FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
Sodexo Live! has won the Retail and Leisure Caterer of the Year award at the 2022 Foodservice Cateys.
The Foodservice Cateys celebrate and recognise individuals and businesses in the foodservice industry who produce outstanding work throughout the year.
The panel of judges rewarded Sodexo Live! for its efforts to maximise its potential in catering for football fans at St James’ Park, home of Newcastle United.
The takeover of Newcastle United has resulted in monumental changes for the team at St James Park over the past year. Demand for matchday hospitality, as well as meetings and events, has increased significantly. Over the course of the season, Sodexo Live! welcomed over one million matchday guests to the stadium, with over 50,000 of these guests enjoying hospitality packages that included a la carte fine dining, globally inspired themed dishes, bistro offerings, and more.
The team has also spent the past year concentrating on creativity, innovation and evolving in line with changing consumer behaviour.
They firstly implemented an order and pay option for guests, recognising a new reliance on technology. They launched the W8R app for meetings and events in November 2021 in time for the festive season and experienced an increase in revenue as a result of allowing guests at Christmas parties to place orders from their tables.
The Sodexo Live! team also focused on including fresh, sustainable products sourced from local businesses. They started establishing relationships with top local suppliers, including Geordie Bangers, Ringtons, and Warren Butterworths butchers. This allowed the team to incorporate their products in its packages and offer guests unique offerings not available elsewhere.
Additionally, it gave the team the chance to establish connections with local businesses and the community.
Gemma Nugent, meetings and events operations manager at Newcastle United’s St. James Park, Sodexo UK & Ireland, commented: “Words cannot express how thrilled we are to accept this prestigious award on behalf of our very hard-working staff at NUFC. We are incredibly proud of what we have accomplished to get to where we are after a rollercoaster of a year.”
The Foodservice Cateys awards ceremony took place on Friday, 21 October, at the Royal Lancaster London hotel.
According to Pitney Bowes Parcel Shipping Index, worldwide parcel volume is likely to double in the next five years, with the UK showing the highest increase in carrier revenue of all 13 countries in the Index.
Alongside a huge uptake in the volume of parcel volume and spend, post pandemic, the adoption of hybrid working patterns means that FMs need to find ways to enable staff to book / host collaborative meetings in available workspaces and to find desk, office and parking spaces by utilising automation and data capture to enable site governance.
Yet a recent survey by FMJ in partnership with Pitney Bowes found that 20 per cent of recipients are still using manual paper-based visitor systems, which doesn’t fit with their top priority – to maintain a safe and operational environment.
This overwhelming reliance on paper-based systems is causing many respondents bottlenecks, resulting in a lack of efficiently in logging and tracking packages and people coming into the organisation.
In this webinar, Gary Abbott Director of Business Development and Stuart Bushaway, Head of Dealers Operations and FM Relationships at Pitney Bowes will outline the main findings of the two surveys and what this could mean for FMs, followed by a discussion, chaired by FMJ Editor Sara Bean with a panel of thought leaders into the solutions available to meet these challenges.
Register for the webinar here.
