At the company’s Food Innovation Centre in Covent Garden yesterday invited TUCO members gathered to learn more about dining trends in the sector and hear about ideas to give them a head start in catering to student demand.
Brakes sector catering manager Cathy Amos said it was important that her team not only identified trends for caterers but also offered a range of ideas and suggestions to help them.
Keith Williams, head of trading at the University of Kent based in Canterbury, said as well as the insight such events provided, he felt it was also useful to be able to network with other university caterers and ‘benchmark’ findings against their day-to-day experience on campus.
Using a YouGov survey of more than 1,000 students from 2016, Mark Butler, Brakes marketing insight manager, told the assembled caterers that students spent £2.3bn on food in 2016, a figure that was expected to rise slightly to £2.36bn in 2017.
Nearly a quarter (22%) identified themselves as ‘committed healthy eaters’, with 14% saying they are specifically vegetarian and 3% as vegan.
At breakfast 72% of students eat at home, but those that do venture out spend just £2.01 on the occasion on average. At lunch sandwiches dominate the food choices, with hot sandwiches, jacket potatoes, pasta and soup dishes popular. Average spend is £6.90 according to the survey.
Evening meals see 88% of students eating where they live, but when they do eat out pizzas and pasta are the favoutites and average spend is put at £7.74.
Butler said: “Snacking is all about grazing, with savoury snacks and confectionery the key items.”
Worryingly, he said that 17% of students said they never used refectory outlets on campus and only 26% saw them as good value, with branded outlets being rated more highly.
In another presentation, Mike Haslin, chief operating officer of TUCO, expounded the many advantages of membership of the organisation.
This included the TUCO Academy, which was professionalising the sector’s training, with work progressing on apprenticeships, new online training packages and a Masters in Catering Management in Higher Education due to be launched in 2018.
He outlined study tours, the annual conference, competitions, research and procurement benefits as some of the other services that members received.