St Helen's delivers quality public sector catering

St. Helen's council worked with our public sector procurement team to procure their food, drink and catering services. Amidst growing economic pressures and rising costs, St Helen's strives to deliver high-quality catering services while maintaining government standards. In this case study, they share their experience using YPO's solutions to meet these objectives.

Relationship with YPO

St Helens, although a member of the local authority, has used YPO as their preferred public buying organisation of choice for many years, whereas support or guidance from other organisations could never compete. We work closely with the Food & Beverage, IT and Catering teams for procurement of stock and services, to ensure we deliver service excellence, especially within our catering business. Recently, we have engaged with these categories to utilise their professional knowledge, skills and experience, including their compliant public procurement frameworks for various catering service solutions.

We have long-established relationships, born out of trust, reliability and integrity, with all these teams, who provide free support, guidance and direction throughout the whole process. Some of the core reasons are that they understand the local authorities and individual services, including industry needs, in particular the Education Sector, which for us is a vital component.

Challenge - Overspend in public sector catering

St Helens Council's biggest fundamental challenge was the service overspend we were faced with, due to the ever-increasing pressures of rising prices and costs to deliver a high-quality public sector catering service, while keeping aligned to government, legislative requirements and standards. This included our own commitment and evidence as a catering provider and council to provide healthy, nutritious meals, while maintaining a minimum standard of bronze Soil Association accreditation.

We needed to find ways of creating efficiencies and reducing costs while maintaining high-quality public services vital to the community, to assist us in addressing food poverty as one of the authorities with higher obesity rates. We required assistance and guidance from a number of YPO procurement teams, who could provide the essential procurement support, especially pricing and benchmarking, to also recognise the efficiencies that could be created while improving social value, local community focus and supporting our council's journey to Net Zero.

Our procurement process was proving to be an extremely difficult and lengthy process due to staffing pressures and a lack of resources across the business; therefore, we required a solution that would:

• Ensure compliance with public sector procurement regulations

• Help create efficiencies and reduce waste, food miles and ultimately our carbon footprint.

• Provide cost savings on our contracts through aggregated and aligned purchasing.

• Simplify supplier management and KPI reporting.

• Improve sustainability and social value outcomes while ensuring ethical sourcing and care for the environment.

Solution - Procurement strategy overhaul

St Helens School Traded Services approached various YPO procurement teams to overhaul our procurement strategy. They provided access to a wide range of pre-tendered compliant frameworks, with multiple routes to market, along with their procurement expertise, specifically tailored to meet the needs of our public sector services. Use of YPO's bespoke framework proformas and templates was so easy to use, which vastly reduced time constraints, with the ease of knowledge that all documents were up-to-date and compliant, greatly reducing the risk to our business.

Key actions included:

• Utilising YPO Frameworks & Bespoke documents and templates: Our service utilised YPO's frameworks for Food & Beverage, IT and disposables, which reduced lengthy procurement exercises.

• Support & Guidance: These specific teams provided procurement advice and support throughout the process, ensuring compliance and best practices, therefore reducing risks.

• Pricing and benchmarking exercises. Saved time, money and created efficiencies

Collaboration with council departments

We didn't collaborate with any other PBO organisations during this process; however, we liaised with other council departments for cabinet sign-off and public health teams.

Outcomes - Efficiency and compliance in food and beverage services

• Hard work was taken away from us, saving time and resources if we had carried these processes out ourselves.

• Removed barriers of understanding regarding procurement regulations.

• A number of cost-saving contracts were set up across the various categories, which also helped create efficiencies.

• Having foodservice and procurement specialist knowledge, the food & beverage team pre-engaged with suppliers regarding our specifications, which gave us confidence that we were compliant in every way.

• Improved logistics, by aligning contracts through multi-category solutions, to lessen the number of deliveries, through the use of multi-temperature vehicles to help reduce food miles, impact on the environment and our journey to net zero.

• Established full digitisation solutions, using technology to create further efficiencies, performing various kitchen management tasks, giving full peace of mind regarding food safety compliance, especially special diets provision, reduction in allergen risks and food waste.

• Customers received their meal of choice, ensuring service level agreements were achieved and fully evidenced.

• New contracts all met with full-service needs operating on current sectors, but also considerations and foundations were put in place to enable us to move towards a wider commercial portfolio.

• Contracts awarded improved our social value, using local suppliers who also supported local council strategies and community programs.

• We also received help in an emergency when one of our suppliers left the market. Specific frameworks enabled us to direct award to ensure service continuity

Experience - Understanding the needs of local authorities

Working with the procurement teams at YPO is an extremely efficient, knowledgeable and supportive experience, and their ability to understand our needs as a local authority service provider is second to none.

The food & beverage procurement team clearly understood our requirements for the various tenders or direct award scenarios that were put before them, but in a way that took away any concerns we may have had, providing a variety of easy-to-follow tools and comprehensive templates to make the tender processes quick and stress-free.

Timescales and expectations were clear and well managed, and Steve or Cat would always be on hand to respond to any queries, either by phone or email, and this approachability adds another level to their focus on delivering an excellent customer experience.

Working in the education Catering sector is challenging in the current financial climate, and YPO have always understood the difficulties we face as local authority providers, and it is this clear understanding and knowledge of the market and education sector that makes working with them so effortlessly efficient, and we can always rely on their expertise to provide us with best opportunity to make the best most informed decisions on relation to our procurement needs.


To find more about how YPO can support the public sector in procuring catering, food and beverage services, view our catering solutions page.