Case Study
Go Meat-Free on Mondays

With an increasing amount of people choosing vegetarian meal options for health, environmental and taste reasons Mark Wetherill, Head Chef for Sodexo at AstraZeneca, Macclesfield, relished the opportunity to trial the Moy Park Foodservice 'Go Meat-Free on Mondays' menu. Capitalising on this current trend, the menu is carefully crafted to provide a wide range of delicious vegetarian burger options, including the Vegetable Superburger and Spiced Vegetable Burger Supreme - perfect for contract caterers looking to take advantage of this profit opportunity.

Mark has been working for Sodexo for 12 years and is instrumental in the service of over 10,000 covers a day, across the two Cheshire based AstraZeneca sites. With his customers ranging from scientists to admin workers and packers, Mark continually looks to serve a wide variety of high quality dishes to appeal to all tastes and dietary requirements. The Go Meat-Free on Mondays’ menu, featuring meat-free burgers, provided vegetarian customers with something different and also great profit-making opportunity for the site.

Mark told us that he ran the menu for two weeks with incredible results "Over the trial period we doubled our vegetarian sales, which is fantastic! The Falafel Burger was the most popular - the first day we put it on the menu we sold out within 20 minutes!"

Mark adds, "The burgers were really tasty and so easy to prepare and serve. We were especially impressed with the Falafel Burger, the whole chickpeas give a really high quality feel and it tasted very good." Recognising the versatility of the product Mark also used the Falafel burger to create a new dish, "We reshaped the burgers to a patty size and served with pitta bread and Tzatziki - it was hugely popular with the customers and great to be able to use the one product for two different dishes!"

Mark concludes, "All in all we had great customer feedback and the 'Go Meat-Free on Mondays' trial was a tremendous success here at AstraZeneca."

Mark's top tips for other contract caterers wanting to sell meat-free burgers are:

Give the vegetarian option appropriate prominence - use high-impact POS to promote a specific vegetarian burger menu and make it the focus dish for the day. We positioned the 'Go Meat-free on Mondays' on the very first serving counter which worked really well. Be sure to offer a good variety of options. The Moy Park Foodservice range is perfect from Spicy Bean Burgers to Falafel Burgers to Gourmet Veg Burgers - the diners feel like they are being offered a wide choice. Up sell side orders with the burgers to maximise profit - onions rings and chips are perfect!