Pelican Procurement Team is growing to meet the market demand

Thanks to strong market demand for more procurement and supply chain expert support, Pelican has seen a number of new arrivals, as well as staff team promotions

Increasingly we are finding that hospitality and catering professionals are focused not just on containing costs, but increasingly seeking best value, and looking for ways to work more efficiently, in a world where staffing problems remain a big issue.

The core Pelican offering remains a professional procurement service, for customers needing a robust, comprehensive tendering solution. But with more catering organisations asking for a simpler way to benefit, the new service “Pelican Group Purchasing” has been officially launched. It offers a ready-made solution and prenegotiated pricing from over 100 suppliers that quickly delivers savings on a broad range of food & non-food goods and services.

Change at the top

At the end of 2021, Ian Holliday was promoted to lead Pelican as the company’s new Director.

With over 40 years in the industry, Ian is passionate about helping catering professionals solve their pain points, around sourcing, pricing, costing, innovating and driving operational efficiencies. He has spent more than a decade at Pelican Procurement, and now leads a team supporting hotels and restaurants, and catering operations at hospitals, independent and state schools and colleges, and care homes.

While Pelican is a leader in technology, Ian sees such tools as a way to help both staff and clients win back more time for creative thinking; and he is passionate about maintaining mental health throughout the business. He leads from the front, spending as much time as he can either meeting customers, or supporting the growing Pelican team.

Ian has put a new team in place to support him, and expanded the offering to meet the latest needs evident in the market.

New arrivals

Among new arrivals to support clients who are interested in the Pelican Group Purchasing service offering is Andrew, joining as Head of Sales for group purchasing. Andrew has worked in many procurement roles supporting hospitality operators including hotels, bars and night clubs for over a decade. He also spent several years selling and delivering events.

Andrew says numerous challenges have moved the business from being price-led, to a value focus. And coming to Pelican, he believes the Pi software suite gives clients a significant advantage, as the Pi system is up there with the most expensive systems on the market – but Pelican clients get to use it for free!

Andrew will be supported by Ricky, who started out as a chef and worked in some of London’s smartest hotels. He later worked across a number of other sectors linked to the foodservice industry, so he truly understands the pain points that hospitality operators feel.

Ricky is very passionate about the catering industry; one of his proudest achievements was introducing training apprenticeships into UK prisons, giving inmates an opportunity to gain a qualification that would be really useful to them on release.

In contrast, new starter Ollie recently graduated in communications with business from the University of Liverpool and his role at Pelican is to provide day to day contact with a number of our key clients, supporting them with any supply chain queries, new product sourcing and price reviews and management. Ollie’s key role is to also provide regular analysis reports to advise clients of potential areas of savings across all categories. He will also be managing data (contract pricing, product information including nutrition & allergen data) within the Pi system – saving clients time and ensuring they are fully benefiting from the Pi system.

Before joining Pelican, Liam had a varied career within Whitbread and then Costa. During a decade with the business, his roles included retail development manager for three separate regions across North of England and Scotland.

Liam is passionate about supporting local charities and is a board member for a regional mental health charity based in Perth. This passion led him to work for a leading Scottish social enterprise, where he specialised in corporate and event catering, and managed a chain of sandwich shops across Scotland. He also supported the Scottish Government in delivering over 800,000 emergency food packs to those sharply affected by the pandemic!

Emily Cunningham has joined as a Marketing Executive, having previously worked with American parts of the Avendra Group where she developed and executed marketing strategies for US-based Avendra Group companies and segments. Emily moved to the UK last year and in January this year joined Avendra Group Europe making the switch from “favorite” to “favourite.” Emily’s sector and industry knowledge will help companies grow their brand presence both online and off-line.

Kev is professionally qualified to Master Level in automation software testing, and software development, and has over thirty years’ experience in IT. Passionate about software quality and improving the customer user experience, he will be part of the Pi development team, constantly testing new automation to ensure the quality of our Pi modules remains high! He will be looking for emerging test technologies to further enhance the system, and bring more benefits to our clients.

Kev started his career as a chef and still loves cooking today. His IT expertise now helps chefs to remove the mundane admin tasks and allow them to focus on creating the tasty dishes for their customers!

Sarah joins Pelican from a global technology services company, where her bilingual skills in English and French were deployed as a support specialist. At Pelican, she will be on hand to help users of our Pi system, as more customers come on board and discover its ability to help transform the efficiency of their operations.

As well as helping Pelican customers in the UK, Sarah’s French language skills will be extremely helpful as we roll out Pi modules to Trinity’s mainland European customers.

Building from within

Michelle Parnham has been promoted to Head of Sales for the public sector, heading a four strong team, who are helping our client across universities, the National Health Service, and education establishments to overcome their procurement challenges and achieve their goals.

The team is fully aware of the issues public sector teams face, their role is to provide solutions that will support clients’ business plans or strategy decisions. The service is bespoke to each client, so the team’s role is to engage with all stakeholders to gain a clear understanding of all their challenges before proposing solutions.

Julia Hemsley has taken on the new role of Head of Operations for Pelican Group Purchasing. The service has been developed to suit clients that need immediate and easy access to a broad selection of products at pre-negotiated discount rates – a ready-made solution that they can use straight away. Plus the clients are able to use the Pi system FREE of charge, as part of the service offering to reduce staff admin and increase operational efficiencies.

The service is supported by an office based client management team, always available on the phone or via email. The team’s broad range of experience and connections to a range of supplies in any category mean they are able to respond promptly to clients’ requests, across both food and nonfood lines. The team is also providing the first line of support with the Pi system, to help operators exploit all of the system’s benefits!

To support the growth of the business, marketing manager Simona Hardy has been promoted to an expanded role to support other brands part of the Avendra Group Europe family. In her new role Simona and her team will provide support for the teams across Pelican Procurement, the Pi system and European arm, Trinity Purchasing.

With over 16 years of experience in B2B marketing supporting the hospitality industry, Simona and her team create innovative and interesting ways to explain the benefits prospective and existing clients can enjoy by engaging with Pelican and Trinity. A key focus is ensuring existing clients take full advantage of all the services that are available to them – helping them to do more with less!