CASE STUDY

« Youmeal allows us to stand out from the rest by automatically providing our customers with data on the content of our recipes: allergens and ingredients, but also the exact ecological footprint of each recipe.»

ALAIN CRABS
Director of Operations, Compass

Download the study

CASE STUDY

« Youmeal allows us to stand out from the rest by automatically providing our customers with data on the content of our recipes: allergens and ingredients, but also the exact ecological footprint of each recipe.»

ALAIN CRABS
Director of Operations, Compass

Download the study

Every company has its own identity. At Compass, it’s the 1,500 people who work to satisfy their customers. The figures prove it: these professionals prepare more than 180,000 meals each day, and serve 260 companies, organisations, schools, and health institutions across Belgium.

There are no secrets: to remain the largest company in the contract-catering market, Compass ensures the best working conditions for its staff. Certified as a top employer in Belgium in 2021 for the fourth year running, Compass knows that happy employees make delicious food.

180.000 DAILY MEALS THAT PROVIDE INFORMATION ON THEIR ENVIRONMENTAL AND NUTRITIONAL IMPACT

Quality food is food that informs

Compass has been supplying and managing many catering outlets for many years. The high-quality meals it serves has so far kept customers happy. But the requirements of one of these restaurants prompted them to innovate. Alain Crabs, Director of Operations at Compass, explains: “One of our customers was making high demands in terms of the information they wanted to give to their customers. In addition to the nutritional elements, he also wanted the dishes they served to provide information about the environmental impact. We were already providing information on allergens and on certain ingredients in our meals, but this was a new challenge”.

The FIC1169 regulation requires information on allergens, but in response to consumer demand, some restaurants have decided to go farther. For example, as consumers become more climate-conscious, some are rightly concerned about the carbon footprint of food. Some companies also want to reduce their CO2 emissions. Alain Crabs adds that, even with the new challenges they are encountering, including on the production front, “We offer a varied range of dishes that change every day. Operationally, a recipe may change at the last minute because of a product delivery problem, a change in supplier, or a stock shortage. Juggling these changes is complicated enough, but providing real-time information about the carbon footprint was a real challenge, which we took up with Youmeal.”.

Guests who understand the ecological footprint of the meals they eat

Compass began using Youmeal software to meet this customer’s request. Youmeal not only allowed the quick and accurate calculation of the environmental impacts of thousands of meals, but has also made it easy to present them automatically with informative and comprehensive meal and menu cards. These cards cover allergens, nutrients, and labelling. Guests are thus informed easily and in real time, and Compass is provided with a concrete action plan for reducing CO2 emissions.

To provide fast and reliable results about tens of thousands of products, recipes, and menus, Youmeal relies on 4 major assets: its giant database, its algorithms, its dedicated interfaces, and its team of experts. The database covers 3,500 fully defined generic products (apples, chicken drumsticks, and so on). It also includes hundreds of thousands of branded products, which can be easily retrieved (based on their EAN, supplier references, names, and so on) to document the client’s products. Dedicated interfaces allow chefs to encode their recipes and menus easily, based on the customer’s own products, and the algorithms analyse the recipes and menus automatically. As a result, your recipe for cod fillet in a herb crust with baby vegetables will automatically include fish, the required nutrients, and even its environmental footprint.

Youmeal’s algorithms can calculate the numbers for all aspects of a recipe: allergens, nutritional values, Nutri-Score, vegan, vegetarian, the presence of pork or other touchy ingredients, labels (organic, Marine Stewardship Council, and so on.), material cost, carbon footprint, consumption of soil and water, endangered fish, eco-score and even Nutri-Eco-Score.

Sophie Flagothier, CTO of Youmeal explains: “Our algorithms take into account food processing such as cleaning (the bones in 200g of chicken drumsticks are not eaten), cooking (pasta, spinach, and so on.) and dilution. Without this, the results are wrong. The final task of our algorithms is to put all this together instantly to come up with an information package guests can easily understand.”

Compass began using Youmeal software to meet this customer’s request. Youmeal not only allowed the quick and accurate calculation of the environmental impacts of thousands of meals, but has also made it easy to present them automatically with informative and comprehensive meal and menu cards. These cards cover allergens, nutrients, and labelling. Guests are thus informed easily and in real time, and Compass is provided with a concrete action plan for reducing CO2 emissions.

To provide fast and reliable results about tens of thousands of products, recipes, and menus, Youmeal relies on 4 major assets: its giant database, its algorithms, its dedicated interfaces, and its team of experts. The database covers 3,500 fully defined generic products (apples, chicken drumsticks, and so on). It also includes hundreds of thousands of branded products, which can be easily retrieved (based on their EAN, supplier references, names, and so on) to document the client’s products. Dedicated interfaces allow chefs to encode their recipes and menus easily, based on the customer’s own products, and the algorithms analyse the recipes and menus automatically. As a result, your recipe for cod fillet in a herb crust with baby vegetables will automatically include fish, the required nutrients, and even its environmental footprint.

Youmeal’s algorithms can calculate the numbers for all aspects of a recipe: allergens, nutritional values, Nutri-Score, vegan, vegetarian, the presence of pork or other touchy ingredients, labels (organic, Marine Stewardship Council, and so on.), material cost, carbon footprint, consumption of soil and water, endangered fish, eco-score and even Nutri-Eco-Score.

Sophie Flagothier, CTO of Youmeal explains: “Our algorithms take into account food processing such as cleaning (the bones in 200g of chicken drumsticks are not eaten), cooking (pasta, spinach, and so on.) and dilution. Without this, the results are wrong. The final task of our algorithms is to put all this together instantly to come up with an information package guests can easily understand.”

A complete daily analysis of 5,000 recipes and menus

After using it for a few months, Compass has seen customer satisfaction, a positive effect on consumers and time savings for its operational teams. “After a few months, Compass was able to measure the differentiation value compared to our competitors. The information delivered by Youmeal is secure, of a high quality, and comprehensive. This gave us a considerable advantage in convincing prospective customers” explains Alain Crabs. In view of the time the site managers were saving, Compass decided to roll out the Youmeal software in all 250 restaurants under its management. Alain concludes: “Today, we use the daily analysis of more than 5,000 recipes and menus in all of our Belgian sites. All product, recipe, and menu changes are processed in real time, and the Compass teams access the platform directly”.

Sophie Flagothier : “Using Youmeal allows Compass teams to manage their recipes and menus more efficiently to meet the growing and varied requirements of their customers, to win over prospective customers by demonstrating compliance with contractual clauses through attractive showcase menus, to provide information directly to consumers, to assess the environmental impact of all dishes and menus, and to find ways to reduce it”.