With the strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both communities and businesses alike, the foodservice industry, among many others, has found itself in a transition phase, globally.
As a regional player based in the UAE, Chef Middle East’s priorities have consistently been focused on ensuring the safety of associates, communities, and customers – while adapting to unprecedented and highly challenging market conditions to maintain and preserve the future well-being of the business.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak, the company has been determined to build awareness internally and externally through addressing efficient ways to curb the spread of the virus, implement precautionary measures within the organisation, and secure and ensure the traceability of the entire food chain, from suppliers located across the globe to customers based regionally. The highest food standards and strictest personnel safety and hygiene measures have been and will always remain paramount during and after COVID-19, Chef Middle East highlights.
In parallel, the company’s supply chain team has been closely monitoring developments abroad as well as local circulars to ensure a rapid response to navigating any potential challenge and stabilising inventory levels for the current limited, but existing demand, and more importantly for the weeks and months to come.
Chef Middle East is now evolving in the most volatile and uncertain environment ever seen in all the markets it operates in, which requires highly adaptive thinking, resilience, energy, and agility to be able to redefine business objectives and strategies to implement and achieve while maintaining smart cash flow management practices to keep a business afloat. It takes leadership, active collaboration and creative solutions to steer a ship in such troubled waters and come out of it forceful.
In the effort to adapt to the current situation and diversify activities to add new income streams and grow brand presence, the company has decided to conquer a new segment of the market for which activity has hugely intensified over the past few weeks, and officially launched a new B2C e-commerce site, ‘Chef ME at Home’ (chefmeathome.com). The aim of this platform is to provide top restaurants, cooking enthusiasts and home chefs with access to quality ingredients at a very affordable price, and with a wide and exclusive offering.
As a company that also supports the local community during this challenging situation, Chef Middle East has actively participated in different corporate social responsibility initiatives conducted by clients. Such initiatives include the Helping Hands movement by Alabbar Enterprises – Retail, Food and Beverage, which involved providing food supplies to those in need. Moreover, the Pay It Forward programme by Al Serkal in partnership with Inked Dubai to cook and provide meals for frontliners across the UAE was another successful initiative.
Chef Middle East has reiterated its confidence in emerging from this crisis a stronger and more agile organisation and going on to accomplish great culinary triumphs. It has also stressed its commitment to provide its clients with the best quality products using the highest standards available in food safety, storage and distribution.
