Unilever Foodsolutions

Understanding our customers

With the majority of people around the world claiming they find it difficult to eat healthily away from home, we're helping by providing foodservice operators products that combine taste, consistent quality and healthier menu options cost-effectively.

Solutions vary as widely as our customers - products that add the right seasoning, flavor or texture, pre-prepared ingredients that save time in a busy kitchen and new ways of serving food on a large scale at consistent quality are just some examples.

Our focus is understanding our customers and designing solutions specifically to meet their needs, using our expertise in taste, chefmanship, food technology and service and the right choice of Unilever Foodsolutions products and brands.

Providing solutions

Unilever Foodsolutions helps to provide healthier options in several key ways. Firstly, we're helping to boost consumption of vegetables by making them more appealing, and developing 'better for you' foods that are attractive, easy choices.

In addition, we're continuing to train our Foodsolutions people and operators in the basics of nutrition – so everyone knows what they should be doing and what the benefits are.

We also focus on canteens and quick-service restaurants, which are under extreme pressure to offer menus with healthier alternatives. We have started to work with quick-service restaurants by enabling them to provide healthier options for consumers, such as Hellmann's extra light mayonnaise and Becel portions.

Concept selling

One of our key strengths is providing unique and creative concepts and solutions that helps our customers to increase their sales by making the products more visible, attractive, and appealing to consumers.

Soup Bar is a soup solution systems enable caterers to capitalise on the growing popularity of soup by making soups available, visible and attractive to consumers. Soup bar offers a choice of new and traditional soups, together with complementary toppings to customise their soup.

Dressings bar offers a range of lower-fat, great-tasting Hellmann's dressings, available through specialised Hellmann's dispensers, is helping a major fast-food chain to provide a healthy salad bar option in a growing number of outlets.

Key facts & figures

The global food-service industry is worth over €350 bn and is growing rapidly as people around the world eat out more than ever before. In the US, more than half of food expenditure now happens outside the home. In Europe, this figure is as high as one third and, in Hong Kong, 2.5 meals out of every three are eaten away from home.