How can benchmarking help hospital caterers?

Hospital catering operates under intense pressure. Teams are expected to deliver nutritious, appealing meals that support patient recovery, meet diverse dietary and cultural needs, satisfy staff and visitors, and comply with strict regulatory and budgetary constraints. Against this backdrop, understanding how your catering operation is really performing – and where there is scope to improve – can be challenging.

This is where benchmarking comes into its own. By comparing performance against relevant peers and established best practice, benchmarking gives hospital caterers the clarity and confidence needed to make informed decisions, demonstrate value, and drive continuous improvement with their catering costs.

Moving beyond gut feel

Many catering teams have a strong instinct for what is working and what isn’t. However, instinct alone can only take you so far. Benchmarking replaces anecdotal evidence with robust, comparable data.

Whether it’s cost per meal, supplier prices, pack sizes or compliance metrics, benchmarking helps answer critical questions such as:

• Are our costs in line with similar hospitals?
• Are we sourcing the best possible quality produce for our budget?
• Where are we outperforming the sector – and where are we falling behind?

Having these answers enables catering leaders to move from reactive problem-solving to proactive planning.

Improving efficiency without compromising care

Efficiency is a constant focus for NHS and private healthcare providers alike, but reducing costs must never come at the expense of patient care. Benchmarking helps strike this balance.

By comparing how your food procurement or contractor’s pricing stacks up against similar trusts or hospitals, catering teams can identify areas where efficiencies may be gained – for example through menu design, procurement practices or product swaps – while protecting meal quality and nutritional standards.

Importantly, benchmarking highlights realistic targets. Rather than chasing arbitrary savings, hospital caterers can see what is genuinely achievable elsewhere in the sector and learn from proven approaches.

Strengthening the business case for change

Securing investment or approval for change in a hospital environment can be difficult. Senior stakeholders understandably want evidence.

Benchmarking provides that evidence. By demonstrating how your catering procurement compares with others, and how savings can be made, you can build a compelling, data-led business case for investment into other initiatives such as new equipment or technology, redesigning menus or service models or the introduction of sustainability or waste-reduction programmes.

Clear benchmarking data helps shift conversations away from opinion and towards outcomes, making it easier to align catering objectives with wider organisational priorities.

Get to grips with your procurement

Whether you’re working with an outsourced catering contractor or managing procurement in-house, benchmarking puts you back in control, highlighting key areas for focus, potential cost savings, and valuable negotiation leverage.

If you’re in healthcare and ready to explore how Quenelles can help streamline your procurement, get in touch with us here.

The Quenelles team