Eye on News
Diversification role for Henderson Foodservice points to future opportunities With the hospitality sector largely on ‘pause’, catering industry supplier Henderson Foodservice has diversified its operations to support a wide range of community support programmes and has seen its healthcare business increase as it helps keep staff, patients and residents fed in hospitals, hospices and hundreds of care homes across Northern Ireland.
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nitiatives include the Department for Communities led contract to supply over 3,000 food boxes per week for delivery to vulnerable and self-isolating people until the end of June as well as providing a range of products for Salvation Army created food parcels and welcome packs for people in need via the Simon Community. Kiera Campbell, Sales Director at Henderson Foodservice explains the background to the various initiatives: “Ensuring constant supply of
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essential food items such as pasta and tinned beans was key at the beginning of lockdown and local community groups and foodbank organisations as well as government departments reached out to Henderson Foodservice to enable them to meet increasing demand. “We are working alongside other food companies to fulfil the Department for Communities contract and staff from all levels and departments at Henderson Foodservice were at one stage
packing 200 boxes per hour on a busy production line to turn out food boxes quickly and ultra-efficiently. Everyone pulled together engendering a fabulous team spirit to get the job done. “Other projects we’re working on include an Education Authority programme to support their youth projects by providing a range of lunch products for young people in need of a healthy regular meal. “As well as contractual projects Foodservice has also made donations to five Belfast based foodbanks and in the Republic of Ireland, we teamed up with our customer Thomas Franks Ireland to supply food parcels to over 200 ICU staff at Beaumont and St Vincent hospitals in Dublin.” Looking to the future and developing new business concepts, Kiera Campbell says: “Creating food parcels was a process we had never facilitated before and we’ve worked hard to adapt and perfect our approach and supply procedures. We’ve built up
valuable skills and expertise and would look to examine the potential to evolve this in the future. “Our new consumer ‘Click & Collect’ service which launched last month, evolved from requests made by local community groups and individuals contacting us and seeking out wholesale purchase opportunities when food supplies were challenging to obtain. The new facility based at our Mallusk headquarters, offers a range of catering style bulk buys and smaller scale units delivering extra value for local shoppers and families.”
