04 Success stories
How hospital catering moved from home- cooked to high-quality
Shifting from traditional Cook-Serve to Cook-Freeze can be a great step forward in enhancing efficiency and food quality, but such a big change is a bold move in a hospital setting. Jim Banks explores how Leighton Hospital in the UK smoothly navigated this change with support from Burlodge
Leighton Hospital in Crewe needed a rethink. Te traditional hot-line produced food with a home- cooked feel, but that was the only positive. “Catering operations were in a bit of a mess,”
W 38 Aliworld
Bamber explains. “Tey were very old-fashioned, there was no innovation, and it was not a great place to work. In 2023, we got a new catering manager with a wealth of experience and knowledge, and everything was immediately better, but we knew we needed real change so that we were less reliant on the chefs.”
hen Paula Bamber took over as head of facilities at Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2022, she immediately realized the foodservice offering at
Te operation Bamber had inherited was fragile –
one absent chef could disrupt the entire operation. Te menu was limited, inflexible, and inefficient. “We were at critical-point failure,” Bamber says.
“I looked at alternatives, including Cook-Chill, which had very little good feedback, as it creates a lot of waste and there is little shelf life. Waste was already high with traditional hot-line cooking. Ten we looked at Cook-Freeze, which had a raft of positives. It took a year to plan for the switch and get approval, but we eventually got full backing from the board.” Now, Leighton Hospital, which has 500 beds
and serves approximately 500,000 meals every month, is sourcing starters and main courses from key partner Apetito, while its in-house chefs cook desserts and food for the retail outlet.
Above: Leighton Hospital in Crewe, UK, has 500 beds and serves approximately 500,000 meals every month
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