Royal Institute of British Architects – ITT Catering tender review

Assignment

RIBA’s C.O.O established contact with one of our senior Catering Consultants when their contract expired with their incumbent caterer, CH&CO. The existing contract was structured on a ‘concessionary model basis’ and our assignment was split into two stages:-

Stage One

Due to a decline of Food & Beverage revenues over the last few years, the operator were expressing an alternative business model to RIBA, which involved taking complete responsibility for all venue Sales and Marketing alongside the provision of catering services. This required us to undertake some ‘mystery shopping’ by approaching the operator’s existing contracted clients to assess their thoughts on this model?

Second Stage

To fully manage the ITT tender Catering review; from the initial production of tender documentation, to bid analysis and contract negotiations.

Output and Results

As a result of our involvement in Stage one, the overriding conclusion from those venues we approached was that there was no clear evidence to prove that outsourcing all S & M activity to the Caterers would demonstrate any significant financial long term benefit to the venue.

Following Stage One’s completion, we then began Stage two which was spread over a four-month period involving just over thirty days of Consultancy work, where we invited four leading London contract Caterers to bid.

The principal aim of the new contract was to improve transparency and provide a more ‘open-book’ policy between both the Caterer and RIBA. In conclusion, GFG successfully negotiated a three+one+one contract involving a move from a turnover-based concessionary model, to a cost-plus and fixed management fee structured model. In addition, we also negotiated a two-year capital investment programme from the Caterer, involving the refurbishment of both RIBA’s Public Café, Staff Restaurant and central Kitchen.