Gary Mullineux is the managing director of Caterforce
PH: What has been your most significant achievement over the past 12 months?
GM: The past year has been fantastic for Caterforce as our members have gone from strength to strength. Pilgrim Foodservice have acquired a new depot, while J Brown Craft Butchers and Chefs Provisioners rebranded the business to better reflect its experience and customer offer.
To support our members, we have launched a new website and members portal – a one-stop-shop for members to access everything they need to grow their sales, including the latest supplier news, insight and marketing assets.
We have begun an apprenticeship programme for our data team to entice new talent into the industry and ensure we are taking full advantage of digital advances including AI to directly benefit members and supplier partners. To meet customer demand, we also launched our brand-new Premium Collection, which has received excellent feedback.
What is your unique selling point?
Caterforce prides itself on its small, exclusive membership. With no geographical overlap, members share best practice and benefit from the group’s rich and extensive collective knowledge and experience.
All nine members are regional champions, proud of their heritage and independence, and Caterforce recognises and celebrates their differences.
Every member of the group has an active role in group decision-making, and the group works collaboratively to inspire, encourage and support each other.
What is truly unique about Caterforce is that it has the largest average turnover per member in the sector, meaning members are the lowest cost for suppliers to service.
Latest member- Q Catering
Number of members- 9
Group buying power- £806m
Read more: Caterforce reveals integrated marketing plan for suppliers
What are your plans to help members over the next 12 months?
For members, being part of Caterforce ensures they benefit from all the commercial advantages of joining a buying group, such as competitive buying prices through economies of scale.
Caterforce members also benefit from industry-leading support from head office, including five award-winning own brands, centralised rebate management, data and insight, and an expert buying team running regular tenders and bespoke promotions.
All members have access to a full marketing service, including PR support, social media content creation and enterprise email solutions, plus specialist food and drink photo-graphic studio.
Members can also access bespoke printed and digital promotional brochures for customers created by the in-house creative team.
To ensure they stay ahead of the curve, members are also given quarterly food-and-drink-trend reports and advice from the group’s in-house data-analysis team with ecommerce expertise.
To ensure members have access to new products and suppliers, we host several events throughout the year including supplier presentation days to educate members’ teams on Caterforce’s own-brand ranges, as well as marketing events and food-study tours to inspire members.
Later this year, we will be holding our supplier conference at Wembley Stadium on 7 November.
We can’t wait to get all our members and suppliers together and celebrate how far we have come and where we are going next.
Read more: Caterforce welcomes Q Catering into membership
What are the biggest challenges for your members over the next 12 months?
The minimum wage increase will have a significant knock-on effect across the sector. In addition to this, there will be increasing pressure from customers looking for the best value.
Caterforce will be supporting its members with a focus on the right products and prices throughout the year.
