Sodexo has launched a new hospitality menu to be rolled out across its portfolio of university contracts.
Universities are increasingly offering hospitality, conferencing and banqueting, in an effort to develop new commercial revenues. Sodexo already delivers significant hospitality work for its university clients, catering for events and conferences accounts for up to 50% of turnover in some of the company’s university contracts.
Sodexo’s new menu includes over 500 dishes in total across 10 categories, covering everything from BBQ’s, canapés and buffet lunch items, through to full banqueting. ‘Star’ dishes include English heritage tomatoes and Pan-roasted Gressingham duck.
Online database
The menus will be made available to all Sodexo’s 30-plus university catering teams through an online database, helping catering teams develop their banqueting capability and deliver high quality menus for all occasions.
The new system will help Sodexo university chefs manage requirements dictated by the allergen labelling regulations that came into force in December 2014. The allergen information for each dish will be stored on the database, making it easy for chefs to provide relevant information to their customers.
Dishes for every occasion
Recipes have been created by executive development chef Robin Turner, through collaboration with the head chefs at each of Sodexo’s university sites. He comments; ‘We’re really excited about the new menus which are seasonally-inspired and based on the use of high quality, fresh, locally-sourced ingredients. We have a fantastic, creative team, and it was great to be able to work together on this project to deliver a suite of dishes which will work for every occasion.’
Booking system
The hospitality menu goes hand in hand with the development of a new room booking system, Area 101, which Sodexo is rolling out across its university contracts. The new system will provide universities with a simple online system for booking catered events.
Simon Knight, contract director at Sodexo, who has led the project said, “Hospitality and conferencing is a huge growth area for universities. With our heritage in hospitality and expert knowledge of food, Sodexo can help our university clients deliver high quality events and banqueting which helps to maximise their commercial opportunities.”
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