Contract caterers report five consecutive years of growth

Contract caterers serving offices, business parks, hospitals and education sites have recorded five years of continuous growth, according to industry analysis, with revenues now comfortably above pre-pandemic levels. The recovery has been powered by higher office attendance, expanded menus that include grab-and-go retail and event catering, and clients willing to invest in workplace hospitality as part of talent-retention strategies. Many contractors have also diversified into vending management, coffee-shop concessions and sustainability programmes—composting, local sourcing, waste reduction—that require additional logistics support and, in many cases, additional fleet capacity.

For fleet and facilities managers, growth in contract catering translates into more delivery vehicles, refrigerated vans and specialist equipment on site, plus greater demand for parking, charging points and coordination with other service providers. Caterers running their own fleets need to balance cost control with brand standards, food-safety compliance and the environmental commitments that now feature in most hospitality tenders. Those outsourcing logistics to third parties must ensure their hauliers meet the same emissions and safety benchmarks, since client contracts increasingly hold the caterer responsible for the entire supply chain's carbon footprint.

The shift to electric vans is particularly pressing for temperature-controlled distribution, where battery range, charging downtime and payload all matter more than in general parcels or maintenance work. Caterers should model whether overnight depot charging suffices or whether on-site top-ups will be needed at client premises, and factor in the capital cost of refrigeration units that don't drain the traction battery. Meanwhile, contracts are getting longer and more integrated, bundling catering with cleaning, security and reception, which means fleet requirements need to be planned alongside wider FM workflows and shared infrastructure.

Bluepoppy works with service businesses across hospitality, facilities management and trade supply whose fleets have grown in step with their contracts. Whether you're adding refrigerated vans to your catering operation, electrifying a delivery fleet or simply trying to get a handle on costs now that volumes are back above 2019 levels, a Fleet Cost Review will benchmark where you stand and show you the funding, technology and data options that match your growth trajectory. Get in touch to make sure your fleet strategy keeps pace with your order book.

Bluepoppy view: Five years of catering growth means five years of rising fleet demand—make sure your vans, funding and emissions strategy are keeping up with the revenue line.

Source: i-FM — summarised and written from a Bluepoppy perspective. We don’t reproduce the original article.