We’re making some changes to the catering service for meetings and events. 

These are part of wider Campus Services changes, which were announced in Staff Briefing on 14 July – see the full details of the changes on the Campus Services website. The College is making some changes to how and where some services are provided on campus, in order to enable reinvestment elsewhere as part of our continuing commitment to an excellent student and staff experience. 

At the moment catering services for meetings are very resource-intensive and can be expensive both to run and use, especially for smaller orders and those placed at short notice. With that in mind, and in order to reduce the subsidy provided by the College, which enables us to offer hospitality services, the following changes will be introduced from Monday 30 October.  

 New lead time of 3 clear working days

A new lead time of three clear working days to make a booking is being introduced, e.g. in order to have catering delivered at 14.00 on a Tuesday you will need to have made this booking before 14.00 three clear working days prior. This will enable more efficient staff rota planning and better stock ordering processes. It should prevent the highly resource-intensive duplication of work required to accommodate late requests whilst reducing the need for us to call on agency or casual staff at short notice, which can be very costly.

Minimum spend of £35 for refreshment orders

We will be introducing a minimum spend of £35 for supplying delivered refreshments, which means that any catering order for less than 15 people will be charged at a higher rate in order to meet this minimum spend.

College staff can apply for a hospitality card which can be used to purchase smaller numbers of refreshments for meetings, from College cafes and outlets. Applications of these cards must be approved by a budget holder. Details of how to apply for a hospitality card can be found here.  

Streamlined menus and new online catering order system

We’re streamlining hospitality menus in general and a new catering order system will be introduced in mid-October to make this as straightforward as possible. The new system will only be used for catering orders so you’ll need to continue to use the Rooms and Catering site to book some meeting rooms. We’ll send you another email with further details about the new menus and this new catering website later this month.

We’re counting on your support while we roll out these changes over the next few months. We are keen to ensure we continue to provide a valued service for College staff at the best possible value-for-money to the College.