As one of the largest food group purchasing companies in the world, Entegra has you covered for your hospitality business’ buying needs. But there’s more to us than just helping businesses with their purchasing requirements while them saving money on food and supplies - as Stephen Beech, managing director UK & Ireland at Entegra, explains:
Stephen Beech, managing director UK & Ireland at Entegra, explains how the company can help the hospitality sector as a whole:
More than just procurement
We are more than just a generalist GPO who has lots of agreements with suppliers. It is all about operational performance improvement for our clients. We won’t tell our clients how to run their business, but we want to help and support them in everything that relates to operations. Because of our DNA, a lot of that gravitates around food operations, but we can go beyond that to areas like beverage, cleaning chemicals and many other categories.
Operational support services
Essentially, we can help our clients beyond securing great prices but improve their margins, design menus, design recipes, optimise their back-of-the-house operations, and also coach their kitchen staff. Entegra has a team of culinarians to develop, test and taste new recipes; the team works with clients and suppliers together to try to find innovative solutions for the client and consumer in a way that is economically efficient.
Digital and data expertise
The company is working on building a stellar digital GPO experience. We provide visibility and analytics around what our clients buy, which enables informed, on-property decision making and continuous improvement in their performance.
Corporate social responsibility
Sodexo is leading the charge on everything around food sustainability and has done so even before it became a topic, and we are leaders in diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The great thing is that as a fully owned division of Sodexo, we get to leverage everything Sodexo has built over the years to bring to the client to help them achieve their own sustainability goals. We’re leading the way by ensuring a truly value-added service to our clients in multiple dimensions and helping them address all of their operational challenges.
Being a one-stop-shop
Entegra can supply literally anything a hospitality business might need, and if we don’t have it, we’ll find a solution. With the support of Sodexo, we are able to build solutions in any category for any specific client needs. Our ambition is to be a one-stop shop.
A culture of performance improvement
Despite Covid impacting performance, Entegra has continued to invest in talent and resource. As we emerge from the pandemic, we’re very optimistic, and we have a clear path and direction we’re following that we believe in. We continued to recruit throughout 2021 and today the company is as strong as ever, with the company culture and behaviours focused on key elements such as integrity, transparency, inclusion and empowerment. We continually engage with our team to ask: What are our people thinking? What is an area we can improve on? What do our partners think of us? It’s a fairly strong culture and continues to drive performance improvement.
Clicking with clients
The pandemic has strengthened Entegra’s relationships with its clients, and we were able to meet our clients’ needs once hotels started reopening. For example, our clients were ready in advance for re-opening, and we were able to navigate some of those country-wide challenges being faced in the autumn, helping mitigate product shortages by providing alternative suggestions and securing suppliers. Our visible agility and speed of responsiveness were ready to be tested when mattered for our clients and protecting their needs remains our priority as we continue to support the industry recovery into spring and, we hope, a strong 2022.
To set up a 30 minute call with Entegra, feel free to contact Stephen Beech or email info@entegraps.uk.
Entegra is a subsidiary of Sodexo and one of the largest food group purchasing companies in the world, serves more than 93,000 purchasing sites with $24bn in purchasing power. The company helps to provide thousands of clients purchase millions of products at negotiated prices and works with hospitality businesses to help them save money on food and supplies.
The company’s name—Entegra—is a play on the word ‘integrity’, while the ‘e’ underscores the digital aspirations of the company. The UK & Ireland business dates back to 1993 and maintains approximately 150 supplier agreements split between national, regional and local - and services the hospitality industry across the hotel, restaurant and leisure sectors.
