We have recently published our financial results for our final full year as an independent company under the stewardship of Mark, Clive and Phil prior to joining the CH&Co family at the end of February. The year ending August 2019 proved to be a year of incredibly strong client retention and was further enhanced by the opening of five new contracts contributing an annual turnover value of £4.5m. Total turnover for the year was just short of £30m, delivering a 14% increase on the previous year and exceeding our predicted turnover by 7.5%

We continued to invest in our head office support team and in technology, with enhancements to our customer-facing app and in the development of systems to record and reduce food waste.

Vacherin continued its charitable support, raising over £20,000 to fund a new training kitchen for the Luminary Bakery.  A social enterprise based in east London, Luminary offers opportunities for women who have experienced social or economic disadvantage to build their skills and improve their futures. We are also working with coffee social enterprise Change Please; helping them to fight homelessness through selling their coffee and offering on-site training opportunities for homeless people to become baristas.

At a time when all sectors within the hospitality industry are implementing measures to mitigate the devastating financial impact of Covid-19, the growth experienced last year has placed our business in a much stronger position to manage its sector of the CH&Co business through this period of temporary closure of the majority of our clients’ catering operations.

Phil Roker, our Managing Director and Catey 2019 winner said “We are thrilled with last year’s results which demonstrate that our commitment to continued investment in our people and our product, whilst staying true to our culture of quality and innovation, are the foundations of success for our business.  The extensive expertise and central resource provided by the CH&Co group will enhance our ability to build on our core values as we manage the business through and beyond this unprecedented period and I am confident that, as we find ourselves in the throes of this pandemic the strength of relationships with our clients and the commitment and support of our people will serve us well as we weather this storm alongside our colleagues across our industry.