A key project in the 2020 strategic plan of Group Chairman and CEO, Philippe Salle, Elior Group’s digital transformation program is a major factor in enhancing performance, designing innovative offerings and forging closer relations with clients and guests. The new Activity Report is the opportunity for Elior Group to explain how the Group is reinventing the catering business via its digital revolution and to look back on the key successes of the year.

For Elior Group, being a caterer of choice at the global level, by offering innovative experiences, requires adopting a digital approach in the kitchen and throughout the guest’s pathway.

This digital strategy is apparent at all levels of its activities: it enables the Group to gain greater insight into its guests, publish more and more information on products (their origins, allergenic content, etc.) and offer new services, such as click & collect. Digitalization facilitates the consumer’s restaurant experience by optimizing customer flows (via on-line payment and shorter cash-register wait-times thanks to restaurant frequentation statistics, etc.).

According to Philippe Salle, Chairman and CEO of Elior Group, ‘The three-pronged strategic plan, launched in October 2015, is designed to develop, innovate, and accelerate. Elior Group has given itself the means to innovate and, thanks to its digital approach, strengthen its ties with its guests who are increasingly at the core of the Group’s strategy and actions.”

Elior Group’s culinary and technological innovations are also highlighted in the up-and-coming-food trends overview at the beginning of the Activity Report. Innovation is not just a fashionable trend: the Group observes and reports on major catering trends, while putting forward concrete solutions, both in terms of food and guest experience. The Group’s three major trends are: eating well to feel well, break time at any time, and digital comes to the table.

Philippe Salle, Group Chairman and CEO stated, “Elior Group is a veritable think tank in the catering sector and aims to share its analysis and knowledge of catering activities, and position itself as an expert in the field.”

To illustrate its implication in societal changes, Elior Group invited its prestigious catering partners to comment on these trends. Alain Ducasse, chef at the Plaza Athénée (Paris), emphasized the value of naturalness in our choice of food stuffs; Marie Schneegans, co-founder of Never Eat Alone, underscored the importance of creating links in the workplace via digital applications; the three co-founders of Foodles, which offers round-the-clock catering, explained that technological innovations made it possible to adapt to new modes of consumption. 

The digitalization of catering solutions will also lead to changes in the jobs and responsibilities of our employees. The report ends with a series of portraits of some of our staff members (cooks, trainers, site managers, etc), and illustrates the importance of the services performed by, and the implication of our teams on a daily basis.

*The 2015 Elior Group Annual Report received a European Excellence Award in  2016 in Berlin for having produced the best Annual Report of the year, a TOP/COM2017 award in Paris in the category of listed-company annual reports, and has also been nominated for this report at the Digital Communication Awards 2016