A corporate caterer feeds offices, tech parks and company events on a contract. Cooks, servers and counter staff are judged by the client's employees every day, so presence, manners and consistency decide renewals.
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Share your requirementsA corporate caterer holds contracts with offices, campuses and tech parks. The work has two sides. One is the daily cafeteria or pantry service, with a fixed team on site, a menu cycle, a rate per meal or per head and a client contact who reviews it. The other is event catering for meetings, launches and festive lunches, which needs extra hands at short notice. Staff work among the client's own employees, who notice a late counter, an untidy apron or a rude word. A site manager or supervisor often runs two or three sites. A change in the client's headcount or a new facilities manager can alter the staffing in a week. The wider food and beverage hub covers what food businesses share.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
A counter person's manner, a cold dish or a slow queue is noticed by hundreds of people, and complaints travel quickly to the facilities head.
A supervisor covers sites across a city, so standards drift on the days they are absent and the cook becomes the only authority.
A client cuts or adds employees on site and the caterer must resize the team within days, without losing the people who know the site.
Cooks and servers working at someone else's premises can feel unseen by their own employer, and leave for a closer, steadier job.
The same ten dishes in a four week cycle bore both the cooks and the diners, and the energy at the counter falls.
A launch lunch pulls people from the regular counter, and both the daily service and the event suffer if nobody plans it.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Onboarding and Probation; Performance Management; Employee Engagement and Experience. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for food and beverage, not in general.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a corporate caterers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A page naming the client contact, service timings, menu cycle, dress standard and escalation steps, handed to every new person on arrival.
What this coversHideA page naming the client contact, service timings, menu cycle, dress standard and escalation steps, handed to every new person on arrival. See the employee onboarding process.
A limit on sites per supervisor, with visits that include early mornings and the lunch rush.
What this coversHideA limit on sites per supervisor, with visits that include early mornings and the lunch rush.
A short routine on greeting, handling a complaint and queue control.
What this coversHideA short routine on greeting, handling a complaint and queue control. The customer-service skills training suits this.
A few trained people who rotate across sites, so events do not strip the daily counter.
What this coversHideA few trained people who rotate across sites, so events do not strip the daily counter. Use the attendance and leave process to plan them.
Client feedback, wastage, absence and complaints on one sheet, reviewed monthly.
What this coversHideClient feedback, wastage, absence and complaints on one sheet, reviewed monthly. Performance management can supply the format.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A site brief and first week plan for cooks and servers joining a client premises.
Float teams, early shifts and cover so no counter opens short.
Counter manners, queue handling and complaint calming for staff facing client employees.
A monthly site scorecard that clients and supervisors can both read.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in food and beverage, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Kitchen, service and outlet staff leave quickly in food and beverage. How to ask what lies behind the first answer, compare outlets and act on what you learn.
7 min readRead article
Hour by hour, then week by week, for a recruit's first month at a module, inverter, pack or junction box line: safety and handling first, a practice bench, a buddy, a sign-off and a day-30 review.
7 min readRead article
Measures that show how reactor, console, lab and gantry staff are really doing, the ones that mislead or bury near misses, and a monthly sheet an in-charge can run in twenty minutes.
7 min readRead article
Eighty per cent responded, the report was thorough, and six months later trust was lower than before. What went wrong between the survey and the silence.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Visit often, recognise good work, give a clear path to supervisor and keep pay on time. People stay where someone notices them.
Use ten minute sessions before opening, on one habit at a time. Pair a new person with a steady one for the first week.
Keep a float team, move the most flexible people first and tell the affected staff early. Honest notice protects trust.
It depends on size and distance. Test it by asking when each site was last seen at lunch. If some are not seen for weeks, the span is too wide.
Not entirely. A float team protects the daily counter. Pay extra for event hours so the regular staff see a benefit.
First we would visit one site at lunch, ask the manager what the client complains about and count sites per supervisor. A site brief and a counter manners routine are a natural first piece of work, with scope agreed in writing.
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