South West business starts New Year with recruitment drive

News
09/01/2019

A successful South West business is making a positive start to 2019 by adding nine new members of staff to its workforce to meet growing demands for its services.


The Regency Purchasing Group, which is one of the UK’s leading procurement businesses, welcomed five new employees last week, and is looking to recruit a further four in the coming months.


The Regency Group works with more than 2,700 leisure businesses throughout the UK, including some of Britain’s biggest and best-known attractions, hundreds of golf clubs, plus pubs, hotels, zoos, farm attractions and many others.


2018 was a tough year for the hospitality and leisure industry and the continuing uncertainty over the impact of Brexit means 2019 is likely to be equally challenging.


This had led to more and more businesses are turning to procurement specialists like the Weston-super-Mare-based Regency Group to help achieve significant savings.


Regency’s Managing Director, Alex Demetriou, said:

“We are recruiting nine new team members in 2019, six field-based and three office-based.

“We are 20% up year-on-year, in what has been a difficult trading year for members, so this is a very pleasing result.

“Part of that is due to the fact the RPG is one of very few purchasing groups that has expertise in both food and drink, with most similarly businesses focusing predominantly in food.

“This has led to us experiencing a significant increase in businesses contacting us on the drinks side of the business.

“We’ve also had new members join the group from other industries, such as care and education sectors, who have identified the need to operate streamlined businesses as essential in today’s tough commercial environment.

“We therefore need more people to join our fantastic team.

“Food service/beverage industry experience, along with a strong work ethic, is required, and you have to be a team player, too.

“Regency is particularly well-placed to be able to respond to the demands of the industry because our family-run enterprise doesn’t just include the procurement group, but we also own and operate our own sites within the industry, so we have practical and hands-on expertise, because we are experiencing, and striving to overcome, the same challenges as our clients.

“We’ve also designed and built a unique IT system that offers new internal monitoring tools to help us track market trends and monitor suppliers.

“There is also a customer-facing part that shows our members invoices from all the suppliers they use through Regency, monitors prices and checks that the invoices are charging the correct prices.

“The system can run several reports, like supplier spends and product purchase reports.

“It’s still being continuously improved and early next year we will be adding our allergen and nutrition section, which includes menu spec sheets, which will ensure all our members are compliant in this area.”


Tristan Jones, a procurement manager at Regency, said:

“It’s a great working environment here and a chance to work with some of the brightest and best in the food and beverage world.

“My time at Regency so far has been a real eye-opener to what can be achieved to support operators in today’s changing environment. I can’t recommend RPG highly enough.”


His colleague Nikki Loxton added:

“You couldn’t work for a better employer.”


If you think you would like to be part of the Regency team, visit www.regencypurchasing.co.uk or call 01934 646 135.