How to use our Catering Cost Tool for Aged Care Homes

Finding the balance between providing high-quality meals and managing a tight budget is one of the biggest challenges in the aged care industry today. With the cost of living ever increasing, every dollar counts. At Cater Care, we want to make it easier for you to see exactly where your money is going. We’ve developed a simple catering cost tool to help you get a clear picture of your aged care catering costs and identify where you might be able to save.

Assessing the health of your nursing home catering

It only takes a few minutes to complete our Catering Cost Health Check. By answering nine quick and straightforward questions, you’ll receive a detailed report on how your facility is performing.

The obligation-free report aims to help you make informed decisions across your catering operations that can improve the daily lives of your residents. When your catering finances are healthy, you have more freedom to focus on the nutrition, wellbeing, and happiness of the people in your care, cook better food, and run a smoother kitchen operation.

Identifying hidden costs in care home catering

We all know running an in-house kitchen involves a lot of moving parts and people, and it’s easy for expenses to slip through the cracks. To help put it into view, our catering cost tool is designed by professionals who have spent years serving meals in aged care homes across the country. This catering cost tool was designed to help you uncover the costs that often go unnoticed, such as:

• Occupancy risk and scale: There’s a direct correlation between resident numbers and cost-efficiency. When occupancy rates dip, it becomes harder to negotiate favourable supply agreements or maintain staff ratios. This tool helps you determine if your current occupancy is working with or against your catering budget.
• Operational expenses: This includes the obvious costs like food, but also the indirect costs like ongoing training, and specialised equipment maintenance. Additionally, labour inefficiencies arise when your team is stretched across roles they’re not specialised for and they’re pulled from their core tasks. Consequently, productivity drops overall, and operational costs rise.
• Menu planning: Developing nutritious menus in-house takes significant time. There’s also the added cost of external dietitian reviews to ensure you’re meeting the new aged care quality standards.
• Procurement: Are you getting the best value from your suppliers? The efficiencies gained through contract catering services and their established supply chains frequently yield significant annual cost savings for residential care homes.

Making better decisions for your residents

With financial viability a major talking point at recent aged care conferences, many providers are feeling the squeeze. We created this catering cost tool specifically to help smaller providers avoid expensive oversight.

The best part? You don’t need to be in the finance team to use this catering cost tool. It’s built for busy managers who need clear answers quickly. By taking five minutes today, you could find a way to significantly improve your bottom line and the quality of your aged care catering.

Click here to start your Catering Cost Health Check.

If you’d like to have a chat about your results or find out more about how we can support your nursing home catering needs, please reach out to Jonathan Storer today.