Foodservice forum: The high street

How do you compete with the high street?

Angus Brydon
Managing director, BM
We know our customers so we’re tailoring our offer to their needs. We’re able to provide a wider variety of dishes catering to people’s preferences, and dietary and allergen requirements, as opposed to the high street’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach where there’s one gluten-free, one vegan option and so on.

Not only do we understand our customers’ needs, but we also understand how and when they want to eat. Therefore, when they come into the workplace, we are able to offer them what they want and need at different times. 

By catering more specifically for individuals and offering a wider range of allergens, our customers subsequently feel more confident about eating the food being served in the workplace and feel included, rather than feeling they must bring their own food in.

Price is one of the biggest ways that we are competitive against the high street. Unlike high street outlets, we’re being supported by our clients as a vital part of their drive to increase footfall back into the workplace. 

Previously you could argue it was a perk, but now, with customers feeling the pinch of inflation and companies realising the value of a quality catering offer in attracting their workers back to the office, it has become key. As part of this, we’ve been able to increasingly subsidise our offer and move some retail offerings towards free issue modelling. Where that isn’t available, tariffs have been frozen. 

We are also able to lead the way in terms of innovation and creativity because, rather than having to stick to a set concept, we can explore the huge variety of cuisines and food styles available, including through pop-ups and themed events. 

We’re the more sustainable option. Whereas high street brands must serve items in single-use, disposable packaging, we’ve started to eradicate disposables across our business.

In an attempt to combat staff shortages and speed up service, some high street brands have started using digital ordering. However, in many cases, this has meant a reduction in service and I’m not even sure if they’re always any faster. 

We’ve purposely shied away from complete tech-based service, as we feel people use our facilities for that personal touch. They want to get away from the desk and interact with our teams. In many ways, we are bettering the high street in terms of quality of service and offering.

Sam Hurst
Chief grazing officer, Grazing 
We started out on the high street and cut our teeth there. We don't come from a corporate contract catering background, so we don’t necessarily think of the high street as competition, or as leading the way in terms of trends that we then must follow in foodservice. Contract catering doesn’t have to compete with the high street – we can be a complementary service alongside it, as long as we’re offering something different.

For us, it’s more about understanding customer preferences, the trends that are out there and offering our customers something new that they may not have seen elsewhere. The way customers behave in a foodservice environment and their needs and wants will be different from what they expect and want from a high street outlet. 

Our priority is identifying what it is our customers want and expect from us, and how they behave differently in the workplace compared to when they’re retail customers. We then make sure that we’re meeting what they expect and want from us, rather than recreating a high street brand in an office environment.

Our menus draw inspiration from all corners of the world, designed by a bunch of passionate foodies always looking to try new things. We thrive on innovating and creating new dishes, which is great because our customers look to us for variety. They don’t expect the same familiar salad or sandwich to be available to them day-in, day-out – they can get that elsewhere. 

We change our menus every single day and typically only repeat a dish a maximum of four times in any year. Therefore, the variety is massive compared to the high street, where there is wide choice of operators but largely static menus with only occasional seasonal variations. 

We’ve always felt that the best way to attract people is curiosity, the ‘ooh’ effect. ‘Ooh, what’s this? What does it taste like? What’s in it?’ A dish that’s visually appealing, combined with an intriguing description, can be all you need. 

Just like us, our customers are keen to try new things, be challenged and are happy to explore what the world has to offer their tastebuds during their lunch hour. And it’s not just the younger generation either, we’re seeing this across all demographics. 

They’re looking to us to provide a continually changing offer.

Sean Ritson
Divisional director, Lexington Catering
When Lexington Catereing began, our aim was to match the quality of food available on the high street. After 20 years, we know we can surpass it. Anyone can get the same sandwich from a high street retailer every day. At Lexington, we have the autonomy to change our menus regularly, if not daily, creating a diverse offering.

London has every possible cuisine available for its audience, so we need to be creative in our offerings in order to match these expectations. Across our kitchens at client sites, we offer a plethora of cuisine styles, hot food, grab-and-go options and hospitality. Every customer has unique requirements, so there is no uniform approach to how we manage sites. Teams are empowered to do what feels right for the client, the environment they are in and the demographic they are serving.

To ensure we always exceed the high street, we partner with several social enterprises to give our offering more impact. Examples include our partnership with Change Please, a social enterprise that uses its profits to train people experiencing homelessness to be baristas, and provide help with accommodation and employment after their training is complete. Elior UK and Lexington have committed to funding the training of five new baristas and we serve Change Please coffee at most of our client locations.

We also work with Fat Macy’s, a social enterprise that supports people to move on from temporary to permanent accommodation through 200-hour culinary and hospitality training and grants, and access to a rental deposit. We are introducing Fat Macy’s trainees to our client sites via their own pop-up kitchens, with trained chefs managing them, offering high-quality food options for our clients.

As well as our commitment to social value, we partner with smaller businesses to bring their food to more consumers. Through our partnership with Sessions, we can introduce new and exciting independent brands into the corporate space. We are the exclusive contract caterer for Sessions, giving us and our clients access to innovative new catering options while also supporting growing independent brands.

Giving our clients the opportunity to support the communities they operate in, and buy and eat from local, ethical suppliers, is an attractive benefit that is often not an option when considering the high street fast food outlets that we compete with.

For many corporate businesses, food has been a vehicle to get people back into the office. Our clients have empowered us to create new and innovative ways to make our food offerings enticing, including an emphasis on important food trends such as health- and wellbeing-focused options.

Our partnership with The Gut Stuff has led to the introduction of the ‘Gut-loving Kitchen’, creating menus that are designed to offer meals that are high in fibre and other important nutrients that are good for gut health. The Gut-loving Kitchen will be available across all our client sites. The highly health-tailored nature of this new kitchen is an example of how we are responding to customers’ needs, and have the agility to adapt our menus to create more diverse food options that go above and beyond what many high street retailers are offering.  

It is through these avenues that we can offer our clients a level of competitive advantage that successfully rivals or exceeds what is on offer on the high street.

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