The NACC Podcast | National Association of Care Catering

The Accidental Chief Executive: Hils' Sarah Wren on the NHS Prevention Agenda, a £5.8 Billion Frailty Crisis, and How Local Authorities Can Fix Meals on WheelsSarah Wren describes herself as an accidental chief executive. A business degree led to a short spell in banking — she grimaces at the memory — then a career she loved as a business and management lecturer, then a stint as a district councillor where Meals on Wheels was a pressing issue. She helped establish Hills as a volunteer chair and never quite left. She is now chief executive of Hils (Health and Independent Living Support), a charitable social enterprise delivering Meals on Wheels and preventative care across Hertfordshire, Hampshire, and West Sussex. This episode was recorded during Meals on Wheels Week.Meals on Wheels is the largest service, but not the only one: Hils also takes preventative care directly into people's homes, including an exercise programme — eight weeks, building strength, balance, and confidence — that Sarah describes as the only one of its kind in the country. With 400 colleagues, 12 sites, and around 130 liveried vehicles on the road each day, the organisation covers three counties and is actively looking to reach more. Sarah goes out on deliveries herself occasionally. She is, she admits, always late. Clients are always disappointed to see her — and that disappointment, she says, tells you everything about what the service actually is. The annual survey makes it quantifiable: 98% of clients say they are better nourished, and 96% say they are happier.That gap exists partly because so many councils have axed Meals on Wheels services, citing lack of funding. Sarah's counter-argument is specific: local authorities don't pay VAT and can reclaim it, which means that by working with Hills they can effectively offer clients a delivery service at no cost to them. This is, she says, a complete no-brainer — keep people at home, keep them out of residential care, prevent the malnutrition that leads to falls, hip fractures, and crisis hospital admissions. The employer National Insurance changes introduced by the government have added half a million pounds of costs to Hills' annual budget. "We have to find a way through," she says. "There is no option. Because the people we serve cannot do without us."Subscribe wherever you listen!A massive thank you to our Sponsors:Unilever Food SolutionsallmanhallPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're Not Dealing with Tins of Beans: Care UK's Andrew Mussett on Dopamine, Fakaway Days, and a Bread and Butter Pudding That Saves Nine and a Half Grand a YearAndrew Mussett arrived in care catering because his contract in Wales ended and he didn't want to move house. He walked into a care home in the Welsh Valleys as head chef, saw what needed changing, and changed it — and eleven years later he's still at Care UK, now as Hotel Services Manager covering two or three regions across a group of around 260 homes. This is his first ever podcast recording...SHOW NOTESAndrew Mussett's path into care wasn't driven by vocation. He was living in Wales, he had a house he liked, and when his contract ended he looked for something local. A care home in the Welsh Valleys needed a head chef. He turned up, saw things that could be better, made them better, and found he couldn't leave. What started as a pragmatic decision became seventeen or eighteen years in the sector, the last eleven with Care UK — the longest he's worked anywhere. His role now spans catering, kitchens, and laundry across two or three regions: supporting home managers through challenges, interviewing head chefs, running audits, implementing new ideas, and delivering training. He describes the work through its problems — "it's like a big bowl of spaghetti, you tug on one strand and the others tighten up, eventually you find the one that lets everything relax" — and says plainly why he stays: they're not dealing with tins of beans, they're dealing with human beings. Five residents who all dislike chicken still have five entirely different layers of complexity underneath that.The nutrition work at Care UK is systematic. Three or four manuals come out each year, each targeting a specific area: blood sugars and diabetes (giving residents with diabetes the same desserts through thoughtful reformulation), hydration, an IDDSI book mapping regular dishes through each adaptation level, retro baking. The frame Andrew uses is fuel quality over fuel quantity: everyone knows roughly how many calories they need, far fewer know how much omega-3 or vitamin D or serotonin precursors they're actually getting. The next project is serotonin and dopamine — genuine mood improvement through food, not ecstatic happiness but a measurable increase in wellbeing and better sleep patterns. He walks through the dopamine exercise: close your eyes, imagine going to buy a bar of chocolate, imagine purchasing it, imagine unwrapping it and eating it. That's the shot. It isn't weakness or comfort eating — it's the body requesting something it needs. The project after that is vitamin D, and Andrew's preference is food over supplements: swapping white mushrooms for brown chestnut mushrooms is one of the simpler changes that adds meaningful vitamin D across a menu.Subscribe wherever you listen!A massive thank you to our Sponsors:Unilever Food SolutionsallmanhallPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You Matter Until the End: Paulius Kriksciunas of Bupa Care Homes on Personal Brand, Imposter Syndrome, and Why Every Chef in Care Deserves to Feel ProudPaulius Kriksciunas started at the very bottom at St. Christopher's Hospice — the first modern hospice in the world — and was told by his head chef to go and work in a hotel if he wanted to be a real chef. He didn't listen. Sixteen years later he's National Hospitality Manager for Bupa Care Homes, and his mission is to change how the sector sees itself from the inside out. In this episode he talks about building a personal brand, a Grand Final at Edgbaston for 140 guests, and a young chef who wasn't sure he wanted to admit he worked in a care kitchen.SHOW NOTESPaulius Kriksciunas didn't follow the advice. When he started at St. Christopher's Hospice — the South London institution established in 1967 by Dame Cicely Saunders, widely credited as the founder of the modern hospice movement — his head chef told him plainly that if he wanted to be a real chef, he needed to go and work in a hotel or a restaurant.He stayed.By 2015 he was head chef, aged twenty-five, and had learned something that shaped everything that came after: working in healthcare wasn't a lesser version of hospitality, it was a more complex version of it. The stakes were higher. The range was wider. The barbecues he catered for five thousand people and the oil visits and the weddings ran alongside the patient meal service, and all of it had to be right. He left hospital kitchens with a 360-degree hospitality education that most of his restaurant peers didn't have.In this episode, host Rob Spence asks Paulius about his philosophy of developing teams — a philosophy he first articulated when he moved from head chef into a catering manager role and set himself a clear target: build a team so good they could run the service without him. He's still working to that principle. He describes his approach to professional development in terms of personal brand — treating himself as a business, being his own CEO and marketing department simultaneously — and he's trying to get the people he works with into the same mindset. Asked on a LinkedIn post what three things he'd learned since moving to London, he landed on being competitive, and doing the unseen work: volunteering, raising your hand, accepting the uncomfortable thing because that's where confidence actually grows. He forgets the third thing live on air, and is entirely unbothered about it.It's that story of the young chef which leads to one of the episode's most direct moments. Paulius visited the same chef a few weeks earlier and discovered he was embarrassed to tell his friends where he worked. He didn't want to admit he was in a care kitchen. Paulus spent an hour talking to him about why he should be proud; then took him to the HRC show at ExCeL, introduced him to suppliers, showed him the wider world that connects to the kitchen he works in every day.His question for the next guest: what can we do to make chefs in our industry feel proud?Subscribe wherever you listen — and if you've ever thought the care sector was a quiet backwater, Paulius is going to change your mind.A massive thank you to our Sponsors:Unilever Food SolutionsallmanhallPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Cinderella Service: Donna Steeden on 28 Years at Quantum Care, Dining Clubs, and Why Care Catering Deserves a Much Higher ProfileDonna Steeden has spent 28 years at Quantum Care, overseeing catering, housekeeping and laundry across 22 care homes — a role she describes as the Cinderella service: invisible when it works, impossible to ignore when it doesn't. In this episode she talks about building long-term supplier relationships over short-term savings, a dining club experience that reduced a son to tears after his first proper family meal with his dementia-diagnosed father, and why the future of care catering means letting residents eat whenever they want.SHOW NOTESDonna Steeden came to care catering the way a lot of people do — through a side door. She'd been working across contract catering, hospital catering, restaurants and army camps when she fell into care as a relief chef, travelling between sites and covering homes as needed. She says it quite simply: she never goes through a day in care without feeling she can make a difference. Even if that difference is just making sure one resident has the food they love. That's unlike anything she experienced in her previous career, and it's why she stayed. Twenty-eight years later, she's Support Services Manager at Quantum Care, responsible for catering, housekeeping and laundry across 22 homes — plus the recruiting, inducting, supplier relationships, policies and procedures that hold it all together. She calls it the Cinderella service. Without it, you couldn't run a care home. Most people only notice it when something goes wrong.In this episode, host Rob Spence asks Donna about the biggest challenges in care catering. She lands where most of her peers do — recruitment and unstable food costs — but the way she approaches both is specific. On recruitment, she's clear that care catering needs to engage people before they're even looking for a job, and that the NACC's Care Chef of the Year competition does that work well. It shows the industry in the light it deserves, demonstrating the skill and talent that go into the role. She sells the hours — no split shifts, no late nights — but what she really sells is the ability to make a personal difference that you simply don't get in most parts of the catering trade. She's also honest that texture-modified cooking requires a particular kind of chef: someone who isn't frightened of it, who has a passion for it. Finding that person is the work.On food costs, Donna doesn't jump between suppliers when prices shift — she builds relationships and has brutally honest conversations. She was talking to her butcher the week of recording about cheaper cuts that require a different cooking skill but suit the care environment well, and how she could support her chefs to handle them properly. That conversation is only possible because of the trust built over years. She also started with a simple win on food waste: she stopped peeling carrots. Not every answer has to be complicated.Her view on where care catering is heading is wide-ranging and honest. The flexibility of how people eat now — ordering food at midnight via a phone, eating whenever the mood strikes — will need to be reflected in care settings. She already moved the main meal to the evening at Quantum Care, which was unusual at the time but simply reflected when people were used to eating. Plant-based diets will become a much bigger part of the landscape, and teams need to be building those skills now. And underpinning all of it is something she feels strongly: older people deserve to be seen, supported, and not dismissed. She offers to train carers organisations and hospitals. She's been trying to have that conversation for years. Subscribe wherever you listen!A massive thank you to our Sponsors:Unilever Food SolutionsallmanhallPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Put Rubbish In, Get Rubbish Out: Gareth Cartledge on Winning Care Chef of the Year at 21, Modified Food Presentation, and the Two Mentors Who Shaped EverythingGareth Cartledge's mum arranged his work experience because he was, by his own admission, a lazy lad at school. That week at St. Monica Trust in Bristol at 15 turned into 18 years, a Care Chef of the Year title won at 21 as the youngest winner in the competition's history, and a career that now sees him Head of Hospitality at Port Haven Care Group. In this episode he answers Stella Stewart's question on modified food presentation, talks about what winning actually meant — which turned out not to be much at the time — and the two mentors who shaped everything.SHOW NOTESGareth Cartledge didn't arrange his own work experience. His mum did, placing him at St. Monica Trust in Bristol at 15, and he never really left — staying 18 years and learning from head chef Gary Brelsford, who gave him two quotes that still stick. The first: life's like a bowl of soup — put rubbish in, get rubbish out. The second, which took years to fully land: food and hydration is just as important as medication within care homes. At catering college on day release, he was surrounded by peers heading for hotels and Michelin kitchens; he was already in care and already questioning why anyone would reach for packet sauces when you could make it fresh.In 2008, entered as St. Monica Trust's representative after a failed attempt the year before, he won Care Chef of the Year at 21 — the youngest winner at the time. He went straight back to work afterwards. The significance, he says, didn't land until years later: through NACC seminars, through connections made, through conversations with people who understood what he was doing and why. What he values most now isn't his own win but the journeys he's supported others through — seeing chefs' careers elevate because he pushed them toward the competition. His second great mentor, Simon Lawrence, elevated him differently: opening the door from chef to regional manager and the whole next chapter of his career.Answering Stella Stewart's question on modified food presentation, Gareth is practical and precise: pipe, quenelle, swipe, mould — make the food look like its form. Don't overcook, so colours stay vibrant when you take them down to the required IDDSI level. Twenty-five to thirty percent of appetite is visual, and a resident on a modified diet deserves to eat with their eyes as much as anyone else. His wider philosophy on menus is the same: residents first, always — ask them what they ate at home, how they cooked it, what would take them back. Chefs in care have to work front and back of house, because unlike a restaurant, the customer is back in five hours. Build the relationship first and everything else follows.To learn more about The NACC, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/A massive thank you to our Sponsors:Unilever Food SolutionsallmanhallPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.