A new voice and lead for a new product

apetito have long been known for their service offering within the healthcare and social care sectors in the UK, but arguably they are not viewed as a key player in the retail foodservice sector.

In truth, they possess the potential to be and have shown a genuine commitment to both innovative and service delivery.

It is part of their core values – Great Food To be Proud Of and a real Passion for Service. It is a belief in innovation, service delivery and building trust with their clients. In many ways they are a well-run, old fashioned business that believes in sustainable growth and has won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise twice in 2005 and 2016.They are conscious of the challenges that Brexit presents to the food service sector and the new challenges facing operators. They believe that they possess the expertise and product offer to help combat the problems that are coming and this too provides them with the opportunity to move into new markets and add real value.

“Solving these issues by reducing labour costs, improving and providing consistent margins, de-risking the kitchen and providing our customers with consistent quality.”

apetito have a genuine international pedigree and have the depth and structure to really build a strong presence within the food service sector. The challenge is to make their case and build relationships across the market. This is a harder task than one would expect given their pedigree, as so often companies are placed into boxes. The challenge is to convince retail operators that they can provide great food solutions across their markets too as well as in healthcare.

The man charged with this task is Mark Smalley – who is leading the new offer backed by his experienced Sales Director, Ian Stone.

Mark (left) though is almost a throwback to a previous time. Mark believes in relationships, and building trust and substance. It has also been encouraging that apetito have given emerging talent the opportunity to lead and Mark has a real passion for both the business and the opportunity.

Mark graduated from Nottingham Trent University with 1^st Class Honours in Business and then joined the apetito Graduate scheme in Sept. 2013. Subsequently, he has undertaken various strategic roles within apetito and in Oct. 2017, he was appointed as apetito Retail Lead. He is responsible for the strategic growth and development of apetito retail into existing and new markets.

The remit he has been set includes:

• To develop a multi-million pound retail division within the next five years
• To be the leader in innovation for the retail foodservice sector with their product, system & service approach
• To create mutually beneficial partnerships with their customers to create high returns on investment

“We developed our unique retail solution to address the key challenges within the retail foodservice sector. The apetito retail product, system & service approach fundamentally solves these issues by reducing labour costs, improving and providing consistent margins, de-risking the kitchen and providing our customers with consistent quality day in, day out.” notes Mark.“We are a consumer-led company and believe that this has been fundamental to our success in our other key markets. We develop our product, system & service propositions in partnership with our customers and adopt the agile development framework. This has been crucial to our success to understand our customers’ goals and to develop retail propositions that are truly customer-led.”“We know that the market will face some deep challenges in the time ahead and we are building and developing strong offers that can really support operators. I genuinely believe in our business’s capability to add real value to the market and my task is to make this argument to client operators and to build a business.The new product offer range for food service and retail markets:

“It is a very exciting opportunity and challenge and one that I suggest, is needed at this time. My goal is to make a difference; to create new solutions that operators can turn to. We have a long term plan and my first aim is to have conversations with the leading operators and build a good base and platform.”As we face an uncertain time with Brexit, we all need options and solutions and it is encouraging that apetito are stepping forward.