Saffron provides The University of Edinburgh with a one stop catering management solution

The Accommodation, Catering and Events (ACE) department sits within the Corporate Services support group of The University of Edinburgh. As the largest catering provider in the University there has been significant growth over the last five years with the catering operations of ACE now covering:

• Catered halls for 2,000 students, which become Scotland’s largest hotel each summer
• Retail catering operations including seven stand-alone outlets with dedicated kitchens and chef managers, 14 Grab and Go outlets supported from a central kitchen, two street food vans and a range of mobile coffee carts
• Edinburgh First: the commercial sub-brand of ACE for conferences, events, outside catering, meetings and weddings
• Three hotels, which are all-year-round properties providing breakfast and a bistro.

Prior to implementing Saffron, our biggest challenge was our stock database: it was neither clean nor well-structured. The implementation itself was a simple process. An export from our old system was taken and imported into Saffron. In recent years, with the support of the Saffron team, we have cleansed the database and put in place a hierarchy which allows much tighter management of new, live and non-live items and recipes.

Saffron provides ACE with a one stop catering management software solution which is made up of a number of different modules. We have used multiple modules to realise the benefits of Saffron. These include:

• Stock down dating via an interface with our EPoS provider
• Stock reporting, including variances
• Purchase control and invoice management
• Sales Order modules to a CPU
• Recipes and costings
• Allergen & nutrition portal
• BI reporting dashboard
• Supplier control
• Wastage segregation, reporting and interface with EPoS provider.

Saffron has a positive reputation within the higher education sector. Saffron provides ACE with a one stop catering management software solution. It is a simple process to ‘switch on’ new functionality and over the years our use of the system has grown significantly. An added benefit is having access to a training system enabling us to train new staff and test new functionality.
Rae Conn, Head of Catering Operations (Campus, Events & Systems), University of Edinburgh