Local chef joins project to improve hospital food

Richard Hughes, local chef and owner of the Lavender House restaurant, is working with Serco and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (NNUH) on a project to improve hospital food.

Serco, who run the hospital’s catering service, has recently embarked on a joint initiative with NNUH to increase patient satisfaction of meals as well as nutritional uptake, following feedback from the Trust’s patient experience surveys.

Richard Hughes is working with Serco to:
• Develop the patient menu through creating a range of freshly produced meals with a focus on local ingredients, which can be produced in-house, including soups, salads, sandwiches and cold desserts
• Offer training and education for the on-site team using techniques from his award winning cookery school
• Create a long term relationship with NNUH to support the continuous improvement of patient menus

Richard will also be working in the NNUH kitchen to produce a menu for staff and visitors once a month using local produce, with the first event taking place in the main hospital restaurant on the 13th June 2013.

This event follows a tasting day held in April where recent improvements to the patient catering service were showcased, including changes to main meal dishes to improve quality and choice, customer service, greater in-house production of soups, salads and sandwiches, plus improved availability of beverages. Patients, visitors and staff sampled the meals, gave feedback and looked at plans for electronic bedside meal ordering.

Nayab Haider, Serco Contract Director at NNUH, said: “We are delighted to be working with Richard Hughes who shares our passion for food and we will be using his expertise to help enhance the mealtime experience for patients and our staff and visitors.”

Richard Hughes said: “This is a great opportunity for me to give something back to the community and I’m really looking forward to working with the team at NNUH.”

Richard Hughes runs the successful Lavender House restaurant in Brundall as well as his award winning cookery school. In 2012 Richard’s school secure two key industry awards; Best Small Cookery School and British Cookery School of the Year at the inaugural British Cookery School Awards http://www.richardhughescookeryschool.co.uk/

Serco have engaged People1st, the leading hospitality industry training and development partner, to deliver customer service training using the ‘World Host’ training module adopted by London 2012 to train the volunteer Games Makers.