Background The hospice catering service is an integral part of hospice care. The team take an individualized and person-centred approach when providing meals for patients and families, as well as providing a café service to staff and the public and catering to a wide range of hospice social, fundraising and education events. Many compliments are received, not only about the high quality food but the exceptional customer service provided. The appreciation of the service has been shown by occasional enquiries to provide catering for private events (e.g. birthdays) and the team have not hesitated to fulfill any casual request made. As hospices face more financial challenges, innovative ways to generate income are required.

Aim To expand catering services to others and generate income for the hospice.

Method To test demand for hospice catering by increasing awareness. Hospice café menus included details of how to make enquiries about hospice catering and the team began explicitly mentioning the potential of catering to external visitors to the hospice. All requests were personally discussed with the Head of Catering and function food and costs tailored to meet the individual need.

Results In the last 12 months hospice catering has been provided to 4 open gardens, 4 community sports events, 4 other charitable events, 3 birthdays, 1 wedding, 5 wakes, and 50 business events. The annual income generated from this catering has totaled approximately £12,000.

Conclusion The potential of generating income from the hospice catering service has been demonstrated. The team now plan to formalize the service and develop a business plan that maintains the team’s values (providing personalised customer care and high quality service), determine a competitive pricing structure, and define a communications plan for increasing awareness of the service, for example by advertising on the hospice social media channels, and website.