How Collinson Grant helped Air Fayre to improve customer focus
Reducing costs and improving core processes at an international airline catering business presented a number of challenges for Air Fayre. The company looked to consultants from Collinson Grant to help it boost customer focus, reduce costs and introduce new processes and IT systems.
Founded in 1997, Air Fayre is an in-flight caterer serving the world's largest passenger and cargo airlines from Heathrow, Birmingham, LAX, and Memphis. It subsequently provides airline meals to Air Canada, BMI, Qantas, Japan Airlines and United Airlines customers.
As with most industries connected to international travel, the last five years have been turbulent in the wake of the pandemic. Despite good growth recently, rampant inflation also saw the business running at a loss – with cash was in short supply. Collinson Grant was asked to help managers implement ‘operational excellence’ as a meant to addressing this.
Aims for this operational excellence included the slashing of £1.2 million in labour costs – but without losing customer focus. Standardising processes, implementing a new IT system, and introducing stronger cost controls were also important to that end.
According to Collinson Grant’s account of events, posted on the firm’s website, the firm deployed “Lean techniques (defined as a way of thinking about creating needed value with fewer resources and less waste) to improve the skills of local managers and fully engage them in the project’s objectives. This included organising a survey of key customers to find areas of improvement; mapping what the ideal organisational structure would be to take care of them; building a staffing model around that; and selecting a new company-wide IT platform.
Results
“We built a strong relationship with local managers and shared their enthusiasm for the progress that was made,” explained the Collinson Grant team. “During the assignment Air Fayre began negotiations with United Airlines (UA), the world’s second-largest carrier, on a new contract to supply meals at Los Angeles Airport. The company had been attracted by the improvements that were being achieved in the UK. When this contract was secured we provided further support to the business in LAX.”
After a joint review of the risks of changing supplier, UA and Air Fayre agreed on a phased introduction of services on flights from LAX. Within six weeks of the original starting date, catering services for all the planned flights had transferred to Air Fayre. The new service has since attracted the attention of some other American carriers, and has won several awards from UA.
With the managers of Air Fayre quickly adopting the consulting team’s new ideas, they achieved a number of additional wins, according to Collinson Grant. Chiefly, they generated savings in direct labour that were double those expected – at £2.5 million – while creating a further £1 million saving in indirect head count after the introduction of improved managerial processes.
They also used Lean principles to halve stock levels for some product groups, allowing these areas to be relocated, and increasing productivity by reducing transit and waiting times.
