The big interview: Just Eat for Business

There will always be a place for traditional caterers. However, online food delivered-in is increasingly becoming part of the mix in a market where hybrid working is now the norm.

Mercifully, however, from a catering perspective, there are still many employers who want to reward their staff with a good but affordable food service. And, more challengingly, a service that can be flexed for an increasingly fluid 21^st century workforce, who may be in the office or working remotely.

That does not necessarily mean companies abandoning contract catered food in favour of pizza and sandwiches from the high-street, or vouchers, though they too are now part of the mix. It does mean, however, fewer offices with dedicated in-house kitchens and restaurants.

But it is by no means all gloom and doom. Despite increasingly harsh fiscal and economic headwinds, a proper lunch, rather than a hastily consumed sandwich at a desk, seems to be back in vogue, reversing decades of grab-and-go. And this is a distinct trend that is strongly reflected in Just Eat for Business’s most recent research into gen z food preferences.

Just Eat for Business currently has some 300 vendors on its delivery platform, supplying 30,000 weekly meals, predominantly in London. It is currently in the process, along with its parent company, Just Eat Takeaway (JET), of being acquired by the global technology investment group Prosus, as part of a £3.7bn deal. And while the vast majority of the company’s vendors are high-street retailers and restaurants, there is growing opportunity for contract caterers to climb aboard the platform, asserts Matt Ephgrave, Just Eat for Business’s UK managing director.

The company currently has some six contract caterers on its platform. This is a number that Ephgrave, who describes them as “boutique-owned, single owner businesses”, would clearly like to grow. He specifically mentions Fika, which last year won a Catey for its outstanding performance in the business and industry category.

“They clearly perceive where demand is shifting towards,” he says. And demand is growing for more flexible, variable food service, creating with it opportunities for caterers to earn additional revenues from reoccurring office lunches, ad hoc events and pop-ups, as well as providing regular coffee bars and buffets.  

Contract caterers could, as Ephgrave concedes, consider Just Eat for Business to be competing against them. However, he maintains that the reality is somewhat different, saying: “What we’ve proven over the five years I have been in this job is that we’re actually complimentary.”

While corporate clients still want to reward employees, or rather entice them back to the office with a good lunch, coffee service or specific events, they don’t always want or have appropriate facilities with which to provide dedicated in-house catering.

This is something that is strongly supported by recent Transport for London commuter traffic figures. They show that for the past two years, workers go to the office for about three days a week on average, which makes a full-on dedicated in-house operation unviable for many corporate clients. It also suggests that hybrid working is here to stay.

This changeover to permanent hybrid working is clearly reflected in Just Eat for Business’s order volume growth, which was phenomenally 17 times higher in 2024 than it was in 2020. “What we are finding is that more and more corporates, particularly their procurement and facilities management teams, want to deal with just one supplier and one invoice,” reveals Ephgrave. “They want to remove as much complexity as possible from the process.”

The Just Eat model, he maintains, helps account managers or administrators manage fluctuating demand in client offices, with 70% of workers being in on some days, then only 20% on others. This can be hard to manage under more traditional forms of catering, especially when food prices and delivery costs are rising significantly.

The service to corporates allows employees to select individual meals from a pre-selected menu under a set budget, while also allowing a business account manager control over food and drink content via a variety of restaurants. “They can limit the amount of less healthy options.” explains Ephgrave. “They might decide that on certain days they’re going to stick to the healthier options. There could be a couple of salad options and perhaps a sushi one.”

Additionally, the platform allows employers to assign, daily, weekly or monthly food budgets for ordering meals, anywhere at any time, which is consolidated into one monthly invoice. Employees working remotely or from home can also maximise their individual employee food subsidy, which tends to average about £15, a day at selected restaurants. The platform also offers eco-conscious consolidated delivery to offices. “Instead of multiple delivery drivers, which would pose problems for clients, individual companies get a single driver who has gone round and collected all the food from the selected restaurants and delivers it at one pre-scheduled time,” explains Ephgrave.

However, at the end of the day, the mission is predominantly about making food an important workplace perk. “We encourage everyone to get up from their computer when they’re in the office and have a proper lunch, sitting together with colleagues,” maintains Ephgrave. “That’s when you get really good conversation and interesting collaboration.”

And this is where contract catering could play a more prominent role, something that is reinforced by Just Eat for Business’s proprietorial research by chartered workplace psychologist Dr Audrey Tang. Her study reveals that gen z is considerably more receptive when it comes to dining with colleagues. Some 66% of them, compared to just 55% of millennials and 36% of gen x, welcome such opportunities. Moreover, a majority of gen z workers want to take their full lunch break entitlement – 56% of them, compared to just 36% for gen x and 22% among baby boomers.

Just Eat for Business was always constructed as a business-to-business operation from its very outset, when it traded as City Pantry before being acquired and rebranded by JET in 2019. This something that Ephgrave argues sets the company apart from other food ordering and delivery platforms, which are essentially later adaptations of business-to-consumer models. “It permeates our relationships with account managers, as well as our service and platform functionality,” he explains.

Despite all this, a third-party, delivered-in online-service may not be for everyone in contract catering. After all, some business owners like to keep control over every aspect of their company. And while some major contract caterers, such as Sodexo and Compass, have established their own delivered-in solutions (though Compass sold its food delivery cloud canteen business, Feedr, to Berlin-based EatFirst in 2023, while retaining a strategic interest in the German company), smaller companies do not necessarily have the resources to follow suit. Managing the logistical challenges involved can prove especially onerous for small and mid-sized caterers.

Regardless, the market for online delivered-in food is undoubtedly expanding. Just Eat for Business plans to grow its operation beyond the capital to other major UK cities in coming years. “What we initially saw was London-based companies offering food as part of their benefit packages, but now that is expanding into other markets in the UK and overseas,” says Ephgrave.

While restaurants and caterers pay variable platform fees, depending on service level, they also get access to thousands of corporate clients to help drive large value orders, which can add up to welcome additional revenue. “We help those businesses massively increase their reach to corporate clients and, of course, we take care of customer support and logistics,” Ephgrave says. Food collections tend to be made between 11am and noon, freeing up kitchens for their own lunchtime service.

Neither does such an operation result in a loss of brand identity, something that some caterers might regard as being a serious risk. “Our teams regularly meet our partners, listen to their stories, see their menus and, on occasion, sample their food,” says Ephgrave. “This allows us to authentically represent those brands to our customers.”

Joining a platform such as Just Eat for Business does not necessarily offer a replacement for core catering contracts. It does, however, appear to offer not only a birds-eye view of the London corporate sector and how it is evolving, but also the prospect of complimentary incremental growth in the hybrid working market.

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