ITT for Catering Services

Tender description

The Digital Catapult is a national centre for Britain’s brightest digital ideas. Our Centre is a collaborative space for open innovation between small businesses, large corporations and academia. Since we opened the Centre in Kings Cross last November, we have hosted over 180 events, attended by over 10,000 people interested in meeting and sharing ideas to grow the UK’s digital economy. If you haven’t been to the Centre before, this short highlights video gives a good flavour of what our events are like. We host around 20 events a month (on average 4-8 per week) with most events running the full length of the day. While a number of our events are organised by the Catapult, many are organised by partners, key stakeholder groups such as universities and small businesses and major blue-chip clients from across the technology sector (including Cisco, Visa, IBM, HP etc). The Centre regularly hosts VIP guests, including senior government officials, foreign delegations and corporate CEOs, but it is an important part of our culture that every visitor receives the same unparalleled guest experience. The Digital Catapult is now seeking a catering partner to supply a range of fresh, healthy and beautifully presented buffet style breakfast and lunch offers across all its events. There will also be opportunities to supply canapés, bespoke evening meals and occasional weekend events catering. The Centre is a unique open plan space with great views across London, with no onsite cooking equipment and extremely limited food-preparation spaces, so successful caterers will work around these restrictions, preparing all or most catering entirely offsite, to be delivered ready to serve on arrival. Although this does not preclude hot food, the expectation is that most, if not all, food will be served cold. The catering partner is not expected to provide drinks unless in exceptional circumstances. Guest numbers for daytime events vary from 20-120; evening guests range from 20-160; bespoke dinners range from 10-40 people. In exceptional circumstances, the Centre hosts evening events for up to 250 people. It is important to note that catering services will be required as and when the events take place. The Digital Catapult cannot guarantee a minimum number of orders or minimum spend per week. In most instances, the catering partner will deal only with the events team at the Digital Catapult. However, on occasion, it may make more sense to deal directly with event clients who have specific or challenging catering needs. The space truly does offer a unique experience and so suppliers are encouraged to innovate.