How to take part in British Food Fortnight

Caterers and Food service organisations

Source British food

• Contact your existing suppliers to see whether the produce they currently supply you with is British. 

• Contact the large producer organisations for a list of British meat, dairy and vegetable suppliers that can cater for large food service sourcing requirements. Email us if you need help: info@lovebritishfood.co.uk .

• Send current and new suppliers a copy of the menu you would like them to supply British food for and invite them to pitch for the business.

• Don’t be put off by prices that initially may seem higher. Buying large volumes can make the whole process affordable.

• If you are catering in the public sector, consider forming a partnership with other public organisations to aggregate demand and make savings through bulk purchase.

• Larger suppliers can still provide local produce; be specific when talking to them about what you want and don’t shy away from specifying local products as part of your requirements. 

• Involve your client in the sourcing process. If they are concerned about increased costs explain that healthy eating is a hot topic at the moment and their employees/customers will expect them to respond to this.

Accommodating smaller suppliers is possible



• Talk to your suppliers to overcome difficulties that may arise if you are a large caterer trying to work with small suppliers. For example, it may be possible to set up a purchasing model that enables a number of producers or farms to supply meat to one butcher who in turn supplies you.

• Make sure that the relevant internal structures are in place. Nottingham City Hospital started to source milk from a local dairy. The relationship with the dairy itself worked very well but ensuring that the milk was distributed to the different hospital sites required some internal adjustments.

• If fragmented supply is a problem, encourage producers to form a co-operative that better meets your needs.

• Set up a customer group involving the catering team, suppliers and your clients so that expectations are managed on both sides and problems can be easily resolved.

Promote the Britishness of your menu

• Communicate menus in advance, for example on employee intranets.

• Run a competition or prize draw to highlight the new menu. Some organisations have run an ‘Around Britain in a Fortnight’ menu and given every customer who ate in their restaurants during the event a gamecard featuring ‘just for fun’ questions about British food that could be entered into a prize draw.

• Display POS material using the British Food Fortnight logo or Union Jack in restaurants.

• Ensure the whole catering team knows about the new products and suppliers and encourage them to communicate this to customers while serving food.

• Include a ‘Chef’s Special’ on the menu to give you flexibility in your ordering process.

• Use phrases such as ‘seasonal veg’ on the menu that enable you to take a variety of stock from different suppliers.
  

See our Private sector catering sections for more advice on taking part, case studies of food service organisations that have taken part, downloadable resources and promotional material.