City kitchen Zurich
The city of Zurich kitchen was a central catering facility in Zurich. After- school care centers , schools, old people's homes, care facilities as well as city canteens and cafeterias were supplied with meals every day .
history
The city kitchen was founded in 1879 as a people's kitchen . The origin went back to the feeding of the poor . As a result, this social institution, which was organizationally assigned to the social department until the end of the 1990s , developed into a catering company for the city of Zurich with a turnover of around CHF 10 million.
Until the 1990s, the city kitchen ran 25 eateries, cafeterias and staff restaurants, produced menus for city schools and old people's homes as well as meals for senior citizens. Employees in the kitchen area were also employed who were difficult to place in the regular job market. At the end of the 1990s it was about to close due to a high recurring operating deficit. An interdepartmental working group, which dealt in detail with the future of the city kitchen, came to the conclusion that the city kitchen should be transferred from the social department to the health and environmental department, since this was the largest producer of meals within the city administration and therefore a great potential for synergies can be assumed was.
Reassignment
On July 9, 1997 the city council decided to provisionally transfer responsibility for the city kitchen from the social department to the health and environment department; on October 29, 1997 the city council finally approved the repositioning of the city kitchen in the health and environment department. At the same time, the expansion of production in the city kitchen and the gradual exit from gastronomy were considered.
Reorganization and realignment
After the reorganization, the city kitchen closed with positive results in 2002, but the top priority was still to develop the city kitchen further. There was a risk that, in the best-case scenario , sales of the city kitchen would stagnate in the next few years : On the one hand, the city-internal market potential had already been exhausted, and on the other hand, the city kitchen, as a city-owned company, was only able to act very cautiously as a market participant - only insofar as the Private sector did not obviously feel competitive. Furthermore, the target market of large-scale catering, which the city kitchens envisioned, was in a state of upheaval: There was a strong concentration, production companies merged or were bought up, and the pressure of competition increased steadily. For these reasons, it was to be foreseen that the existence of the city kitchen in its previous form would sooner or later be called into question. There was thus the risk that the city kitchen would have to give up one of its most important fields of activity, the low-cost delivery of meals to day nurseries, after-school care centers and schools, in the event of a possible closure. Associated with this would have been a reduction in the 50 jobs in the city kitchen at the time.
The assumed synergy potential within the Health and Environment Department (GUD) could not be used as expected. The food production processes in GUD were checked with regard to an overall process chain (catering from a single source). It emerged that the catering or the production of meals is an important strategic success factor for each affected service department, which is strongly linked to the actual core business and therefore closely linked to the special needs of the customers. These customer-specific needs could no longer have been satisfied with an overall process chain or with its effects.
Further development of the city kitchen
One way of further development was to grant the city kitchen sufficient entrepreneurial leeway, which could only be ensured through unrestricted market access, which, however, did not exist due to the previous status of the city kitchen as a service department of the city of Zurich. Due to its small market size, the city kitchen was dependent on a strong partner in the highly competitive market, who enabled it, on the one hand, to continue to be entrepreneurially active, to achieve greater sales and to make investments in product development and in the company, and thus the To guarantee cheap meals for children in city crèches, after-school care centers and schools and, on the other hand, to maintain the jobs of the city kitchen staff
Cooperation with partner
At the beginning of 2003, contact was made with the non-profit foundation DSR. DSR is the second largest Swiss caterer based in Rolle and runs staff restaurants and cafeterias. After DSR initially operated exclusively in French-speaking Switzerland, the company expanded into German-speaking Switzerland in 2000 and opened a branch in Zurich.
DSR as caterer and Stadtküche as manufacturer of menus and menu components worked on identical market fields; Nevertheless, there was no direct competition, because the two business activities mentioned were complementary . On the one hand, this line of argument made it easier for representatives of the two institutions to initiate discussions and, on the other, opened up new development prospects for both sides. In the early summer of 2003, DSR and Stadtküche decided to seriously consider the option for future cooperation. In February 2004, the declaration of intent for the commencement of definitive negotiations between the City of Zurich, or the Health and Environment Department, and DSR was signed by both parties.
Establishment of an operating company with DSR
Type of collaboration
The aim was to found an operating company jointly supported by the City of Zurich and DSR on January 1, 2005, in the form of a stock corporation (based in Zurich, Sihlquai 340). The intention was to implement a joint market presence and joint market development in those sub-segments of the catering industry in which a synergy effect between DSR, the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and the city kitchen can be most effectively developed. The operating company should focus on marketing, sales and customer management. From this point on, the city kitchen was limited to production.
Participation
DSR Participations SA, Rolle, took a 60% stake and the City of Zurich 40% in the operating company. The share capital to date is CHF 600,000. With the majority stake in DSR, the operating company as a private company had the opportunity to freely appear on the market. In return, it was ensured that with a 40% stake, the interests of the city of Zurich would be preserved while the product-specific core competencies of the operating company were retained in the city kitchen. The two parties agreed on the name Menu and More AG for the newly created stock corporation. On June 24, 2004 the city council approved the establishment of Menu and More AG and the participation of the City of Zurich in this company with 40% of the share capital. The remaining 60% of the share capital was held by DSR. Menu and More AG started operations on January 1, 2005.
On January 1st, 2015 the company was renamed from DSR to Eldora AG . The share capital of the company Eldora AG is still entirely held by the DSR Foundation. Since the name change, the DSR brand can no longer be found in Swiss community catering.
Market presence
With the long-standing core competencies of the two partners, the newly founded Menu and More AG succeeded in building up the new business areas and, due to the changing demand, combining them into a new market strategy that clearly differs from that of the classic caterer as well as that of the manufacturer difference. For the Stadtküche, the establishment of Menu and More AG meant that it withdrew entirely from direct market cultivation and, on behalf of Menu and More AG, limited itself to the manufacture of products that were sold under their names. All customers of the Stadtküche were taken over by Menu and More AG and supplied by them at unchanged conditions. With this step, the city kitchen remained as a service department of the city of Zurich until further notice. She was responsible for production (from production planning to and including product manufacture) until the end of 2010. Marketing and sales (including distribution), on the other hand, worked under the name of Menu and More AG from that point on, with all employees remaining employed by the Stadtküche and loaned to Menu and More AG to the extent necessary for compensation.
Market cultivation
Menu and More AG is active wherever the kitchen infrastructure is limited or missing in the community catering on site. The decisive factor is that products and sales come from a single source and that tailor-made products for everyday catering are offered inexpensively and of good quality in the competitive displacement market. Menu and More AG's target market is community catering. This includes institutional caterers for lunchtime tables such as school after-school care centers or day nurseries.
Sale and dissolution of the city kitchen
Following the decision of the city council on February 25, 2009, on March 3, 2010, the city council of Zurich also gave the go-ahead for the privatization of the city kitchen with a clear majority . Since the city kitchen was mentioned by name in the municipal code of the city of Zurich, the voters had the last word on June 13, 2010. This approved the motion of the city council - albeit just barely - with 51.0 yes shares. As a result of this decision, the city kitchen as a service department of the Health and Environment Department was sold and dissolved on December 31, 2010 and integrated into Menu and More AG, which had existed since 2004, on January 1, 2011. The employees were transferred to Menu and More AG by means of a personnel transfer agreement and employed by Menu and More AG with a private-law employment contract (with a guarantee of ownership). The 131-year history of the city kitchen came to an end with a farewell party on December 17, 2010.
The Menu and More AG
"Menu and More AG", a company of the Eldora Group, is a renowned and multi-certified catering provider with over 50 employees who specialize in the preparation and sale of healthy and child-friendly menus for lunch in schools and day nurseries. Over 450 institutions throughout German-speaking Switzerland now rely on the fresh menus and personal service. menuandmore supplies everything from a single source, from preparation to packaging to the refrigerator of the lunch table, in a climate-neutral manner, generating annual sales of around CHF 15 million.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ HP Zurich
- ↑ DSR ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
