Fosters Event Catering has developed a new initiative to create and safely deliver thousands of meals to the region’s workforce on a daily basis.
Desk Dining will be based at Fosters’ large city-centre production kitchens where experienced staff will make pre-packaged meals for direct delivery to workplaces, offices and schools.
Neil Lodge, chief executive at Fosters Events said: “As a large-scale, quality hospitality catering business, well-versed in delivering dinners for one thousand people or more at any given time or location, Fosters has been thinking about how and what we can do differently and what, for the time being, our ‘new normal’ could be.”
“Great food and service comes in many guises and this is why Fosters is developing and producing high quality, locally sourced and seasonal pre-packaged meals in sealed containers which can be delivered direct to workplaces, offices, colleges or schools.”
“That will help office staff or students to avoid busy restrooms or canteens and will also mean they don’t have to leave the premises to purchase food or snacks in places where they might run the risk of picking up the virus. Instead, they can collect their nutritious meal and take it to a place where they can socially-distance, confident that their meal has been safely produced.”
“It’s all about adapting to what is being called the ‘new normal’,” said Mr Lodge. “Our new normal means that for the time being there are no large gatherings like sporting events, gala evenings or weddings where we would be doing the catering. Our new normal has meant that, although we’ve had to furlough 90 percent of our staff, 25 of them have volunteered to come in and provide 300 meals a day for front-line NHS staff through the Food For Heroes programme.”
“Desk dining could become the ‘new normal’ for quite a long time to come… It stands to reason that we are ideally equipped to provide this solution – we have large central production kitchens where we can scale-up to feeding 1000 or 2000 people day. And we are talking about good nutritional food which has, for the most part, been sourced within just 20 miles of Bristol.”