With over 25 years of experience perfecting hospital meals, apetito is the UK’s leading provider of pre-prepared meals to the healthcare sector. Every meal is developed by our team of talented chefs, nutritionists and dietitians. With over 400 meals and market-leading specialist nutrition ranges, we support healthcare settings by providing delicious, nutritious and sustainable meals that suit all tastes, dietary requirements cultural preferences.

Always looking at ways to improve our offering and after listening to customer feedback, we are proud to be launching our first ever dedicated children’s range. Join us on Stand 2 to find out more and try the new products.

Approach to Healthcare

With over 25 years of experience perfecting hospital meals, apetito is the leading provider of pre-prepared meals in the UK, supplying over 700 hospitals across the country every day.

We are dedicated to supplying quality, nutritious food, creating an efficient catering system, and providing an excellent service. Our wide range of over 400 meals including market-leading specialist nutrition ranges, caters to all needs, meal occasions, and dietary preferences, and we are always developing these ranges based on customer feedback.

Our dedicated Healthcare Team work closely with our customers to provide a service that is bespoke to their needs. We are the only healthcare food provider with an in-house Training & Operations team, and alongside our dedicated Catering Consultants, support our customers to create true partnerships, looking for innovative solutions to best meet the needs of their sites, whether that be patient, staff or visitor dining.

Impact of Products/Services on Healthcare

Our hospital meals range offers delicious and nutritious hospital meals that aid patient recovery, as well as catering to the needs of healthcare customers with our Bulk offering and CarteChoix, our innovate individual plated meals solution. Our Staff & Visitor Dining concepts support retail offerings in hospitals by improving convenience and bringing delicious meals and more choice to staff and visitors.

We are leading the way with our specialist nutrition range, including or IDDSI-compliant texture modified meals that prioritise safety for patients with swallowing difficulties, as well as being visually appealing. Additionally, our Finger Foods range enables those with dexterity issues to pick up meal components more easily and still enjoy a nutritionally balanced full meal. We’ve also created energy dense smaller meal options to ensure malnourished patients, or those with smaller appetites, get the nutrition they need.

For peace of mind for our customers and patients, our accredited laboratories and strict procedures make our food one of the safest catering options available for the health and social care sector. We have 3 state of the art laboratories at our site in Wiltshire, independently audited and approved by the Campden Laboratory Approval Scheme (CLAS) to ISO17025. Our unique positive-release policy means we analyse a sample of food from every batch of meals we create, and no food is released for sale until the absence of pathogens is established. This includes the testing of all meals in our Free From range, ensuring they are free from all 14 of the main allergens, as well as onion and garlic, with no compromise on taste or flavour.

Innovation

We are always looking at new ways we can innovate within the market, through our products, systems and service.

Our in-house New Product Development teams, dedicated Chefs and Dietitians are constantly developing our product ranges, ensuring it meets the needs of all customers. This includes creating new and exciting dishes that reflect industry food trends and needs, and improvements to dishes following customer feedback, ensuring all products meet dietary coding and nutrition requirements.
Our innovative sustainability projects, such as Project Boomerang and Reduced Carbon Menus are leading the way and supporting the NHS towards their Net Zero target by 2040. Project Boomerang, is the NHS’ first closed-loop recycling system for ready meal trays. Under the scheme, all meal trays used in our CarteChoix and specialist nutrition ranges can be collected back directly by ourselves and recycled into completely new trays, right here in the UK – with a guarantee that 100% of trays returned will be recycled into new trays.

Since launching in 2021, the scheme has seen a total of over 25 million trays returned from both our Wiltshire Farm Foods and Healthcare customers nationwide. The initiative was also an integral part of apetito being recently awarded The King’s Awards for Enterprise in Sustainable Development 2024, demonstrating our commitment to sustainable business practices.

Future Direction

We are always looking at ways to further develop our Healthcare offering and support our customers in order to best meet their needs, as well as the wider healthcare industry.

Our Healthcare division is currently working on a number of projects to future support our customers, and the wider healthcare sector, including:
- Children’s Meals – a dedicated paediatric product range and mealtime experience package designed specifically for children’s tastes and nutrition needs
- Staff & Visitor Dining – new retail options to improve convenience and bring delicious meals and more choice to staff and visitors
- Hospital to Home – a service focused on the transition from hospital care to home support

We are also always exploring ways to improve sustainability across the sector, with new initiatives that can help the NHS towards their Net Zero targets. As well as our tray returning scheme Project Boomerang, we recently launched our Reduced Carbon Menus and are supporting our customers to make small changes to their menu offerings in order to reduce carbon emissions through mealtimes.