allmanhall prove their ‘Worth’ and secure significant contract extension from happy clients
Overview
In 2014, Worth School engaged allmanhall after a benchmark demonstrated that, by partnering with these food procurement experts to manage food and catering related purchasing, a saving of 13.93% was realisable.
In addition to cost savings, the school’s objectives included administrative and process efficiencies and access to expert operational catering consultancy.
After the most recent review of the partnership, Worth School have expressed their satisfaction and have extended the contract once again.
“I am certainly happy to agree to an extension. The market is so uncertain at the moment with COVID and Brexit that the value you [allmanhall] bring is worth every penny.” – Paul Bilton, Chief Operating Officer, Worth School
Background
Worth School is a co-educational Roman Catholic boarding and day independent school for pupils from 11 to 18 years of age, in West Sussex. The school has over 600 pupils, of whom 300 are full boarding. They proudly operate a very busy and complex in-house catering service.
In 2014, Worth School engaged allmanhall after a benchmark demonstrated that, by partnering with the food procurement expert to manage food and catering related purchasing, a saving of 13.93% was realisable and other objectives such as administrative efficiencies and access to support would also be made possible.
What did the client need?
Worth School’s objectives were to achieve:
- Food cost savings, as demonstrated in allmanhall’s benchmark
- Streamlining of controls within the catering department, with a view to improve service levels and consistency of the school’s foodservice offering
- Administrative savings for both the catering and finance teams
- Retention of selected valued suppliers, whilst ensuring they remain competitive and are integrated into allmanhall’s supplier management framework and catering software platform
What was the result?
After several years, Worth School undertook a full review of the allmanhall relationship. More recently they have undertaken a second evaluation. Both reviews have resulted in contract extensions and strengthening of the existing partnership, with allmanhall continuing to prove their expertise via impressive results and to deliver for Worth School:
- Supplier tendering and price mitigation, which identified a further 11.53% improvement
- The financial benefits and savings initiatives delivered by allmanhall have contributed to supporting the school’s comprehensive and ground-breaking 2019 refurbishment of their dining facilities
- Continuous proactive supplier management to drive consistent and ongoing benefit for the school – for example, housekeeping spend is now also managed by allmanhall
- allmanhall’s industry-leading catering software platform coupled with trading support from allmanhall, have brought financial control and visibility to the team, enabling:
- monthly stocktaking
- administrative efficiencies and a reduction in volume of invoices, from 2000 per year to less than 120 per year
- …partly through the integration of EDI. This currently covers 55% of supplier volume and is steadily growing
- tracking of a high volume of (sometimes complex) internal transfers, via the set-up of 223 transfer centres. 11 cost centres have also been created, bespoke to Worth School, improving administrative processes
- inputting of 198 recipes, facilitating more accurate costing, stocktaking, wastage tracking and allergen management
- ongoing improvements and systems innovations and integrations: tablet based stock-taking, a labelling package and more. The latter will ensure Worth are ready in advance and enable compliance when Natasha’s Law comes in to force from 1 October 2021.
- Day-to-day support from a dedicated Client Support Advisor at allmanhall, handling supplier issue resolutions so that the in-house team at Worth can focus on catering operations
- Regular reviews and operational consultancy from a vastly experienced team led by allmanhall’s Director of Client Relations, previously a school Head of Catering himself
- Additional support activities are myriad and habitually reviewed then tailored to fit Worth School’s needs, for example:
- Regular allergen training delivered by allmanhall’s Registered Dietitian
- Food innovation days delivered by allmanhall’s Development Chefs, on topics ranging from fish and seafood to vegetarian and vegan menu ideas
After the most recent and second review of the partnership, Worth School have expressed their satisfaction with allmanhall’s performance and the results being achieved, agreeing to yet another extension of this successful relationship.
What did the client say?
“I have worked with allmanhall since appointing them in 2014, and I have certainly seen the financial savings, and their ongoing effective mitigation of supplier price increases. I also greatly value the administrative time savings. Nothing is too much trouble for allmanhall’s support team to assist us with, and I really see them as an extension of our catering operations. The support and reassurance that this partnership brings has allowed me to focus on enhancing our pupils’ dining experiences and environment to a new level of excellence”. – Emma Hickmott, Domestic Bursar, Worth School
