The actions and achievements of your people reflect on your
organisation. That’s quite something to consider. And because of this,
business often implement dress codes, best practices and job roles to
make sure everyone understands how to live your ethos. But rarely does
this end up as a food policy.
Unless, of course, you’re a government department, charged
with guiding the health and wellbeing of the nation. Then you would
expect any food you served in your buildings to be healthy. And that was
the challenge we took on with the Department of Health.
They needed to improve the workplace for their employees,
offer healthier menu items, reduce salt levels and eliminate artificial
trans fat. We also helped them to encourage people to make healthier
choices; portions of fruit were made cheaper than a hot dessert, and we
made drinking water freely available.
We went that extra mile to make sure that people could have a
straightforward understanding of the nutritional values of the food
they were eating; everything produced onsite is nutritionally analysed
and labelled.
Many of the initiatives put in place for the Department of
Health are ones we carry across to other clients’ experiences, like our
‘swapping’ initiative — trading out less healthy ingredients for
healthier ones. Sustainability is also key — we make sure our healthy
initiatives can be adopted easily and with a clear path into the
future.
If you’d like to know more about how we delivered health and taste for the Department of Health, read our case study.
Eurest 2013. ‘Delivering a responsible deal for government’, [Online], http://www.eurestfood.co.uk/downloads/13086_Case_study_Department_of_health_v2.pdf, Middlesex, Eurest (Accessed 01 April 2014)