16 CATERING INSIGHT /^ FEBRUARY 2018 /^ http://www.cateringinsight.com

KITC H E N HOUSE REVE NUE / SPECIAL REPORT

I

often get asked about who the

biggest catering equipment

distributors are in the UK, and

it’s a notoriously slippery term to

define. What kinds of companies could

be described as distributors and how

they could be ranked has been, up until

now, more than opaque.

So we at Catering Insight have taken

the issue by the scruff of its neck and

delved into a hopefully definitive top

10 ranking. This is made possible due

to the transparency of British business

practices, namely publicly-available

Companies House financial reports.

This information has allowed us to

detail the current performance of the

biggest catering equipment distributors

in the UK and compare that over the

past few years too.

Scope of analysis

In putting together a report such as

this we have to lay down some ground

rules so that like-for-like is compared.

Therefore, we have concentrated on

kitchen houses only, namely those

companies which supply, maintain or

outfit catering equipment and which

usually have a commercial kitchen

design capability too. These companies

only deal with end users, so equipment

wholesalers etc are not included, as they

would usually be supplying the kitchen

houses themselves.

Furthermore, we have eschewed

earnings will likely further increase

going forward.

One firm crossing the food/non-

food supply divide is Bidfood, which

is a trading division of BFS Group, a

subsidiary of the Bidcorp Group – an

international foodservice group.

The Bidfood Catering Supplies and

Hospitality Design divisions’ results

are also not recorded individually, but

we do know that the overall group’s

revenue for 2016 was £2.5bn, up by

4.2% on 2016’s £2.4bn. 2016’s operating

profit numbered £45.9m.

Another similar outfit is the Brakes

Group. Brakes Catering Equipment is

just one of several foodservice industry

divisions, including Brake France,

Country Choice, Davigel, Fresh Direct,

Freshfayre, M&J Seafood, Menigo

Foodservice, Pauley’s, Wild Harvest and

Woodward Foodservice.

The group’s latest accounts are not

available yet either, as its accounting

period was extended from 31

December 2016 to 30 June 2017, likely

due to its £2.3bn acquisition by the

Sysco Group in July 2016. But in 2015,

Brakes Group’s annual revenue was

nearly £3.3bn, a 6.5% increase from

the previous fiscal year (£3bn). How

much of that is from Brakes Catering

Equipment is pure guesswork though.

And speaking of latest accounts not

being available, our top 10 list would

have featured Gloucester-based Space

CATERING INSIGHT HAS PRODUCED A

MAJOR RESEARCH REPORT INTO THE

CURRENT TOP 10 KITCHEN HOUSES

IN THE UK BY REVENUE, IN THE FIRST

ANALYSIS OF ITS KIND.

KITCHEN HOUSES

HOTTEST

1

Whose revenue is

on the up?

any mainly online dealers – there has

to be some kind of full service design

or maintenance capability for us to

feature them. We have included a brief

analysis of some of the leading online

firms, including the giant Nisbets, later

in this feature just for comparison, but

they are not in the main list.

We can only include those

companies where financial information

is available through Companies

House too. So for those dealers within

large multi-national groups, often

the individual division results are

not recorded. For example, the Bunzl

Group doesn’t release financial results

for Lockhart Catering Equipment, but

we can see that the global group posted

a £7.4bn turnover for 2016, with an

operating profit of £409.7m.

Looking in detail, the group

reported its UK revenue was £1.1bn,

15% of overall sales. As Bunzl reports

that the foodservice sector is worth

around 30% of its overall revenue,

we can perhaps discern that its UK

foodservice earnings for 2016 were

around £330m. But this includes other

non-food consumables, including food

packaging, disposable tableware, guest

amenities, cleaning products and safety

items. So the actual catering equipment

sales total is likely to be quite a bit less

than that. And as Lockhart has just

purchased the Aggora Group, overall

catering equipment sector group