourites” and subsidies began to rise, causing schools and caterers great concerns financially.
Today, there are many schools that have individually sub-contracted their catering service with the remaining (often smaller) schools in a smaller group contract either with the authority catering organisation or a contract caterer. All are working together to overcome the difficulties of life changing our young peoples’ eating habits whist still running a cost effective service.
But what about the future?
Within our education projects through supporting in-house catering operations, tendering catering services and working with authority caterers, we have noticed a significantly more positive mood.
All good caterers have reinvented their services to pupils, students and staff to provide good quality fresh ingredients through well balanced menus, prepared on site, sold in a very adult way. We are beginning to recognise that good, well trained staff deserve decent pay. Schools are seeing the benefits of investing to create adult dining environments. Our young peoples’ expectations are changing, moving away from “childish” offers to requiring a sophisticated adult service. And we are all expecting to pay a bit more for this significant improvement.
This is clearly positive but there is still lots to do. Within our work we have seen fantastic results from a combination of actions but only if the school and the caterer work in partnership and only if this partnership communicates professionally to its customers.
Let’s look at some of those actions;
• Staff are regaining and using their unused or even lost cooking skills,
• Menus are innovative, nutritionally well balanced and regularly changed to reflect seasonal produce variations,
• Dishes use quality, fresh ingredients, prepared on site by the local staff and presented, labelled, described and priced professionally,
• There is more emphasis on a combination of local and nationally sourced ingredients generating more customer and parental loyalty and trust,
• The dining and servery facilities are being up graded to provide more space and efficient, much faster queuing and dish selection, creating environments that we would want to eat and socialise in,
• Schools are giving more time and management to ensuring the dining and socialising experience is of the standard that we would choose,
• Catering managers regularly “walk the customer journey” before service to ensure the service is always ready and perfect for speed and efficiency,
• The introduction of completely cashless payment systems,
• Caterers using all their professional marketing skills from their adult dining experience to generate long term customer loyalty and capture more non-customers;
o Professionally printed dining entrance signage to inform what’s on offer where to increase speed,
o Local merchandising to identify dishes and their price,
o School intranet,
o Properly planned and advertised special days,
o Properly planned and advertised genuine promotions,
o Professional staff uniforms,
o Engaging with a well set up and regularly run school council,
o Proper customer feedback,
o Parental engagement,
o Caterers engaging with the learning experience through the curriculum and work experience,
• Caterers being more sustainable through the introduction of recyclable products and workable, practical programmes,
• The expectations from every stakeholder are increasing which in turn is generating better services.
But what about those subsidies, I hear you say?
A good question; with the staffing having to increase to prepare the fresh food on-site, with the recognition of the better skills required through enhanced wages, with the initial reduction in sales due to the life changing offer, (albeit somewhat offset by the reduced food cost by using more fresh food), with the necessary increase in marketing spends and facility investment, this must have increased school subsidies?
We can only talk from our experience, so yes, subsidies have increased but as we have already mentioned, there was a reasonable expectation that initially subsidies should increase to get a better service. All of our schools’ clients and governors accept this as best value and are looking positively at a longer term strategy.
This is where a really good partnership between the school and the caterer reaps mutual benefits. Where this partnership strategically develops a long term plan engaging most of the actions mentioned above, we are seeing customer uptakes far greater than before and more significantly, average spends increasing through the purchase of whole meals rather than cheaper snacks. This is raising sales levels and pushing subsidies back down. Our own belief is that when a consistently good percentage customer uptake of over 70% is achieved buying a whole meal, then the service should naturally be at nil subsidy to the school, with any betterment being re-invested to continuously improve the service.
Dare we say that these good partnerships are investing initially to generate a service which we would all be pleased to use let alone serve to our children; but isn’t this what all good business partnerships should do?
We have enjoyed working with many schools on a variety of projects and are pleased to say all are operating within a longer term partnership strategy. In most, this is already reaping the rewards of reduced subsidies; therefore, we know this works. It sometimes requires professional guidance and faith, but that is where a good experienced consultancy comes in; but I would say that wouldn’t I!
Review Consultancy Limited,
www.reviewconsultancy.co.uk
023 9223 2647
info@reviewconsultancy.co.uk
Steven Watts; 07920 888478