Your Sandwich Makes a Difference

Simon Coles and Phil Barker

Knightstone Housing – Registered Social Landlord with 11,043 homes and approx. 22,000 residents across West of England, Somerset and South Glos.

Coles Kitchen – we are a local business that supports young people with learning difficulties through provision of volunteering and work placement opportunities.

Introductions & Context

• Conversation started in a kitchen 2 years ago exploring social value from contracts

• Identified an opportunity with catering for the new office• Involved a bit of effort – we could of followed more

traditional route based on cost and service delivery• Within the business we had to overcome concerns that

it would present an increased risk to service delivery – only real risk was that staff might go hungry

• Dipped our toe in the water looking for social value – changed our procurement process

Story so far……….

• We were looking for tender opportunities – something to enable is to do more for volunteers

• Completed the tender documentation – found it quite easy as used to writing tenders.

• Started to supply buffet lunches• Contract started sooner than expected• Surprised by demand – 3 x more than expected and

tendered for• Constant menu changes • Too many Head Chefs

Story so far……….

• The relationship needs an investment of time• Perception – size of the business.  Didn’t realise how

small an operation we were – we don’t have admin, etc• Communication – too many different people involved in

the processes.• Simplification – don’t over complicate things• Regular meetings every two to three months – with the

right people• Work in progress – we are getting there.

Lessons Learned

• Competitive price and good standard – no compromise on quality

• Speed and flexibility of response – smaller and local• Potential route to employment for residents – direct

impact to bring in rental income and likely to bring more benefits to the community in which they live.

• Fore-runner to extracting £900k of social value from current procurement round

• working with contractors on processes to increase the level of social value that can be extracted from contracts.

• We get fabulous buffets and an amazing ploughmans!

Business Benefits & Social Impact

• Employed 6 new people• Increased number of volunteers and also the scope and

diversity of volunteer roles• Enabled us to take on new premises and therefore

increasing capacity to delivery more opportunities• Contract has given other people confidence in what we

have and what we can offer• Future plans – bringing NVQ and Apprenticeships • Helped develop social benefits for volunteers and their

peers

Business Benefits & Social Impact

Nick, Volunteer

Working on grand pier before started, pressure was too much to handle. I came across Coles, which gave my confidence a boost - with learning disabilities and autism, like myself, people don’t know what it is like, Simon knows how my mind works and the best boss anyone could wish for. All the sandwiches and chocolate are not good for the diet though. It a good experience going to Knightstone feels like I am giving something back. It keeps me on my toes with the amount of work. We are selling to a professional company and it has to be perfect’. I also like to pass on some of my experience to newer volunteers’.

The last word