Following an extensive consultation with the campus community, the University has this week launched a competitive tender process to identify those who will partner with us to deliver catering services on campus from August 2023.

With the support of our students and staff, the University has developed a values-based, ethical procurement process that will drive the choice of partners, alongside considerations of value for money, quality, and efficiency.

To get to this point, it has been critical to hear the views of the University community and to feed these into the tender process. At the end of 2022, thousands of you took part in our consultation on the future of food on campus. Thank you to everyone who gave up their time to share your views by completing the survey, attending our focus groups or speaking to the programme team while they were out and about.

The University community has shown enormous interest in the future of our catering services, with more than 3,200 staff and students taking part in our survey. Your feedback is helping shape the future of catering provision as we look to identify our partner, or partners, to deliver these critical services from August 2023.

How your views are shaping the future of catering on campus

During the consultation, you told us about the things that you want our new campus catering to offer. These are now included in the requirements documents for the catering providers who want to work with us, and include:

• making meat-free easier: a “largely plant-based outlet”, as part of the new provision

• a more diverse offering: we hope to see sub-contracted local and independent operators “to reduce homogeneity and deliver a diverse, differentiated and current offer”

• monitoring value: we will work with our catering partners to regularly review pricing to ensure staff and students are getting value for your money

• providing better options: areas have been highlighted as locations that lack services – these have been incorporated in our tender.

This week we start the formal process to find a provider (or providers) for catering on campus. This includes all food and drink provision, including sit-down meals and snacks in our cafes and eateries, as well as mobile street food vans and coffee carts, alongside our summer school catering and hospitality for conferences and events. The successful firm(s) will be announced in mid-June.

This is an important opportunity for the University to appoint catering providers who will play a leading role in the transformation of catering services on campus and meet the needs of our diverse community of students and staff, as well as support us in fulfilling our aim to become one of the most sustainable and inclusive universities in the world.

To find out more about the results of the campus community consultation, read our story on the Student Hub.