Sourcing British in a changing world: General observations
How to source British in a changing world
Love British Food in association with Tried and Supplied
Public Sector Catering magazine asked Love British Food to investigate how public sector caterers currently approach local sourcing; identify where there are challenges; and share successful strategies.
To conduct this research, we teamed up with the founder of Tried and Supplied, a user-friendly sourcing and purchasing software for caterers looking to shorten their supply chain, reduce their risk, and increase their social impact.
The product of our research is a series of reports that will serve as a guide for any public sector caterer looking to source more locally and increase the quality of their catering offering. The 20% less meat campaign in combination with a focus on waste reduction creates an opportunity to increase food quality without increasing the cost. The old adage ‘less is more’ has never been so true.
Public sector catering plays a hugely important role in nourishing our communities; often those most vulnerable and in need of good nutrition. Quality food can make a big difference both to the nutritional impact and the uptake of meals. Local sourcing can contribute to this. Especially when it comes to fresh produce, speed of delivery from farm to fork is paramount in maintaining freshness and nutrient content.
The challenges of covid and the uncertainties of Brexit have proved, more than ever, the importance of robust, local supply chains. Beyond just the speed of delivery, shorter supply chains provide greater transparency into the methods of production, greater control over food standards, and the ability to respond better in times of crisis. Local sourcing also provides the public sector with an opportunity to financially support the communities they serve. It confers significant benefits over and above price making it worthy of focus for public sector procurement.
General observations
The public sector is by no means a uniform entity. It deals with a wide range of nutritional, dietary and cultural requirements; manages menus to cater for full time residents and for those who are only there for a day at a time; and works with distribution networks that cover dense urban environments to the remotest Scottish islands. Nevertheless, there are key themes shared across the sector that have emerged from our research:
How well do volume frameworks cater for the diversity of the public sector?
Benefits
Collating spend into bulk contracts is well-known to provide economies of scale, which can result in bulk discounts and considerable savings. It was one of the recommendations in Lord Carter’s recommendations for the NHS back in 2014.
Consolidating spend into single frameworks reduces the work involved in managing the supply chain and facilitates best practice procurement. However, framework management is time-consuming, both in terms of the tender and auditing process and also performance management.
Challenges
It is easy to make large framework contracts inaccessible to smaller, local suppliers due to the nature of the volumes involved. Smaller suppliers may be able to supply and deliver to their local region but may lose out on the contract if they cannot cater for the volume and area specified for the whole framework.
There can be a greater disconnect between the end customer and the supplier that makes it harder for the two to work together on developing products to better suit individual needs in terms of nutrition, culture and geography.
Recommendation
Flexible frameworks and distribution models including local authority-managed distribution hubs, as seen in Scotland, as well as direct representation of the end-customers to the supplier are both good ways of achieving a balance.
The need for greater understanding and appreciation for food and nutrition
The recent Hospital Food Review recommends a Food as Medicine approach but, more than just medicine, good nutrition is a preventative measure against mental and physical ill health as well as anti-social behaviour. This has a direct financial impact on the NHS, prison services and benefits system.
This is now being recognised but there is still a dearth of nutritional knowledge within the sector. Neither chefs nor medics are given a nutritional focus in their training and there are comparatively few nutritionists or dieticians involved in advising public sector catering. This lack of nutritional knowledge feeds a misperception of food among senior leadership teams and often leads these teams to deprioritise food. Time and again we heard that motivation and focus from top management is essential in enabling creative solutions to local, healthy sourcing that remain in budget.
Recommendation
A programme of re-education on nutrition should be offered to senior leaders to help them align with changes in government policy and drive progress.
How strong relationships with local suppliers can drive innovation
The public sector by its nature has very stringent requirements. It must adhere to the highest safety standards and deliver nutritional food at a scale and budget not normally required of caterers in the private sector. Local suppliers may lose out on public sector contracts because their products do not offer the required nutritional content or come in the required format. Yet numerous examples show that the public sector can work with suppliers to develop the products they need. These new products can then benefit public sector caterers elsewhere and create an entirely new market for local suppliers.
Recommendation
Communication is key. Through regular supplier contact and initiatives, such as Meet the Buyer events, the public sector can help local suppliers understand how to work with them and create products that will solve their challenges. Local suppliers are an incredible and underutilised resource for problem solving. In return the public sector can help them grow their business.
Tracking and celebrating success
This is a difficult area. The success stories we heard were mostly anecdotal and lack data to back them up, build a statistically representative picture and encourage others. Many suppliers do not provide country of origin information on products, especially seasonal products, and true provenance is hard to ascertain when products are grown in the UK and processed or washed abroad. There are local suppliers responding to public sector demand but their successes and lessons learnt are not being shared.
Significantly, many success stories are born purely out of the passion of those responsible. They are not designed to demonstrate success to others. There are no benchmarks, targets or timelines set, but just as obviously there is no platform for celebrating and sharing success should those targets be met. If motivation is key, then tracking and celebrating success needs to be a driver for local sourcing projects.
Success stories are also a great way of bolstering the perception of public sector catering and recruiting both local suppliers for tenders as well as talented catering staff.
Recommendation
We encourage public sector caterers to take a goal-orientated and data-based approach to local sourcing initiatives and promote their success through Love British Food as well as their specific associations. As a whole the sector should encourage more competitions and even catering league tables.
Is it really more expensive?
Cost is often perceived as a barrier to sourcing locally but those doing it well feel that this is a misperception that does not factor in savings made through menu cycles that reduce waste and work well with the seasons. Focused nutritional products that appeal to the end-customer, developed in partnership with local suppliers, are able to achieve more with less. In remote areas, the complexities of distribution can also mean that local suppliers are more cost-effective.
However, a procurement framework weighted towards price does not factor in these savings made elsewhere. We received varied reports of price weighting in procurement frameworks. Some report contracts weighted as much as 70% towards price, while others say that nutritional quality and other social values are now being prioritised over price.
Recommendation
A transparent and standard approach to public sector procurement weighting, which takes the bigger picture into account could help drive change in areas where the motivation is lacking from leadership.
Conclusion
The observations from this research highlight the opportunity for public sector caterers to learn from each other and for policy makers to address a set of common challenges.