A new digital restaurant concept has opened at Colchester Hospital.
The service is for hospital staff, visitors and patients.
The new Kitchen Works restaurant has been designed to minimise queuing times and speed up food ordering and collection, helping busy hospital staff – particularly frontline teams – make the most of their breaks. With a new pre-ordering and ‘click and collect’ service, customers can order via an app or at in-restaurant kiosks, with meals ready within minutes to eat in or take away.
The restaurant offers a variety of seating options, including breakout areas with soft seating, larger community tables for groups, and traditional dining spaces. A 24/7 ‘grab-and-go’ section provides ready meals, salads, soups, sandwiches, drinks and snacks at any time of day.
Menus feature daily chef-created dishes, themed days and events, and a range of cuisines under Sodexo’s Hawkers street food brand, from Indian and Greek to Korean, Caribbean and African flavours. Staff using the app can also access discounts, loyalty rewards, offers and the option to save customised orders.
Philip Leigh, CEO of Sodexo Health & Care, said: “The new digital Kitchen Works restaurant has been designed to give time back to people and to drive efficiencies for our hospital clients, their workforce and users. Whilst time is of the essence, the food is high quality and the range extensive. Kitchen Works enables us to deliver on our promise of ‘good food made easy’.”
Colchester Hospital, part of East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust (ESNEFT), appointed Sodexo Health & Care as its soft FM partner to provide catering, housekeeping, cleaning, portering and security services across its sites. The hospital has around 760 beds and provides care for approximately 370,000 people in Colchester and the surrounding areas of North East Essex and South Suffolk.
