With a global turnover of around USD 300 billion per year, catering is a highly relevant player in the food service industry. And more importantly, it plays a major role in how and what we eat, without it, catering for the whole population is simply not possible. But what are the biggest challenges in this segment? How does the industry really stand according to hospitality experts? Where are we heading? And what can you do to ensure that we can count on it in the future?
Leading catering experts provide exclusive insights, tips and examples on the state of the industry. In today's world, a restaurant is an entity that (also) functions as a high-profile stage: beautiful food, dedicated creators, passionate chefs, beautiful surroundings. Catering, on the other hand, cannot offer this type of experience. These meals are designed in offices, prepared in commercial kitchens and then delivered to companies, events or airlines, making them less visible to consumers and social media for both. But of course they face many of the same challenges as traditional restaurants. These include climate change, technological revolutions, price rises and the lack of skilled labour.
THE CHALLENGES OF THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY ARE INTERLINKED
Whether big or small, we are all affected by the trials of our times, as in the case of traditional gastronomy. This is because the hospitality industry is a multidimensional structure. Of course it has to be delicious, high-quality and healthy - and preferably creative too. But there are also operational issues: how to get quality goods in large quantities that are also sustainable? What can be done to optimise processes in times of skyrocketing prices? When you dig deeper into such questions, it is surprising how closely related seemingly unrelated areas are in hospitality compared to many other industries. For example, topics such as sustainability and young talent.
SKILLS SHORTAGES AND SUSTAINABILITY IN HOSPITALITY
As great as the potential is for industry technological advances of the last five years, in the long term, you cannot do without competent, motivated employees. “And this has become one of the biggest challenges in the industry since the Crown virus.” - says Lloyd Mann, CEO of Sodexo global executive chef and one of the world's largest and most important restaurateurs.
Serving more than 100 million people in 53 countries every day, he is well aware of the difficulties. „In my opinion, there are two very relevant points when it comes to today's skilled addressing labour shortages we are talking about. We need to make a conscious effort to unlock resources to ensure the development of young people. They need to experience what it means to grow with and because of a company.
Secondly, sustainability also plays a role here. Today's young people want to know where the food their company serves comes from.” If you look closely, there are few players in the food service industry who think so deeply about sustainability or about food using resources sparingly. However, these days it's about more than just vegetarian food that leaves behind the smallest possible ecological footprint thanks to plant-based foods.
NOTHING WORKS IN HOSPITALITY WITHOUT INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS
Oliver Fischer, Director of Culinary Excellence at Gategroup, the world's largest airline catering company, exemplifies this claim. The Swiss-based group serves more than 700 million passengers a year in 60 countries and for years Gategroup has been committed to making hospitality as sustainable as possible - which makes flying itself more sustainable. As well as reducing meat consumption, the focus is on operational efficiency. „It's clear to us that we need data to operate more sustainably,” says Fischer. „In the past, we simply bought everything we could get, cooked it and put it on the aircraft to provide as much food as possible for the passengers. But with the right data, we now know which preferences apply on which flights and which food works best where. This means we can produce more targeted and efficient food, which avoids food waste. As a result, we produce more than 20 percent less waste,” says Fischer. And that's why smart software is essential for any catering business at a time like this.
RAISING PRICES IS NOT THE ONLY SOLUTION
„Production costs have risen in the wake of various crises, but price increases should not be the only solution,” says Carl Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of Apicbase. It's a leading food and beverage management software solution that optimises manufacturing processes by creating a central data system for companies. Beyond food waste, other aspects can be fine-tuned to help the hospitality industry remain profitable in times of war, inflation and high energy prices - even if it sometimes seems impossible.
„You should not only use sales data as a measure, but also the actual profit margin,” says Jacobs. „For example, in our software, a company can centralize its entire back office system. That means everything from recipes to labor hours to food inventory to invoices is linked together. This is difficult at first because it completely reorganises the structure of a company. But experience shows that it optimises many old processes and has been proven to increase profit margins.”
TECHNOLOGY TO MEET THE CHALLENGES OF THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
Progress in the field of kitchen technology shows that sustainability and efficiency go hand in hand. „Rational's energy-efficient steamers are becoming increasingly important in many catering kitchens over traditional gas and charcoal grills,” says the catering expert. „Not only do the latter emit more CO2, they also increase the amount of time that staff spend in kitchens, which, as we know, are simply too few and far between.”
Intelligent cooking systems such as iVario or iCombi allow chefs to save time with their creativity. Especially for new vegetarian or vegan recipes are time-consuming to develop, and the demand for them is growing. What's the advantage? Vegetarian food is generally cheaper to produce, even if it is of high quality, because the price is usually lower than for meat dishes.
Want to know more about the current situation and challenges facing the hospitality industry? Then watch Rational's unique catering TrendTalk in full here:
