Underlining the strength of its offering, Fooditude recently received three stars from the Sustainable Restaurant Association and has been nominated as Boutique Caterer of the Year at Foodservice Catey Awards 2019.
“Our submission was a true team effort,” explains Dean Kennett, Managing Director. “We called on people from across the business to contribute and provide evidence to support our submission. Being named Boutique Caterer of the Year would validate all the hard work we’ve put into the business and give our teams a morale boost for being recognised in our industry.”
The award nomination is the culmination of a great deal of hard work that began back in 2005 when Mr Kennett had the itching feeling something wasn’t right in contract catering. He therefore founded Fooditude to shake up corporate office culture and bring office catering back to what really matters – the customers. Thanks to his vision the company has become the go-to office catering provider for London’s most forward-thinking businesses. For firms that understand the power of food to motivate and reward staff, Fooditude delivers value through close working partnerships and constant innovation.
Today Fooditude is a contract caterer that offers quality food, cooked from scratch, every day. Delivering to offices throughout London, it can count top media and tech companies on its client list, including Twitter, Dropbox, Netflix and Verizon Media. Unlike traditional contract caterers, it does not sell to its end users, so its product and services are marketed with a combination of B2B and B2C strategies to appeal to its buyers as an invaluable partner and to its end users as an excellent perk from their employers.
Supported by 110 staff, Fooditude cooks hot and cold food in its 20,000 sq ft central production kitchen, before packaging and transporting it in temperature-controlled boxes to its clients’ offices. Once the food arrives, it is handed over to its on-site team that displays and serves the food as though it were prepared on site. At the end of service the company takes all the equipment and food away, returning the space to be used as desired by its clients. This offers companies huge cost savings, as they do not have to give up prime real estate in central London to a kitchen that only gets used at meal times. Additionally, its clients can avoid investment in equipment and labour.
This year’s award nomination follows a rebrand in January, after 13 years of being called Just Hospitality. “Last year, we wanted to refresh our brand and took out extensive research with our clients to better understand what they thought about our name, our brand, and if Just Hospitality was an accurate representation of the company,” explains Mr Kennett. “The overwhelming consensus was that our brand needed an update and that it did not match the breadth of our services. The research also made clear that a rebrand would not affect our working relationships with them.
“Encouraged, we embarked on a renaming and rebranding exercise that has culminated in a brand that we feel truly reflects our personality and the services we offer. The new name, strap line and look represent our company’s core business and ethos, which is all about bringing happiness into the workplace through our food and service. Our new visual identity uses bright colours, bold illustrations and patterns to characterise the brand as cheerful, self-assured and authentic.”
As the award nomination demonstrates, Fooditude is on the right track and can look forward with confidence. “Our mission is to make people happy no matter what the working day brings,” says Mr Kennett. “We know it’s not just about the food we eat, but also about creating a social space that facilitates eating together. We spend the majority of our day at work so it’s really important for that time to feel enjoyable, meaningful and productive. We want to be known as a driving force for good in the world of workplace and facilities management. To that end we’ll be focusing on gaining accreditations and awards that relate to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. This year we’ve achieved a three-star accreditation with the Sustainable Restaurant Association and are aiming for The Planet Mark and the City of London Healthy Workplace Award. We hope that this will help us attract clients that share our values, which will in turn help us achieve our mission of reaching more workplaces with our unique brand of food service.
“Of course we want to grow our business too. Currently we service London but we’d like to look at other urban centres in the UK and beyond. Our clients often ask if we would consider catering for their offices across EMEA and that is certainly a challenge we would like to tackle.”
With its services in such high demand, Fooditude looks like a force to be reckoned with and further award recognition can only be a matter of time.