Words and photos: CHARLOTTE ULLEBERG
PICTURED: ANGUS McKENZIE, MIKE COWLEY, ANGELA WAKEFIELD, PETE ATMORE
Re-published with the kind permission of Hospital Caterer magazine
There’s no doubt that the demand for good quality coffee ‘on the go’ continues to rise unabated. First the High Street, then the service station forecourt and now the hospital café: they’re all being transformed in response to customer demand. However, by inviting in High-Street brands to take over the coffee offer, are NHS hospitals missing a trick?
The people at Ormskirk and District General Hospital thought so. They decided to launch an investigation to see if it might be possible to give their visitors and staff the coffee-break experience they desired, without sharing the profits with an external supplier.
The hospital’s driving force behind both the investigation and the subsequent installation of Ormskirk’s premium Kimbo coffee offer consists of Angela Wakefield, and her colleague Tracey Potter. Besides giving staff and visitors a desirable product, they had in mind one objective: ‘We wanted to keep the profits in house’, Angela said. ‘We wanted every penny of the profits generated by coffee sales to be driven back into the hospital’s patient services.’
Elsewhere in the NHS, managers faced with a similar conundrum have elected to take a different route. Indeed, in the same week the protagonists in the Ormskirk initiative met to review the impact of Kimbo retail offer, Compass Group tweeted that they’d ‘just opened their fiftieth hospital based Costa Franchise store’ – and other brands are making their own inroads into the NHS.
High Street brands are said to be ‘perfect’ for the healthcare sector and it’s true that gourmet self-serve vending machines are a fantastic way to demonstrate customer care at the same time as creating new revenue streams.
However, the downside to a typical High Street offer, popular as they have proved to be, is that the ‘new revenue stream’ flows into corporate coffers, as well as those of the host hospital.
Great coffee is indeed capable of demonstrating a hospital’s commitment to ‘customer care’. One assumes that some NHS facilities concluded that ‘a share in a large profit is better than 100% of a smaller one’, but in Angela’s view, the Kimbo solution gives the NHS the best of both worlds: the confidence inducing participation of a truly international brand that doesn’t dilute a hospital’s income. ‘We have a top quality coffee offer that makes a healthy profit, all of which goes towards the improvement of patient services’, she said. ‘You don’t have to boost a wealthy corporation’s bottom line to give your customers great coffee’, she said.
So, what’s the deal with Kimbo?
For several years, North West Vending, one of the UK’s most successful independent vending companies, has been providing Ormskirk and District General with a professional vending service. However, there’s more to North West Vending than meets the eye: The St. Helens’ based vending operator, along with its sister company Coffee 1652, was amongst the first in the country to respond to customer demand for a better cup of coffee and as part of their mission to ‘take the retail coffee experience to the workplace’, they forged an alliance with Kimbo, one of Italy’s pre-eminent coffee roasters and an internationally respected brand.
Kimbo’s UK Managing Director, Angus McKenzie, impressed by the company’s commitment to quality, entered into an exclusive agreement that would see the brand, for the first time, made available through vending machines. As guardian of Kimbo’s reputation and its brand values, the move into vending was not taken lightly.
‘I was impressed by North West Vending’s approach’, Angus said ‘The company really is on a mission to deliver the best coffee it can to its customers and when I tasted their Kimbo offer I knew we’d made the right decision. It’s an espresso of a very high quality and it’s an accurate reflection of our brand values.’
So, when North West Vending MD, Mike Cowley, learned of Angela’s ambitious strategy for Ormskirk and District General, he was able to capitalise upon his company’s relationship with Kimbo to put a unique proposal on the coffee table which ticked all the hospital’s boxes.
Visitors and staff are now able to enjoy high quality coffee – and fresh brew tea – 24/7; thanks to a modern, airy cafeteria, equipped with state of the art coffee (and tea) machines, which is attracting record customer numbers during the day time and is supported by a high-quality vending service, providing premium quality food and drink out of hours. The reaction of both visitors and staff has been ‘remarkable’. Sales are running ‘over budget’ and satisfaction levels amongst user groups are ‘unprecedented’.
‘We’re offering a first class product at a first class price’, Angela said. ‘It’s true that the price of a cup of coffee has gone up since we implemented the changes, but there’s been absolutely no resistance to the price rise because the new product, quite frankly, is so much better than the offer it’s replaced. What’s more we serve Kimbo in a ten ounce cup, as opposed to the six ounce offer of old, so customers really do believe that they’re getting a better deal all round.
They are! We’re selling a first class latte or cappuccino for £1.50 a cup and that’s perceived as a bargain price by the vast majority of our customers’, Angela said.
‘The NHS, understandably, has a risk averse culture and sometimes it’s seen as preferable to go with ‘the devil you know’, rather than with a comparatively unknown quantity’, said Coffee 1652’s Pete Atmore, ‘but it’s clear that it’s not such a big risk after all to keep coffee in-house rather than sub-contracting it.’
‘Going down this route did involve a leap of faith’, Angus acknowledged, ‘but the hospital’s strong business relationship with North West Vending / Coffee 1652 mitigated the perceived risk. The hospital knew that it had a trustworthy partner that would commit long-term to the project.’
‘To have accepted a High Street-style proposition would have guaranteed the hospital a certain level of income from coffee sales’, Angela acknowledged, ‘but when we analysed the numbers we concluded that we could earn more money by taking a different route; money that could be invested in improving patient care and so far, that’s exactly what’s happening.
‘I’m delighted with the results’, Angela continued. ‘Our solution works on so many levels: it’s sustainable, it’s high quality; it’s local and it’s the result of a genuine partnership, which continues to go from strength to strength. This is not an ‘off the shelf’ solution, it’s been created to address our specific requirements and to my mind, it’s proof that hospitals don’t need to sub-contract.’
‘The expertise required to keep customers happy and contribute funds to hospitals’ coffers already exists in house’, Mike said. ‘By empowering those managers and staff already engaged in hospital catering, by encouraging them to use their expertise and know-how, we’ve shown that there’s really no need to surrender profits to outside interests.’
Ormskirk and District General Hospital’s Kimbo offer has proved that point and the offer has now been made available to NHS managers the length and breadth of Britain. ‘I hope that other NHS Trusts will take time out to investigate what we’ve done here at Ormskirk’, Angela said. ‘Sometimes its tough to weigh short-term gains against long terms benefits and I hope that colleagues will take a close look at we’ve done and investigate how a similar solution might work for them.’
Mike Cowley concluded: ‘If Ormskirk and District Hospital had gone down the third party road, any commission earned would be used to plug the consequent hole in beverage takings elsewhere in the facility, because other sales outlets would have found themselves in direct competition with the company that had been invited on site. There’s a real danger that the money offered up front by outside operators digs an unexpected financial hole elsewhere in the trust.’
At a time when the NHS needs money, what better time to put the money back in where it matters most, on the NHS bottom line?
To discuss your requirements as an NHS catering facility, please contact Mike Cowley on 01744 762912
For further information, visit the North West Vending web site, which is here
