Compass serves up healthier dishes for its customers across the UK

Continues to increase the procurement of vegetables year on year
Maintaining low levels of salt, sugar and fat
Introduced tracking and reporting on beans, pulses and lentils on its menus

Compass Group UK & Ireland, the UK’s largest food and support services company, is continuing to increase healthy and sustainable choices for its customers, delivering on its commitments from its ‘Our Wellbeing Promise’.

This is being achieved through a focus on the provision of nutrition information at the point of choice, recipe management and working with their procurement arm Foodbuy Group, to increase vegetable procurement and greater use of beans, lentils and pulses in its dishes. Compass’ Wellbeing Promise aligns to the Government’s goals to utilise diet, to create positive health changes.

Action taken to increase health and wellbeing outcomes include:

An increase in vegetable procurement of 7.95% over 12 months. This equates to >12,000 tonnes. It includes more than 120 million portions of vegetables that were served to children. Compass is on track to achieving its target of 20% increase in vegetables by 2030.
Baseline analysis of procurement volumes of beans, pulses and lentils shows that over a 12-month period (Jan 2024 - Dec 2024) over 29,000 tonnes were ordered.
Compass is maintaining its progress in relation to low salt, fat and sugar in meals. Almost 88% of 21,000 live recipes are low or medium in fat. Over 93% of recipes are low or medium in salt and 94% of dishes remain low or medium in sugar.
In the last three years, the business has placed particular emphasis on increasing plant-based dishes. Analysis of over 70,000 live products shows that 17% would be classified as a source of or high in plant protein, and 23% would be classified as a source of or high in animal protein. Using this data, nutritionists are continuing to update recipes to increase plant proteins every month.
Working with Flora Food Group, together delivered an annual reduction of 2,688kg of salt.

Across the business, Compass’ team of Nutritionists and Dietitians have been introducing healthier switches and dishes. Examples of success include:

Business & Industry - ‘The Good Stuff’ healthier range, which is now embedded into over 50% of its food concepts. This range ensures that there are no recipes that are high in saturated fat, sugar or salt and they contain either a wholegrain or at least two portions of vegetables. So far this year, over 540,000 Good Stuff meals have been sold.
CH&CO’s Gather & Gather - includes “Live Well” as a core range across its menus - which underpins its dedication to providing healthier food. The range of nutritionally balanced food and drink options have been developed by its Nutritionists and Chefs. The aim of Live Well is to help customers eat more fruit and vegetables, more wholegrains, and more healthy fats.
Chartwells – continue to increase plant-forward and vegetarian options with every seasonal menu change. In addition, within the Spring/ Summer 2025 menu, the team has achieved over 60% sugar reduction from the dessert lines since the start of the project in 2022.
ESS – within Defence, for the Essentials and Field concepts, 76% of items on the menu aren’t high in fat, saturated fat, sugar or salt; simply cooked proteins without sauce or glaze are available at every lunch and dinner service; 100% of dessert options are vegetarian and/ or plant-based and 100% of breakfast smoothies are plant-based.
Levy - Nutritionists are looking at how they can reduce the amount of ultra-processed foods available. By reviewing 12,000 lines of data, the team has identified the top 50 UPFs that feature on their menus, with the view to reduce or remove these where possible.
Medirest’s Wellspring restaurant - increased vegetable availability and items containing veg in the recipes for Spring/ Summer 2025. Alongside, reducing the number of red meat dishes and increasing plant-based proteins. They also continue a quarterly publication written by Dietitians. The “On Your Plate” magazine connects nutrition advice to mealtimes.
Restaurant Associates Group - launched four years ago, the Ways to Be Well programme, centred around a plant-forward philosophy, continues to drive strong client and customer engagement. Over the past year, the Wellness team has hosted more than 60 pop-up events, ranging from nutritional drop-in sessions to lunch-and-learn events. Most recently, they held a plant-powered cook-along that featured a variety of delicious, innovative and sustainable BBQ dishes.

Commenting on the ongoing health and wellbeing strategy, Nicky Martin, Director of Nutrition, Compass Group UK & Ireland said: “I am pleased to see a widespread acknowledgement of the importance of diet in improving the health of the nation. Our dedicated teams are continuing to look at how we can put health and wellbeing front and centre of meals and track sales for healthier sustainable choices - I am incredibly proud of our progress. We continue to keep levels of fat, sugar and salt low; our focus on plant-based and plant-forward dishes has resulted in creative and delicious dishes for our customers alongside an increase in veg procurement and items like lentils.

Diet continues to be a real challenge for so many, but our teams are committed to our continued work in this area. We are passionate about providing balanced nutrition, to help prevent malnutrition, obesity, and diet related disease.”

Dr Paul Litchfield CBE – Independent Chief Medical Adviser to Compass Group added: “Good nutrition is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle and food services companies can play a vital role in improving the health of the nation. The team at Compass takes an evidence-based approach to producing appetising menus, which reduce potentially harmful ingredients, like salt and sugar, and increase consumption of plant-based protein. The progress made in recent years has been impressive and will help deliver long lasting benefits to society."

Compass Group UK & Ireland is also committed to supporting the communities it works within through initiatives such as redistributing food. It works with partners including FareShare, Olio and Too Good To Go, to prevent food from going to waste and to support communities in need, giving people access to a range of food items.