Royal Free Hospital’s Culinary Transformation with NHS Supply Chain: Food

Royal Free Hospital, serving over 10,000 staff and 360,000 patients annually, embarked on a culinary transformation in partnership with NHS Supply Chain: Food in September 2024.

With a strong leadership mindset and a commitment to excellence, the hospital aimed to refresh its food offering in their restaurant, promoting healthier eating, and creating a model that could be replicated NHS-wide. 

A Culinary Plan was devised by Culinary Specialist Michael Sharp at NHS Supply Chain: Food, meaning a plan was put in place with objectives on what was to be achieved in a one-year period from 2024 to 2025, with various types of support being offered by the team including engagement events and training onsite and becoming the trusted advisors to Royal Free.

This Culinary Plan and the overall involvement from NHS Supply Chain: Food supported the trust’s SmartPlate NHS Staff plan. The SmartPlate plan is a pioneering food program meticulously crafted for NHS employees, directly addressing prevalent health concerns by fostering sustainable, informed, and inclusive eating habits. Acknowledging the unique demands of healthcare professions and the specific dietary challenges including excessive sugar, saturated fat, and salt intake, insufficient fruit, vegetable, fibre, and oily fish consumption, and deficiencies in vitamins like A and iron. The program empowers staff to make healthier choices that yield lasting results.

Working together the trust now has a model of continuous improvement that any Catering Manager within trusts in England can follow, to achieve sustainability, customer satisfaction and profitability goals.

We’ve worked with the trust from Culinary engagement days, to pop up events in the restaurant, we’ve mentored staff as well as giving general advice and guidance.

Michael Sharp, Culinary Specialist, NHS Supply Chain: Food

Royal Free is an exemplar trust, meaning they are committed to providing the best possible service across the trust. The recognition is part of an NHS England initiative to enhance hospital food standards nationwide and set benchmarks for trusts across the country. They were keen to improve their offer, as their restaurant menu required a refresh, and when the new executive chef joined the team keen to improve what was on offer, Michael and the team at NHS Supply Chain: Food set about supporting the onsite culinary team with doing this, helping to reignite their passion for feeding staff, visitors and patients within the hospital.

A consultant within the trust reached out to Larry Rosenthal, Catering Manager at Royal Free, to see how he could conduct a pilot model of healthier eating which could remain profitable for the trust as well as promoting a healthier lifestyle. NHS Supply Chain: Food felt it provided them with a great opportunity to collaborate on a plan of support works and deliverable measurables that could help this new project over the year.

The trust wanted support from the team to create a more diverse healthy menu with an emphasis on plant-based dishes to compliment the staple dishes currently on the menu. They were also keen to create a culture of a healthier workforce and change the mindset of people coming to the restaurant. They wanted to challenge and improve what they ate on a day-to-day basis. 

They set the following catering objectives – to develop the culinary team, to help with recipe engineering (involving the precise calculation and documentation of the ingredients, quantities, and methods required to create a dish), to support with the training across all kitchen aspects, and to make plant-based food shine and introduce the SmartPlate NHS concept.

The key features of SmartPlate included:

• Nutritional Nudging – Healthier options are made more visible and convenient.
• Diverse, Culturally Inclusive Menus – Supporting all dietary needs and preferences.
• Interactive Events: – BBQs, street food, and global cuisines to engage staff and promote healthy eating.
• Continuous Feedback Loop – Monthly menu updates based on staff input.
• Home Cooking Support – Affordable, easy recipes to help fight food poverty.
• Sustainability Focus – Low-carbon operations and British Dietetic Association (BDA) compliant meals.

NHS Supply Chain: Food evaluated the trust and where it could add value in terms of improvements within the team and the offer. They identified the needs of the trust, zeroing in on plant-based dishes that the trust’s Food Advisory Group (a trust-wide working group) would be happy to welcome onto their menus.

Dietetics and nutrition support was given to understand what the needs and wants of the Food Advisory Group were, whether it fit in with national health and evidenced based agendas. It was identified that there were requirements for more sustainable approaches in the restaurant, as well as demand for plant-based dishes. This was supported by utilising the Culinary Concept Root Kitchen, developed by the chefs and dietetics team for hospital settings, which pioneers plant-based recipes.

Further to this advice was given on how the trusts current recipes could be adapted to help fit in line with public health agendas and the demand from the Food Advisory Group to reduce cost and environmental impact.

The advice and support was developed alongside the culinary team in NHS Supply Chain: Food, ensuring that the approach was adapted specifically for the most effective and practical use in the hospital’s restaurant setting. By combining culinary with nutrition support NHS Supply Chain: Food empowered the culinary staff in the hospital to be able to actively apply their knowledge in their everyday setting.

A showcase of dishes were presented to representatives from Royal Free at an offsite event to demonstrate the types of dishes that could be implemented on their new menus.

The team then moved onto the training and aspect of the plan. They conducted internal training to all the catering team at the hospital to support the executive chef on how to deliver on the trust’s objectives. They delivered a Chefs Academy event, falling in line with the trusts vision to upskill and excite their staff about the new menu ideas.

Chefs Academy was developed by NHS Supply Chain: Food after recognising a gap in training and resources for NHS chefs. The team teach culinary skills through hands-on cooking, inspiring them to cook new recipes and look at cost and time efficiency producing these meals. They provide the opportunity to learn new dishes using our approved products. Attendance can also count towards a chef’s NHS Chef Apprenticeship.

The dietetic and nutrition team supported in the training, providing the staff with what healthy eating represents, basic information of what they can do to contribute to the public health agenda goals and empowering the staff to take that information and apply it to their recipes. They detailed why sustainability was important in the current time, why there is a push for plant-based meals and helped to break down barriers surrounding this. They provided the team with an allergen refresher, to promote safety and safe practices in their role, reinforcing how important they are in the hospital landscape.

The team then moved onto another Culinary Engagement Day, a pop-up event where the NHS Supply Chain: Food team supported the inhouse culinary team to cook and serve some plant-based menu dishes at the restaurant to staff and visitors.

The event was a great success and new recipes from the Bamboo Culinary Concept were experienced for the first time. The Culinary Concepts were devised by the team, thoughtfully crafted to provide catering teams with healthy and innovative food options for both staff and visitors, having undergone thorough nutritional analysis and accommodating different dietary requirements allowing trusts to easily find recipes tailored to specific nutritional needs.

Bamboo is an on-trend Pan-Asian culinary concept, and on the day the team served Bao buns, Katsu fries and pickled vegetables with multiple toppings. The offer was tasty, healthy and appetising, something new and fresh, and went down fantastically well with staff and visitors alike. It gave a new enthusiasm to the culinary staff about the food they were cooking and serving at the restaurant.   

I`ve been working with Larry, Patrick and the team at Royal Free since I started in January 2022, and they have always been very engaging, great to deal with on a day to day, very forward-thinking as a trust and within their catering team.  The Culinary Plan, with all the support Michael, has been giving has been working well. We supported the Royal Free team to deliver a very busy, successful Culinary Engagement Day. This has also supported what we are doing with the trust on procurement projects and to drive savings and has led to both Whittington NHS Trust and North Middlesex NHS Trust being part of a North London Collaboration with more hospitals to be included soon.

Kesley Hull, Food Account Manager, NHS Supply Chain

The NHS Supply Chain: Food Procurement and Account Management Teams were able to support with competition-based exercises to drive costs down and help make major savings for the trust. Through their frameworks (contractual agreements that are put in place after an open or restricted tender process) on offer, this drives savings as well as giving trusts a compliant route to market.

On recommendation from Kesley Hull, Food Account Manager for Royal Free, the trust started to make some changes to their purchasing. A new Vending Solutions contract was awarded in October 2024, projected to make the trust savings from supplier rebates of up to £40,000 per annum.

The NHS Supply Chain Catalogue has proved to be a useful tool for the trust from late 2024 onwards for their ambient food purchases, making savings of £70,000 for the trust. In addition the trust stands to make a saving of £100,000 in overall rebates through NHS Supply Chain: Food’s Multi Temperature Food Solutions framework. These savings will be ongoing now for the trusts, as the education is in place – Kesley, Michael and the team worked through all the stumbling blocks the trust had in their processes, which enabled them to streamline their spending and increase their savings wherever possible.

The roll-out of new dishes, methods and ideas has led to a real change in mindset at the trust about healthy eating. The team are now working on a full adoption of plant-based dishes to cover the week, to compliment the old favourites on offer in the restaurant.

The expertise and passion of NHS Supply Chain: Food’s Culinary experts and educators has been transformative. They didn’t just help revitalise our menus, they ignited a new level of culinary creativity within our entire team. They supported us in improving our carbon footprint, giving a better taste to our offer, and improving financials in terms of the sales we make in our restaurant.

They’ve helped tick all the boxes. We’ve gone from serving meals to crafting dining experiences, and the positive impact on our patients, staff and visitors has been remarkable. Since Michael and team have began helping, we have recorded a 14% increase in sales in the restaurant, even though we have not even implemented everything yet. We are committed to continuous change, and regularly update our menus to keep things fresh, offering plant-based dishes everyone wants to eat. We’ve also had dietetics support from NHS Supply Chain: Food in the form of a training day, which has also been invaluable.

Larry Rosenthal, Catering Manager Royal Free London Property Services Ltd at Royal Free Hospital

Michael and the team have fully supported us. The salad bar at the restaurant has been greatly improved for example – customers are happy and savings are being made, the offer has been increased with more pulses included, and on Michael’s suggestion we are now charging for the salads based on weight not size. The sales have made a significant difference to the savings being made for the trust. We have even started BBQ’s including homemade burgers which have been a huge success.

Nigel Brinkhurst, Executive Head Chef at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

The objectives of the partnership between Royal Free and NHS Supply Chain: Food were met and the relationship continues to be strong – the team are on the trusts speed dial, and offer ways to enhance menu diversity, promoting healthier eating, and are on hand to further develop the culinary team and continue to support the trust in creating a blueprint for other trusts to follow. By partnering with NHS Supply Chain: Food, Royal Free have created an innovative footprint for NHS catering services, which can be adopted by other trusts.

The driving force behind this was to support new catering mangers in the industry by giving them a model they can pick up and run with, improving the food offer across the country.  The SmartPlate plan empowers NHS staff to make better food choices, improves satisfaction, supports financial and environmental goals, and fosters long-term healthy habits. The SmartPlate for NHS Staff will be developed further now into a SmartPlate for patients, ensuring sustainability and health are at the forefront of the model.

To express interest in joining a Culinary Event send an email confirming your trust name, location and job title with your full contact details.

Food Team

food@supplychain.nhs.uk

See our Useful Links section for more information about the added value services NHS Supply Chain: Food can offer your trust.