The big interview: Elior

Elior, the world’s fifth largest caterer, is one of those companies that appears to be enjoying something of a post-pandemic renaissance, evidenced by its recent first half results published in May. During the six months to the end of March, consolidated revenue amounted to €3.2bn, representing year-on-year organic growth of 1.5%. Meanwhile, net profit soared to £37.2m, from £866, 650 during the first half of 2023.

It seems that a stronger focus on profitable business has paid off handsomely, with organic growth in contract catering being some 2.3% higher due to ‘higher than expected contributions from the United States, Spain and Portugal, and a resilient performance in the United Kingdom’, the company said in its results statement.

Elior UK, however, is not resting on its laurels. It recently rebranded its regional business and industry (B&I) division under the snappier-sounding Elior at Work, following an intensive 14-month research study. The reasoning behind this move was twofold: the contract catering industry itself is changing and so too are customer preferences.

“We’ve now got some massive [catering] companies and some up-and-coming companies, which undoubtedly do a fantastic job, but don’t necessarily have the right infrastructure in place,” observes divisional director Calum McLaren.

His goal is to secure the middle ground of B&I catering, which continues to be something of a sweet spot for potential new business, as well as for existing clients. “We want to establish Elior at Work as a medium-sized business where we can deliver all the same initiatives as the bigger companies, but at the same time one that remains fluid, innovative and responsive when it comes to our clients’ needs,” he says.

The first step towards that achievement involved a deep dive into understanding how the market might evolve in coming years; and importantly the impact that generation z, which will account for 58% of the workforce within the next five years, will exert upon it. Elior’s ensuing study was a collaborative effort involving both internal and external participants, including those with expertise in craft skills, marketing and nutrition. “We wanted to create a really strong brand identity,” explains McLaren. “We also wanted to ensure we got everything right and were fit for purpose, both now and in the future.”

While the research was bespoke and painstaking, in the end the direction of travel boiled down to five essential ingredients, mainly underpinned by gen z preferences: quality of food and nutrition; health and wellbeing; sustainability; innovation and technology; and a focus on employing the best people. While many of these requirements are espoused by other catering companies, Elior is determined to make its approach more practical and finely attuned than theoretical. “We really dug down into the actual delivery of all that,” says McLaren. “We wanted to ensure that we deliver the right nutrition to make workforces flourish, while at the same time serving them food that tastes great, otherwise people won’t buy it.”

This simple principle underpins much of McLaren’s own personal philosophy. Most of the Scots-born caterer’s 20-year career has been spent working in a variety of operational roles for Elior, save for a seven-year gap in between when he left to become a general manager for Benugo, part of Westbury Street Holdings, at Edinburgh Castle, before returning in 2017. And despite the number of changes, fads, trends and concepts that have shaped the industry over those years, he maintains that the fundamental principles of good hospitality remain unchanged. "Catering is not difficult,” he reasons. “As long as you focus on the people and the food, everything else falls into place."

While these principles apply to workers of all ages, understanding the needs of gen z appear, on the face of things, different from what has gone before. Apart from anything, these youngsters are glued to a far greater degree to technology for much of their communications and transactions.

They are sometimes dismissed unfairly as being ‘snowflakes’, but are in reality they are generally a sensible bunch who appear to like moderation in most things. Again, Elior’s own findings appear to concur with the view that gen z, unlike their older peers, eschew extreme diets in favour of a more balanced relationship with food. They want meals that support mental health, good gut microbiome and healthy blood sugar levels. They are also less likely to binge drink than older generations, with a higher percentage than other age groups, preferring to drink non-alcoholic or low-alcohol beverages.

Sustainability is also a major consideration for gen z, who are more likely to seek brands that align with their own environmental and ethical beliefs, and are willing to pay more to do so. A new series of measures forms part of the core foundation of the new Elior at Work, much of them underpinned by technology. “To make Elior at Work successful, we really need to make sure we are really across the technology side, making sure that our digital ordering, self-checkouts, smart vending and robotics are all in place to support the brand and our customers,” says McLaren.

Those measures include extensive carbon labelling, which allows customers to select dishes on the basis of environmental impact. The division has also launched ‘Kitchen Reclaimed’ to encourage its chefs to repurpose ingredients that might otherwise be wasted by turning by-products into new menu items. CauliBox, a digital food container return scheme, has also been launched at Elior at Work sites, allowing customers to borrow reusable boxes with a tap of a card and to get their holding fees back on their return. All this is designed to encourage a shift away from single-use packaging.

And there is still more to come. Elior at Work will shortly launch its Food Print Reporting Assistant at selected sites. This digital tool will connect directly with site menus to identify dishes generating the most waste and pinpointing where improvements might be made in real time. This will form a key plank in Elior's net-zero strategy, which pledges to cut food waste by 50% by 2030. A fully robotic kitchen is also underway, which is expected to be trialled at an Elior at Work site later this year.

Innovative technology is also intertwined with menus and underpins support for customers who want to make healthier choices, but who sometimes feel confused by the morass of conflicting advice on social media. “We know that consumers want to make healthy choices, but sometimes they require help in order to do so,” says McLaren.

Eatuitive, a wellness concept, provides educational resources, such as videos and online seminars, as well as practical nutritional hacks, allowing customers to adapt this knowledge to their own individual preferences and requirements. Dishes are broken down clearly by their fibre, saturated fat and protein content. Each dish on the menu is clearly labelled to meet nutritional criteria of at least 3g of fibre per 100g, no more than 1.5g of saturated fat per 100g, and at least 12% of kilocalories from protein. This enables customers to make choices tailored to their individual requirements.

Significantly, Elior initially chose to test-drive Eatuitive at a large manufacturing, multi-site business involved on the shopfloor with metals and heavy machinery, where the overall workforce was split more or less equally between white- and blue-collar workers. “We were really surprised at the high level of uptake,” admits McLaren. “We instinctively felt it would sit well with the white-collar element, but were pleasantly surprised to see how popular it was with the blue-collar workers too. There is evidently a growing and strong desire by all customers, regardless of age, to eat more healthily.”

Perhaps less surprisingly, Elior’s research also flagged up a continuing appetite for food choice and variety. To this end, Elior at Work operates Street Kitchen Collective, which combines its own concepts with carefully selected partners to provide an array of global food choices. These can include everything from Aegean-inspired healthy bowl food to West African chicken stews. It is designed to be flexible, so it is available as a series of pop-ups or individual dishes that can be integrated into main menus.

While all of this is hugely important to gen z consumers, it is also increasingly compelling to older generations, who McLaren maintains are also becoming more health conscious. “The rest of the market is catching up with that, and in effect it is becoming one market for good, nutritious food that’s also healthy for you and gives you strength to get you through your day,” he says.

But while much of Elior’s workplace market is coalescing around issues such as health, sustainability and wider menu choice, progress does not necessarily exclude regional differences or old-fashioned favourites. McLaren’s geographic area of responsibility is a huge one, spanning everywhere from Aberdeen to Portsmouth. This keeps him travelling by car, rail and air from his home in the central belt of Scotland to support his three operational directors, teams and clients.

And despite the extensive changes that are now in place, menus remain sufficiently flexible to also capture the regional favourites. “This means we are not inadvertently forcing a dish on someone in Aberdeen that only really appeals to people down south and vice versa,” explains McLaren. In Corby, in the East Midlands, for example, there are workers of Scottish descent whose forbears initially migrated down south to work in the mining industry. “Their descendants still favour a Lorne sausage – a square sausage – something that is generally unheard of in England, which wecontinue to provide.”

Understanding these differences, as well as more contemporary preferences, is part of future-proofing Elior at Work’s brand. As McLaren maintains: “If you invest in your people, and invest in making sure you are providing the right food, you will be successful.”

You may also be interested in…