Westpac Waikato Business Excellence Awards, Claudelands, Friday 5 November 2015. Photo: Stephen Barker/Barker Photography. ©Barker Photography
Ten years of fresh food service solutions is culminating in ten fresh foodie ways to celebrate for Hamilton-based catering management company Cater Plus.
The company plans to reward and delight clients, customers, suppliers and staff throughout the year with ten 10th birthday treats, including free tablets, supermarket vouchers, fruit and vege hampers, movie tickets, a commemorative recipe book, and a big birthday bash to mark the milestone.
“Cater Plus owes all of it’s success to the fantastic people who work for us, and the clients and suppliers we partner with who support us. We couldn’t do it without them, and ten years is a great time to tell everybody what they mean to us,” says CEO Paul Hodge.
Born in Hodge’s backyard on February 27th, 2006, Cater Plus has grown from his vision of a catering industry that could deliver passion for food and excellence in service while still meeting all the necessary demands of compliance and economies of scale. He began by delivering great service, person by person—an approach Cater Plus still embodies to this day.
They have been showing the North Island service the way it should be ever since, running over 35 corporate cafes, student cafeterias and residential meal services. Innovation remains the name of the game, and it takes a lot of it to make both company lunch queues and the bottom line smile the way Cater Plus does.
“Everything is personalised to solve problems and create efficiencies. Because we are local we’ve got the local relationships and decision-making to do new things quickly and easily,” Hodge says.
One of those efficient solutions quickly and easily took on a life of it’s own. Cater Plus Point of Sale (POS) is a purpose built catering software system that handles everything from the cash register to purchasing, rosters, sales data and financial reporting. The system not only makes life easier for managers and staff, it gives clients total transparency and insight into site performance and informs continuous improvement. The system is currently being adapted for markets outside the catering industry.
Winner of the 2015 Health and Wellbeing Award at the Westpac Waikato Business Excellence Awards, Cater Plus has also been a market leader in corporate and community health. Recognising that supporting healthy eating is now part of many corporate wellness programmes, Cater Plus cafeteria menus are developed to meet The Heart Foundation’s Healthy Cafeteria Menu Guidelines, taking on all the healthy lifting for businesses to provide the right food choices for staff. Through The Cater Plus Foundation, the company also joined the fight against youth obesity in partnership with Monty Betham’s Steps for Life Foundation.
“These last ten years have given us so many opportunities, but the best has been the opportunity to create opportunities for others,” Hodge says. “I hope that will be the legacy of Cater Plus for a long time to come.”
