National Trust Spices up catering systems

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The National Trust is implementing a new web-based hospitality management system to improve data quality for running its customer catering business.

The catering department of the British Heritage organisation is responsible for running around 150 public restaurants at Trust-owned properties across the country and needed to improve the central reporting of key performance metrics.

Its implementation of the Saffron Spice management information system from hospitality software specialist, Fretwell-Downing Hospitality, will enable the organisation to use the web to improve the efficiency of reporting back from each restaurant site and the quality of data analysis at head office.

The system is being centrally hosted by the National Trust and accessed through a password-controlled website by both head office and selected personnel at the restaurant sites.

Rachel Everton-Grime, National Trust business analyst, said: "Saffron Spice will move the Trust away from each restaurant site operating on a stand-alone system and towards a structure that will be easier to control and support."

"Using the web also means there are ongoing maintenance benefits - for instance, if there is a problem with a PC, catering managers can still access and record information from another computer," she said.

And the new centralised management capabilities will also be used to improve the co-ordination of management planning and forecasting activities. For example, catering managers can record information such as stock usage, purchase invoices and sales data simply by logging onto the internet and uploading the data, which is then sent back to head office.

Area management access will also provide greater visibility of analyses and guidance on food stock issues without having to actually make site visits. The Trust can also more easily check that recipes are costed accurately to deliver the desired margins, and compliance with buying policies.

Everton-Grime added that the move to this centralised structure avoided imposing a rigid process that would run counter to its local sourcing of food products and individual pricing structure. Improved data quality and access would instead help management in more detailed negotiations with suppliers.

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