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A brand-new digital restaurant concept has opened at Colchester Hospital offering all hospital staff, visitors and patients a convenience-led offer serving an extensive range of affordable meals underpinned by a commitment to sustainable sourcing.
The design of the new Kitchen Works restaurant has been carefully considered to reduce queuing times, improve the speed of ordering and collection of food to help busy hospital staff, particularly frontline teams, maximise their break times and allowing more time for customers to enjoy their food.
With the new ‘pre-ordering’ and ‘click and collect’ food service, customers can order via an app or the in-restaurant kiosks to order on their arrival, with food delivered within minutes to take away or eat in.
The new restaurant features different seating options from breakout areas and soft seating for those requiring a quick drink and chat, larger community tables for teams/families to gather and enjoy meals together, traditional restaurant-style tables.
The restaurant also provides a 24/7 offer of ready meals, ‘grab-and-go’ section with salad, soups, sandwiches, drinks and treats available around the clock.
Menus feature daily chef-created dishes, limited time offers, weekly theme days and events, local favourites and global flavours. There will also be regular street food pop-ups under Sodexo’s Hawkers brand, with concepts including Indian, Greek, Lebanese, Korean, South East Asian, Caribbean, Brazilian and African foods.
Hospital staff using the app benefit from staff discount, loyalty programme, exclusive offers and the ability to customise and save their order.
Philip Leigh, CEO Sodexo Health & Care said: “The new digital Kitchen Works restaurant has been designed to give time back to people, and to drive efficiencies for our hospital clients, their workforce and their users. Whilst time is of the essence, the food is high quality and the range extensive. Kitchen Works enables us to deliver on our promise of ‘good food made easy’.”
Colchester Hospital is part of the East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT) which appointed Sodexo Health & Care as its soft facilities management services partner. Sodexo’s appointment the result of ESNEFT’s decision to move to a single, consistent approach across all its sites with one partner. These services include catering, housekeeping, cleaning, portering and security.
