Theme 5
Transforming Catering and Food Procurement
Food Newcastle is providing a forum for communication and co-operation across public sector bodies serving food in Newcastle. Lead support is provided by Geoff Moyle (NHS Hospital Catering).
The group consists of procurement, sustainability and catering managers from:
- Newcastle City Council
- Newcastle College
- Newcastle University
- Northumbria University
- Northumberland and North Tyneside NHS Trust
- Compass Group
- NEPO – North East Procurement Organisation
Organisations have so far shared current policies, strategies, awards and achievements relating to procurement of healthy and sustainable food to celebrate and give wider recognition.
The group has been brought together twice with actions from the most recent meeting including:
- Seek to develop a citywide sustainable food procurement policy that can be adopted by other organisations across the city.
- Gain an understanding of the capacity of our local regional supply chain.
- Explore the potential to develop the group on a NE level – linking with our north east neighbours e.g. SFCs in Durham, Middlesbrough, Carlisle and Northumberland County Council’s ‘Produced in Northumberland’ to bring together NE representatives from catering, procurement and sustainability.
- Explore the potential to organise and facilitate a ‘meet the local (NE) producers’ event – bringing food producers and catering, procurement and sustainability managers together with the aim of enabling small local producers to access procurement contracts.
We are aiming as a city to adopt a shared vision for the catering and procurement of healthy and sustainable food; with the focus initially on the public sector but expanding to support and encourage the private sector to adopt a similar approach.