BETTER FOOD, BETTER LIFE

By Foylan Rhodes

The Lost Executive looks at the United Kingdom food and catering business Apetito, a well-established brand who’s specifically created and frozen meals have changed the lives of millions of people in British schools, care homes and hospitals.

Founded by Karl Düsterberg in 1958 in Rheine, Germany as “Apetito Ready Meals” producing frozen ready meals for retail and business canteens, schools, nurseries and the service of Meals on Wheels in German. Now firmly settled in the UK, Apetito is set on offering these sectors better nutritional and flavoursome food options with the belief that food should be enjoyed by everyone.

And, by providing exceptional meals to organisations catering to the young and the elderly with meals that are expertly crafted by their inhouse dietitian and chefs, and frozen to retain their taste and goodness, they have considerable raised the standards of hospital meals, care home meals, nursery meals and school meals to a completely different level.

Laboratory First Kitchen Second

Food safety is the company’s number one priority because, as Apetito’s group technical manager Ian Mortimer says, “Our customers need to know the food they eat is safe. Thanks to our accredited safety and traceability process, we know this is the case every time.

”We recognise that our consumers are vulnerable, so it’s important to us that when they eat, they can enjoy their food because it’s great quality and its as safe as it possibly can be.”

He elaborates that they operate a positive release system, they’ll test a product prior to any release for any bacteria that may be present before any food is released to be sold. So, consumers can be 100% confident that their food is safe. They test over 120,000 batches of food per year and test every batch they produce and of those samples ⅔ of them will look specifically at pathogens. All the testing is also accredited by the Camden Laboratory Credidation Service. Campden BRI Ad.

“We also go further to take a bacteriological map of the location, swabbing floors, walls, matts, working areas where a pathogen carrying bacteria contamination is going to come from and instead of curing a problem they would rather prevent it from happening in the first place.” he says.

Once cooked, their positive release policy means a sample is taken from each batch of food, analysed in our three laboratories, before being released for sale once confirmed safe. We are also able to assure nutritional levels are kept.

“We’re the only caterer to the health and social care sector that has microbiological, chemical and allergen laboratories onsite,” Ian says, “All of which are independently compliant by the Campden Laboratory Accreditation Scheme.”

Ceo Stepping Down

Paul Freeston has announced that after 25 years of service at meals provider Apetito he will be stepping down at the end of the year (December 2024).

Under Paul’s leadership, Apetito UK and its Wiltshire Farm Foods home delivery business has grown from £30m to £250m in the UK, whilst increasing its team from 400 to almost 2,000. He also led the Apetito Group into