The South East’s leading independent foodservice wholesaler, Q Catering, has been awarded a sizeable sole supply agreement with Independent Catering Management (ICM).
ICM is one of the leading school meal providers in the Southeast of England and has been at the forefront of providing fresh and fabulous food to schools for over 26 years. After 15 years of sharing the business with Brakes, Q Catering is proud to announce they have been awarded a sole supply agreement for frozen and chilled products.
Steve Clarke, Managing Director at Q Catering, tells Wholesale Manager how the new deal will benefit both parties.
Q Catering has won sole supply agreement with Independent Catering Management. What benefits will this bring to Q Catering’s business?
This is going to be a win-win for both sides. For Q Catering, it gives us that stability, having them sign up for a three-year contract and enabling us to supply the majority of their needs gives us that volume, which gives us buying power. It gives us a bit of stability from a contract point of view. That enables us to service them at the level they want to be serviced at. We treat them specially so that if there are any issues, any special requirements, any projects, any products they specifically need, any issues they have with their business, we react very quickly and we are able to put a dedicated person on to that, to manage that account and make sure that it is as seamless as it needs to be.
From a Q Catering perspective, we tend to grow with them. So if they bring on a new school, it automatically comes on to our books and we work with them collaboratively to make sure we service that new school in the way that they need to be serviced. If there are any special requirements with delivery days, with areas the goods need to be delivered to, if we need to put the goods away for the kids, we’ll do that. The service element we bring to them helps them but their support of us in buying the products helps us with our buying power.
How many products are in Q Catering’s range?
We are around the 2,000 mark at the moment. We went backwards to go forwards so when I first joined around 18 months ago we did a bit of a consolidation of what we were doing, what we were selling post-Covid and what we needed going forward. Our business has changed an awful lot in a short period of time and will continue to do so. Our focus is very much on what we call general foodservice which would be hotels, restaurants, pubs, sandwich bars, garden centres, that sort of everyday general foodservice business, along with schools which is still a focus of our business. We were historically very focused on fast food.
While we still have fast food customers, that isn’t the main focus of what we do. As we change that focus, the product range changes along with it. We are looking at NPD, food trends, what those new customers are going to want, what is missing from our portfolio, gap analysis.
We did go down as low as 1,500 products in the range but we are now building it back up again with products that suit where we want to be. From a value perspective, we are looking at ambient and frozen being about 40% of sales and chilled being around 20%.
Do you run promotional programmes? How often do they run? How many products are included in the promotional programmes?
We have started to run promotional programmes. We didn’t do promotions very well and we didn’t produce promotional leaflets to the standard I wanted but from January this year we have decided to produce a monthly leaflet. It is predominantly promotional but we also use it as a vehicle to launch new lines. Those lines tend to be promoted in the main for launch but not necessarily always. The last one probably had 50-60 promotional lines in it. That was always the decision to try and use it as the main vehicle of introducing new lines but also customers want promotions, they look for promotions. That was predominantly why we launched the new brochure.
What geographical areas do you deliver to?
It hasn’t grown an awful lot from where we started. We currently do the South-East of England – Kent, Surrey, Sussex. If you took a line from Brighton up through South London, we keep south of the river and then back across again. That is our delivery area. We have got no real intention of moving anywhere further in the short term. We have got enough opportunity. We don’t want to be dragged too far away. We intend to increase our delivery frequency rather than push out further. We would like to saturate the areas we have got rather than move into virgin territory. That is the most cost-effective way of growing the business, our investment is in people. We have got a new person joining in June, that is the most we have ever had. That enables us to put them on different patches, divide them up by postcode and then make sure we are offering the right service in those postcodes.
How much warehousing space do you have?
Warehousing space increased in the last year. We are looking at around 550 pallets worth of ambient storage which was about roughly the same as we had previously but we have put new racking systems in to make the most of the space we have got. We have put roller shelving in there, which means we can get more items per pallet space and it is a lot easier to top up with regards to the batch codes. You top up from the back and you don’t have to pull everything out to put the new stock to the back, it goes in automatically. That drives efficiencies and means that we are not strapped for space, as we would have been historically.
Freezer space has gone up to 520 pallets. That was over double what we had before. That was because we saw the frozen section of our business probably being the biggest growth area so we invested in that. Lastly, chilled is up to 120 pallet spaces which is probably treble what we had before. That is going to be the next phase of our growth, focusing on chilled lines and developing the chilled ranges.
The warehousing was a major investment from the beginning. When I came in we looked at where we were and where we would top out for space. We made the decision very early on that we would invest in infrastructure and warehousing because if you don’t you will hit the buffers at some stage and then it takes so long to catch up. You don’t want to kill off that momentum.
How many vehicles do you have in your fleet and are they multi-temperature vehicles?
They are all multi-temperature vehicles. The fleet has been replaced since we have been here. We have added another two but it is not just the addition. In real terms you are looking at 11 HGV and two 3.5 tonne vehicles. We used to have 7.5 tonne vehicles which had a payload of about 2.5 tonnes. We have invested in one 12 tonne vehicle which has a payload of just over 5 tonnes. We also have an extra half a tonne of payload per vehicle. The thought process behind that was to invest in the future and to make sure we are giving ourselves enough growth space for the resources we have invested in for the coming year to hit our target of hitting £20m by 2030.
How many staff do you employ?
We are currently at 50. We have grown a few. Like everybody, we cut back during Covid to make sure we came out the other side. We have been very conscious to look at where we were under-invested going forward. We have had to invest in QA, procurement and warehousing staff.
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