“City Catering Southampton are passionate about providing quality work experience placements, that help to encourage and inspire young people to consider a rewarding career in the Catering and Hospitality sector. We very much look forward to working with EBP South moving forward.”
City Catering Southampton have a long standing working relationship with EBP through Work Experience. We enjoy being able to give something back in offering placements to students across our business, and find that it is great CPD for our team also.
Alarna was already aware that EBP South provide a managed work experience service, and they have previously worked with City Catering, so contacted them for a meeting.
At the meeting she wanted to put in a structured approach to their Work Experience offering, ensuring they were able to utilise the spectrum of opportunities available across their business which included Catering & Administration placements.
The first stage for EBP South was to review the existing placements that City Catering were offering and identify any new opportunities. EBP South went through the placements and reviewed the job descriptions, hours of work and within that considered any health and safety or safeguarding that was required for each role.
The second stage was to go through the placement process from advertising placements to applications and interviews. EBP South also provided City Catering Southampton with a simplified induction paperwork. EBP South’s work experience platform provided them with the opportunity to advertise multiple roles, specify the dates that are available and for students to apply to the placement.
City Catering believes that everyone deserves great quality food, served with kindness and care; therefore, we exist to make a tangible nutritional difference in people’s lives. Through our relationship with EBP and subsequently being able to offer Work Experience placements, we have found that we are able to make a positive impact on students’ lives from a health and employment skills point of view.
Our placement opportunities provided students with a real experience of what a Catering career can look like, as well as the other roles available in the industry that are a vital part of the puzzle – for example administration, accounting, food development. We hope that this will help encourage students to consider Catering & Hospitality as a rewarding career choice, and in turn increase the talent pipeline within our industry; helping to overcome the challenges of the current labour market.
For our teams, supporting a student through a Work Experience placement is a wonderful CPD opportunity that many find so rewarding and motivating. Our teams learn how to mentor, support, encourage and train the individuals and we often find that the young people have some wonderful suggestions and ideas that we may never have thought of.
