A glance of the highlights over the past 12 months at Restaurant Associates

As we come to the end of the year, we wanted to look back at some of the highlights over the past 12 months. Despite the challenging background, we are proud to have made huge strides forward with our sustainable practices alongside being the first major caterer to make a net zero commitment by 2030.

Throughout the year we have developed stronger connections to the communities in which we inhabit working with the likes of Refettorio Felix and the Outside project to help support their incredible work around tackling homelessness. Alongside providing food for dozens of local charities the team came together to raise over £2,000 for Hospitality Action and CALM.

Learning and development has been at the heart of our people strategy to help our associates grow the skills and confidence they need to further their careers and capabilities. This summer we launched Forward with Marcus Waring, a level 4 apprenticeship programme that provides our senior chefs with the knowledge to create more sustainable menus and finesse their culinary techniques. In Spring we partnered with Catch 22 and Off the Streets to launch our new barista apprenticeship programme helping young people to enter the world of hospitality, and in Autumn we launched our career pathways, a scheme that offers continuous learning opportunities to all our team members at every level.

We were proud to be recognised for several awards in 2021 including three from Caterer.com for Employee Engagement, Wellbeing and Skills and Development. There has been a huge focus on the health and mental wellbeing of our teams, and we are proud to have qualified Mental Health First Aiders in every venue.

We won several prestigious new corporate clients m across the country from north to south and launched new restaurant concepts with Dipna Anand at Somerset House as well as the Galvin Brothers at Glyndebourne Opera House, strengthening our community of consultants.

We are looking forward to the year ahead with some exciting announcements planned in the coming months. Meanwhile, we wish everyone a happy and healthy new year!