Paul Mizen, chief executive of the EF Group, said the easy-to-use, next generation allergen, nutrition, menu planning and costing system offers a wealth of enhanced functionality to help caterers gain significant efficiencies in their operations, to control costs and increase profits.
“The service industries are moving at pace towards technology to help meet their stock ordering, menu planning and compliance challenges. Our experience shows that there is increasing demand for more advanced dish and menu costing tools, as well as detailed, easy to use product data,” he said.
“Catering managers require their menu management software to seamlessly integrate with their ordering systems and demand best value from their food suppliers. With CaterCloud, we will remain at the forefront of delivering the innovative features the industry needs.
“The entire catering industry has been heavily impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic and as businesses work hard to recover, we are providing CaterCloud for free to help maximise efficiencies and reduce costs. This is our way of giving something back to the industry upon which our business is founded.
“With food labeling regulations set to change in October 2021, as a result of Natasha’s Law, all England-based businesses working in the food industry will be required to clearly label all foods produced and packed on their premises with a full list of ingredients detailing the full allergen profile.
Designed to help businesses prepare for this upcoming regulation, CaterCloud provides sub-allergen information and tagging; QR code scanning for live allergen and nutritional information, along with the ability to print Natasha’s Law compliant food labels. CaterCloud also offers customers access to a range of accredited training for allergen awareness and food safety.
Mizen said CaterCloud’s functionality also boasts many other benefits to enable simple menu management for caterers across the hospitality, healthcare, education and retail sectors.
“It offers effective menu planning with dish and menu costings; access to a nutritional database with thousands of ingredients and customisable dashboards to record KPIs.”
H said that CaterCloud was funded by the business e-foods, making the system is entirely free to use.
“Originally we were considering charging for CaterCloud, as is the case for most systems Then Covid-19 hit the UK. Many of our clients and suppliers were struggling to respond and recover from the impact of the pandemic. So we decided to re-evaluate our business model to support them by offering the system for free and not just for a limited time.
“CaterCloud users can, if they wish, take advantage of the wider group’s buying power through our buyers’ club; but this is not a pre requisite and is entirely the users choice.
“The buyers’ club is the central part of the E-Foods business operations. As a national procurement management system e-foods has significant buying power.
“This means it is often in a position to negotiate to better procurement prices for its clients. E-foods also ensures that often critical supplies, such as food, are not interrupted by any difficulties experienced by individual supply partners. Given the unique combination of our services, we believe this is a long-term sustainable model for CaterCloud that will also strengthen our clients.”