Creating excellent patient and staff experiences in high-stress environments

In this Expert Series video, Richard Green, Head of Contract Catering at Costa Coffee, discusses how creating normality in a high stress environment, such as a hospital, helps patients and staff. Richard also explores what can be achieved through Sodexo’s partnership with Costa Coffee in terms of NHS net zero goals and sustainability.

The value of working with a known brand

In terms of patient experience, working with a well-known high-street brand provides familiarity that helps empower patients and staff in often challenging, stressful environments. There is often an increase in footfall when there is a well-known and trusted brand, also leading to better financial outcomes, with uplift between 20-30% where there is an existing outlet and revenue can even higher than that. 

Sodexo is delighted to have partnered with Costa Coffee to deliver the best possible patient experience, proving choice and quality with the patient experience consumers are used to receiving on the high street. 

Initiatives to prevent food waste

Sodexo’s food waste prevention programme launched in March 2021 prevented over 28 metric tonnes of CO2 and 4,000 Kg of food from going to landfill – the weight of an adult rhino. 

Costa Coffee is also working hard to prevent food wastage, which is particularly important in the fresh food business. There are avenues to minimise food waste such as Costa’s partnership with FareShare, and Too Good To Go scheme, which allows people to buy short life products at a discount. 

Providing 7-day fresh deliveries into sites, store managers also keep an eye on supply/demand to ensure that everything is sold and not wasted. 

Supporting the NHS net zero goals

Costa Coffee launched its sustainability programme called ‘Coffee with Commitment’ last year. Working with partners such as Sodexo and Marks & Spencer in healthcare towards a net zero goal of 2040, there are steppingstones in place to get to a certain way on that path by 2030. 

Large retail brands are able to identify where their emissions are coming from and put initiatives in place to address the challenges, such as helping the NHS by identifying scope 1 & 2 emissions. For instance, as milk is high on the emissions scale, Costa aims to reduce dairy emissions by 40% by 2030. Another initiative is the reuse scheme where customers are offered to ‘buy 4 get 1 free’ and Costa is looking to make sure at least 1 in 4 takeaway cups are reusable by then.