In the first of a new regular feature showcasing the UK’s best care home suppliers we pick our Top Five foodservice providers

apetito
apetito’s care home meals service improves labour efficiencies, reduces costs, makes catering for dietary requirements easy and ensures residents enjoy high-quality, nutritious meals. apetito allows care homes to have transparency of costs, while reducing staffing requirements and meal preparation time without compromising on quality. Its service can more than halve the time spent in the kitchen compared to cooking from scratch.

Staff cook the meals from frozen, meaning that with some initial training, the complexities of managing kitchen staff and time spent in the kitchen can be reduced, allowing staff resources to be devoted back to front line care. As a provider of care home meals, apetito knows how to help care homes deliver a dining experience that satisfies and nourishes residents, whatever their dietary requirements or culinary preference.

With a range of IDDSI compliant texture-modified food and Finger Food Bites range, apetito’s meals enable care homes to bring back dignity and independence to dining for residents living with dysphagia and dementia.
apetito knows that one size never fits all when it comes to catering provision within a care home, and tailors its services to individual needs.

Customer feedback
“Since moving to apetito, I’m never worried about mealtimes. Now if I get a call from my kitchen team saying they’re unavailable, I don’t feel stressed – I know all the residents, no matter their requirements are always going to have a meal that’s safe, nutritious and that they’ll enjoy.” – Fatma Makalo, Bridgeside Lodge Care Home

Bidfood

Foodservice provider Bidfood has a passion for great food and going the extra mile for customers.

With a range of more than 500 care- specific recipes, its team is on hand to provide support in areas such as catering for differing needs and keeping operators up to date with the latest trends.

Bidfood says consistently creating nutritious and delicious meals tailored to residents’ individual requirements isn’t always easy, especially when juggling time, budgets, stock levels and staff skill. So, to support care operators, it has launched Caterers Campus, an online learning platform for Bidfood customers that supports their teams, allowing more time to be focused on residents.

The platform gives teams the opportunity to learn key skills, enabling them to cater to residents better.

Modules include:

• Dysphagia and IDDSI
• Fortification
• Dementia
• Hydration
• Menu planning
• Costing
• Diabetes
• How to understand and calculate profit

Customer feedback
“Over the past two years we’ve been accessing the Catering Campus for our chefs and kitchen assistants. This has made a huge difference to the team as many come into care without any previous understanding of the adaptations they need to make for our residents. This is a unique training platform covering the basics and we’ve included it on all our chefs’ and kitchen assistants’ learning pathways and inductions. This is the first place I have found tailored training for themin health and social care. I would highlyrecommend.” – Samantha Varnals, learning and development manager, Gold Care Homes.

Creed

Creed understands catering in the care sector can be challenging work at the best of times. Not only do chefs have to cater for residents’ varying tastes while ensuring meals meet required nutritional standards, they are also required to offer enough variety throughout the day to suit individual needs, while also keeping residents interested in their food to prevent malnutrition.

Creed is more than a foodservice provider and its customers rely on the company to help support them and offer expert advice. Its range of tools, such as Saffron Nutritional Software, menu ideas and recipes from its Care Asset Hub, and market updates from its Insights specialist, are all intended to help its customers streamline and improve their operations.

Creed services a range of sectors across the foodservice industry with its care customers a priority. It points to its 99.3% service levels, with stock availability and order fulfilment at the forefront. It employs a dedicated team of care sector specialists, working together to support independent and group care homes to deliver hospitality to their residents, while working to a set budget per head.

Customer feedback
“Our experience with Saffron and the Creed team has been brilliant. Saffron has made our lives so much easier; we have absolute confidence in the nutritional and allergen information it provides, and Creed are helpful and respond very quickly.” – Lucy Coombs, nutritional advisor, Lilian Faithful Care

EF-group

EF-group works closely with more than 3,000 care homes, saving them time and money while offering value, efficiency and safety to their day-to-day operations. It stocks everything customers need, from food, drink and cleaning products to medical and sanitary supplies through its supply chain network and manages all orders to invoice process via its simple-to- use system, Freshmarkets.

The company understands a top priority for care homes is creating nutritious, fortified food that provide residents with healthy, individual choices, satisfying recommended daily allowance and complying with the Care Quality Commission’s requirements.

Its customers can manage budgets and food margins, reduce waste and produce nutritionally balanced meals using the advanced menu planning features in its CaterCloud menu management tool.

HC-One, one of the biggest providers of healthcare in the UK, approached EF- group as part of its digital transformation programme. Using Freshmarkets and CaterCloud, EF-group changed HC- One’s provision and introduced a fully integrated stock system, budget module and 250 cost-effective recipes with flavour and nutrition.

EF-group can help with controlling cost per resident per day, managing menus and providing insights into allergen and nutritional information. It also helps customers stay on top of food safety compliance and budget handling, including multi-category and multi-supplier ordering. Its systems can take care of operational issues. It also points to its 160 years of procurement and menu management experience in the care and senior living sector.

Customer feedback
“I would recommend EF-group to other clients as nothing is ever too much to ask; the flexibility and adaptability from the team is amazing. The support we have received has been second to none and I wouldn’t look at using anybody else.” – Chris Bonner, executive chef and nutrition and hydration lead at HC-One

The Full Range

The Full Range is a food purchasing business which aims to help independent care and nursing home operators save on food costs while delivering high- quality standards for their residents. The company combines market knowledge, manufacturer supported pricing and client spend of more than £42 million per annum to give its customers big company buying power. It adds that as it is 100% supplier funded, its services don’t cost anything.

The Full Range takes a proactive approach to delivering results and is committed to quality and forming strong relationships with its local and national suppliers. The care sector has been a growing market for the company and it is focused on residents in care and nursing homes being able to enjoy nutritious and delicious meals. It takes the time to understand customers’ businesses and the challenges they face, working with all stakeholders, from owners to chefs, to reach solutions that leave everyone happy.

Customer feedback
“The Full Range offers an invaluable service for procurement, with no contracts and no hidden costs. They allowed us to analyse our purchases, look at new potential suppliers, and dramatically lowered our costs. The team offers an excellent service including lots of hard work behind the scenes. Resolving issues and offering solutions free up my time to enable me to focus on other areas of the business.” – Chris White, Sunbury Nursing Homes