YOUR Civic Catering Service

Over the past few years, here at Cityserve we’ve been laying deep foundations to make sure that we are ethically-driven, quality-focused, civic-minded and secure for your future. Last year saw us make significant strides: winning catering awards, opening our new Qualsafe Learning & Development Centre, investing in technology and above all, becoming a total education catering service; Cityserve is now 100% focused on food provision which means that we can continue to improve, innovate and grow so that more schools and more children can benefit from the only education catering service that exists solely for them. We don’t have shareholders – you are municipal stakeholders; we’re all about the kids.

We’re different from contract sector caterers. As a civic service, we belong to you, and we don’t make profits out of the children we feed. We won’t compromise on standards or get involved in a cost/quality race to the bottom like many of our competitors. Our focus is on excellence and we aspire to be the best and to provide the healthiest food possible - developing inquisitive minds and healthy bodies. 

We’ve been working hard to align our services with your needs – at the same time mindful that balancing budgets and doing more with less is now a common aspect of school life.  Over the coming months we’re very excited to be able to introduce inclusively:

CITYSERVE|PAY - our exclusive interactive pre-ordering system manages parent-payments online and combines meal selection with registration. The system has proven to increase meal uptake, reduce food-waste and save substantial time allocated to cash-handling and reconciliation. We look forward to showing you how much time and money our system can save you.   

SAFFRON - the introduction of catering management software will bring a new layer of efficiency in school kitchens whilst supplying real-time, on-time financial reporting enabling a tight-rein on budgets. Our new Purchase to Pay IT system and in-house foodservice procurement team will ensure the best possible, locally sourced products, all efficiently ordered and paid for online allowing-for greater optimisation of prices and spending.

DEDICATED COMMERCIAL BUSINESS MANAGERS – your Total Education Catering service will be supported by a team of dedicated specialists. Without distraction, your named Business Manager will be focused on your needs to ensure optimised growth, financial performance and food/customer service quality. Our new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) IT system will ensure excellence in reporting, task delivery and SLA management.

PROFESSIONAL CHEF SUPPORT – unit catering teams will be mentored and developed by a named field chef who will ensure delivery of the highest standards of food, presentation and customer-service, as well as all aspects of food-safety/legislative compliance. Our Head Development Chef is responsible for R&D (research and development) and will continue to support Food for Life standard, School Food Plan compliant ‘fun and fresh’ menu concepts and marketing as part of your package. CityKitchen Live is our ‘open-to-all’ development kitchen, and we’ll be delivering more interactive educational events than ever.   

These innovations come ‘fully-inclusive’ as part of our traditional Direct Service contracts. For schools that cater in house, everything we do is available as a bolt-on, as part of CITYSERVE|SELECT which offers our award winning services to all, on a pay as you go basis.

These changes are helping us to refocus your Cityserve, streamlining what we do to deliver a class-leading business. But while we’re moving forward, at our heart we’re exactly who we’ve always been doing what we always do - feeding the region’s children a nutritional, tasty diet. Unlike plenty of other companies out there we’re not motivated by profit - just by the health and wellbeing of our children. And that’s never going to change.