Back in July I mentioned the work we do during the summer months on developing the campus and what we offer students and staff when we welcome them back in September.
I am pleased to say that the development of the City Campus East restaurant into the CCE Hub, an exciting, vibrant space where students and staff can eat, drink, learn and collaborate is complete and we have seen a great uptake in the use of the space.
We also introduced a number of exciting developments in the University catering offer with changes in both outlet space and menu variety. New menu concepts included converting our old ‘Taste’ café into a Pan-Asian offer in the form of Bamboo and menu updates to introduce the Peruvian themed Halo Polo and finally Beesha, an authentic Middle Eastern menu. These new concepts are available to all staff and students and feed into the variety we can offer external clients during conferences and events. In fact, all of the concepts went down extremely well when we recently hosted the Universities UK Annual Conference.
To support the new menu and outlet concepts we also introduced our new Uni Food Hub App which gives the option to pre-book, click-and-collect or delivery to collection points around campus. The App also promotes special offers and discounts on purchases throughout the year.
It is always a challenge when launching new products and services and we have worked closely with our catering partners, Chartwells on developing and promoting new marketing material as well as with our own University Comms team. It will be an interesting semester one as we monitor the response and feedback to all these new initiatives and further develop our campus catering offer.
Barry Nicholson - Commercial Conference & Events Manager