Harlech Foodservice adds hundreds of customers and creates over 70 jobs

Harlech Foodservice has gained 943 new independent customers and won 243 new contract customers across Wales and the border counties of England since April. It has also created more than 70 new jobs.

Managing director David Cattrall.

The wholesaler has secured major local authority deals, such as a contract to supply drinks and snacks to Shire Services, the catering and cleaning arm of Shropshire Council.

Harlech supplies schools across Rhondda Cynon Taf, and since that success it has won contracts worth nearly £500,000 from its newer depots in Carmarthen and Merthyr Tydfil.

Earlier this year Harlech opened the premises in Carmarthen and took over rival Celtic Foodservice in Pembroke Dock in Pembrokeshire.

It has signed up football league clubs Tranmere Rovers and Bristol Rovers; Everybody Health and Leisure Centres, which runs 17 centres for Cheshire East Council; and Hickory’s Smokehouses, which has 25 restaurants as far afield as Leeds, Lincoln and Gloucester.

The raft of new contracts have come after Harlech launched a £6 million expansion strategy. The company is “well ahead of schedule” in meeting its target of creating 150 jobs over the next five years.

The plan was spurred by the company’s growth over the past three years, which has seen sales increase from £32 million to a turnover of around £50 million, with profit at an all-time high of more than £2 million.

Harlech sales director Mark Lawton said: “These new contracts enable us to demonstrate the range of products we can supply and the excellent service we provide across a huge area of the country.

“We now have a real presence throughout Wales and across the border into the North West from our base in Chester and into the Midlands from Telford, and I know that opening these new bases has been key in signing these new deals.

“Shire provide meals for about 100 schools in Shropshire alone and the opening of the Telford depot in June was important in winning that contract.

“Cutting food miles and employing local people at local bases is a key factor in gaining contracts in the public sector and so is providing a flexible and efficient service, and that’s something we pride ourselves on.

“We are flexible so we can provide our national account customers like local authorities with the best price along with consistency and quality of service while also working with them on social and community benefit and environmental factors.

“On the independent side we know what they want and we’ve been supplying them for over 50 years – we are a family-owned business ourselves. We’ve got their back so we lock their prices in and we don’t sneak them up.”

Published Date: October 23, 2024
Category: Wholesale Industry News