Case Study - Catering
Employee Role: 450
Region: North
Type: Engineers/Tele Sales/Admin Functions/Directors
Prior to the commencement of our services the catering environment was that of a traditional ‘works canteen’. Our proposal was to develop the service areas of breakfast, lunch and the trolley and to introduce CC’s Café Continental within the existing restaurant area.
We worked with the original servery counters but clad the fronts with new laminates. The dining area was painted with new blinds fitted to the windows and we created a soft seating area with some low level tables. This works nicely as a relaxed seated coffee area. We also have a high stool seating bar which we find is popular with ‘lone diners’. The overall image has been further transformed by spotlights that we have strategically placed to enhance features within the restaurant. The final brand transformation was to give the restaurant a name. The name was chosen by the employees and now has its own ‘in-house’ brand known as:
The sales growth has been 37% based on the original cash takings. We achieved this significant growth by introducing the following strategy:
Breakfast Service
Improved the quality of key items purchased, i.e. bacon and sausage and introduced different types of breads.
We extended the range by adding healthier options such as smoothies, juices, natural yoghurts and a fresh fruit bar. (We found that the salad well was not utilised at breakfast so we devised a ‘healthy eating bar’ serving dried fruits, seeds and muesli).
Other promotions that we have devised included an ‘Early Bird’ offering aimed at encouraging customers to have breakfast at work.
Trolley Service – “CC’s Express to Your Desk”
Here we reviewed the range of products. Out went the old style cake bars, and bars of chocolate and we introduced a new range of sandwiches, hot sandwich special of the week, smoothies, juice bottles, pots of grapes, melon, and vegetable sticks with houmous. We still kept some of the ‘indulgence’ lines such as chocolate fudge brownies, chocolate chip cookies etc and also introduced a trolley loyalty card and produced mini menus to circulate around the offices so that our customers got to know the range of products on offer. The other important factor was to make sure we reviewed the range to prevent ‘menu fatigue’.
Lunch Service
New style menus professionally printed and using ‘descriptive text’ immediately uplifted the perceived quality of the offer. Nice garnishing techniques and relevant point of sale material was also used. We used meal deals and offers to really promote the ‘value for money’ element of the service.
Theme days and promotions are regular monthly events. All of our menus and promotions are promoted on the intranet. We even conduct our customer satisfaction questionnaires via the intranet.
CC’s Café Continental
This was an additional service that we developed. A corner of the restaurant was used to develop a coffee lounge concept serving bean to cup coffee, freshly prepared sandwich, paninis, Danish pastries, smoothies etc. We have also added a CC’s Essentials Unit that sells newspaper, magazines, pick ‘n’ mix sweets, boxes of chocolates, cards, paracetamol and other of life’s little essentials. Again within this area we still promote new products and have the coffee collector card that runs continuously, after you have purchased 10 hot drinks, you get the 11th FREE. There is so much you can do with a bit of creativity ……… our customers certainly agree with us – “they have never had it so good!”
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