In November 1999, S.K. Tam, Ian Campbell, Mike Phillips, and Michael O’Brien founded Cater Care with the shared dream of building Australia’s best contract catering business. They knew they could find success with a uniquely personalised business model, and sought to create a company culture that emphasised caring for their staff, fostering growth from within, and treating every client as if they were our only one.
In the two and a half decades since, we’ve grown, learned, and expanded to become Australia’s leading catering provider, but those commitments have never changed. Our core values of Care, Pride, and Community guide our every action, and we’re proud to say they can be traced back to the earliest days of our history.
In the beginning it was challenging to find business while competing against established market players, but once we won our first contract at St Catherine’s Girls School in Melbourne we quickly began to build momentum. Our second contract with the Case Corporation in New South Wales came next, quickly followed by four contracts in one hectic June afternoon.
Once celebrations settled down, the team realised how tight a mobilisation timeframe they’d been left with. They rose to the challenge and opened all four sites on schedule, and Cater Care began to truly earn our reputation for careful, prideful work. We ended 2000 with 18 new clients who were drawn in by our focus on personalised service, and we posted our first operating profit 3 months ahead of schedule in February 2001.
The 2000s and 2010s were a period of rapid growth for Cater Care. In 2004, Cater Care Services was created to bring our tailored services to the Remote sector, beginning with the Giants Reef mine in the Northern Territory. By 2007, that personal touch saw Cater Care Services catering for 30 sites across the country. Our Urban and Remote businesses continued to expand alongside it, and by the mid-2010s we were serving 80 sites around Australia with 1,200 staff.
In 2014 we rebranded for the decade ahead with a fresh coat of paint, a new logo, and a new tagline that simplified our service mission to ‘Welcome Home’. This neatly aligned with our recently formalised values of Care, Pride, and Community, and in 2015 our growth caught the attention of private equity firm CHAMP Ventures. They soon purchased a 45% stake in Cater Care, fuelling the next phase of our growth while leaving us uniquely Australian owned.
We soon acquired 31 retails in 6 major airports, creating our new Cater Care Retail division. This division has now grown to include more than 45 airport-based and high street retail outlets around the country, and was even named a finalist in the 2024 International Airport Food & Beverage Awards for Restaurant Design of the Year.
S.K. Tam retired as CEO in 2018, and Colin Redman stepped up to lead Cater Care through what would be the most challenging time in the company’s history. Despite the difficulties presented by lockdowns and staff shortages, we’re proud to say that Cater Care never missed a meal throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – serving more than 20,000 meals a day, no matter what.
We took another step towards living out our values of Care, Pride, and Community in 2020 by launching our Caring in the Community Corporate Social Responsibility program. We became official charity partners with both Lifeline and Foodbank, and we’ve had the honour of helping deliver real change to our communities in the years since.
That wasn’t the only community support initiative we launched in the early 2020s. Our Thrive Mental Wellbeing Program is a major part of our commitment to caring for our staff by protecting their mental health, and other ongoing investments in our team include our apprenticeship program, our Filipino Get a Start project, and Relish, our employee benefits and rewards program.
But taking an inward focus didn’t slow down our growth. We engaged in two major brand updates in 2022; first, we launched our gather by Cater Care education sub-brand and rolled it out to partners around the country. Second, we purchased the Buylink software in order to offer our clients streamlined food service procurement and payment through Buylink Services. 2023 saw us acquire majority stakes in Care Food Co., an innovative texture-modified food supplier, and Mini Meals by Cater Care, a childcare catering service, to provide a runway for future expansion.
Last year marked another significant leadership change. Colin Redman retired after 23 years with Cater Care, with Neil East taking his place as our new CEO. Neil has been an integral part of Cater Care for 15 years, and his wealth of experience and leadership skills will be invaluable for guiding us towards continued success.
In 2025 we’ll continue working towards being Australia’s caterer of choice while staying true to our values of Care, Pride, and Community along with our founding mission: to treat every client as if they were our only one.
Happy birthday, Cater Care. Here’s to another 25 years.
