time and money has never been so important as inflation continues to bite….”

EVERY penny counts for care homes right now and with no end in sight to the cost-of-living crisis, all care homes – regardless of size and scale –are looking to make cost efficiencies, without any loss of service or provision.

According to research undertaken by us, Care England and Caring UK magazine 97 per cent of care homes say they are worried about fast rising costs of meals across ingredients and labour.

Whilst 90 per cent of homes reported they have looked at ways to streamline cost and efficiencies in the kitchen since the cost-of-living crisis hit in 2022.

A home that has a team of cooks in the kitchen is always vulnerable to labour issues – whether sickness, or staff turnover.

And as the cost of ingredients continue to grow by as much as 30 per cent in some cases, understanding the monthly costs and how these can be controlled is causing significant stress to care home management teams.

By turning to high quality preprepared meals which can be easily cooked from frozen, there are innumerable benefits.

Care homes are able to save money on their catering through reducing labour and waste and associated costs, whilst still meeting a wide and diverse range of nutritional needs that supports their residents’ care.

With meals provider apetito, costs are fixed, so full transparency of the cost is one major benefit and removes the influences and impact of inflation on a daily/weekly basis.

Having a pre-prepared meals service helps make it easy for kitchen staff to cater for different numbers with minimal notice, whilst also managing portion control, producing less food waste, and streamlining efficiency in the kitchen.

Staff can all cook the meals easily from frozen, meaning that with some initial training the complexities of managing kitchen staff and ensuring cover can be reduced significantly –and this means a notable reduction in costs associated with same.

There’s also less admin and working out of nutrients and calories, so resources can be devoted back to the frontline giving an additional benefit to residents, and their families. Whether reducing waste, being able to offer personalised nutritional pathways and most importantly delicious meals that residents will love – the cost benefits are clear.

Let’s give you an example. Last year some of our care homes’ team visited the VSA Group, who appointed apetito after struggling to recruit chefs, ensure consistency and guarantee cover. apetito’s service doesn’t require any skilled labour, so homes are less impacted by staffing shortages.

This had led to the group having to supplement internal teams with agency staff who were unreliable and expensive.

During the visit, chief operating officer of VSA John Booth explained that, since moving over to apetito, he has seen immeasurable benefits when it came to reducing food waste and saving on labour, having been able to streamline catering roles.

Our team can train care home staff as to how to prepare and serve meals, so if any kitchen staff are ever off ill or on holiday, any employee who has been trained can jump in and help in the kitchen.

At VSA there’s now less admin, less invoices, less suppliers, less people to manage, and this alone has removed a stress factor including the removal of expensive agency staff.

It’s great that the team now has more time than ever before to focus on frontline care.

We recently challenged a chef to cook a shepherd’s pie from scratch for 24 residents, which took one hour 57 minutes.

It only took apetito member Molly three minutes in the kitchen to put an apetito meal into the oven and serve it, leading to a huge time saving.

Same quality, same ingredients but massive time and cost difference.

From speaking to customers like the VSA we know how much they value having more time to devote to frontline care since moving over to us and have recognised the value in streamlining cost efficiencies with no loss of service.

Managing costs alongside care is a real challenge and we’re proud that our service helps care homes reduce catering costs without compromising on quality.

Discover more about apetito’s care homes service by visiting https://apetito.link/CaringUK