Catering Assistant
Job overview
If you are looking for an opportunity to make a difference and work in a fast-paced, highly rewarding department, our Catering team at Wexham Park Hospital is recruiting Catering Assistants to assist in providing a highly professional and customer-focused catering service to all patients, staff, and visitors.
The ideal candidate will be willing to work hard as part of a team and confident to carry out individual duties. You will be interacting with a high number of people each day, playing a vital part in making their visit as comfortable as possible.
Working 5 days out of 7 working 37.50 per week,12 Months Fixed Term Contract
On a typical day as a Catering Assistant, you can expect to serve food and drinks in patient or staff dining outlets, assist in food preparation, support wards in delivering their food service, undertake cashier duties, and proactively support continued innovation and development of the department.
Due to the nature of the role, you will be required to adhere to departmental standards and food hygiene regulations. You will also act at all times in a manner that upholds the Trust’s values, working as part of a team to ensure efficiency and excellent customer care.Catering experience and a certificate in food safety are desirable, though this is not essential, as full training will be given.
As part of the recruitment process, you will complete a Maths and English assessment. You must pass this test to progress to an interview.
Main duties of the job
The role requires that the job holder follows the duties laid out by the Café Supervisor in the day-to-day operational management of the café. You’ll be expected to treat visitors and staff in a welcoming, friendly and efficient manner, whilst maintaining the highest standards of cleanliness and hygiene.You’ll be working as part of a motivated team in Café Glade, Crossroad and Courtyard restaurant.
The job holder will assist the Supervisor to expand and/or make recommendations for improving standards and enhancing the service to all customers. This would be through quality initiatives and by looking at ways of maximising good customer care and income generation.
You’ll need to be aware of menu content whilst understanding the importance of portion control, food presentation and customer care. In addition, you must ensure that the privacy and dignity of visitors, staff and patients is respected at all times.
Working for our organisation
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust provides NHS hospital services for around 900,000 people across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.
As well as delivering excellent general hospital services to local people, we provide specialist heart attack, vascular, stroke, spinal, cystic fibrosis and plastic surgery services across a much wider area.
We have three main hospitals - Frimley Park in Frimley near Camberley, Heatherwood in Ascot and Wexham Park near Slough.
Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other, Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.
We are also proud to host the Defence Medical Group South East at Frimley Park with military surgical, medical and nursing personnel working alongside the hospital's NHS staff providing care to patients in all specialties
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Undertake all duties relating to food service including:- Prepare food service areas and equipment e.g. placing equipment ready for use (woks, fryers etc.)
- Serve food and drinks in patient/staff dining outlets and on the patient meal assembly belt
- Ensure a full supply of crockery and cutlery to the restaurant during service hours
- Deliver and collect meal trolleys to/from wards and departments
- Deliver catering supplies to wards and departments including call orders
- Menu collation, picking of all ward food according to menu choice and record information
- Assist in food preparation e.g. peeling vegetables, prepping salad items, traying up and labelling items
- Assessment of good portion control, manage food waste and appropriate record-keeping
- Decant chilled food
- Regeneration of food and garnishing
- Adhere strictly to standard recipes and production methods, check food and beverages served, for quantity, quality and appearance and maintain correct standards of hygiene and temperature control as per HACCP
- Undertake cashier duties including receipt and accounting of cash and vouchers, operation of cash register to give correct change, ensuring cash security, maintaining records relating to cash handling, balancing cash takings with till receipts and accounting for differences
- Comply with all organisational and departmental procedures relating to cash handling and security
- Replace or refund patients or retail customers to ensure immediate customer satisfaction, escalating to supervisor or manager as required
Person specification
QUALIFICATIONS
Essential criteria- GCSE or Equivalent
- Level 2 Food Safety Certificate
- Previous catering experience
- Foundation Certificate in Food Hygiene or Good knowledge of Food safety and Kitchen hygiene
- Team player
Experience
Essential criteria- Basic catering experience
- Hygiene COSSH procedures
- Experience in healthcare
- Infection prevention and control
Skills
Essential criteria- Good communication skills
- Customer focussed
- Good time management skills
Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust (FHFT) has an outstanding reputation and a proud record of achievement. As a well performing, well led and ambitious Foundation Trust, we have exciting times ahead of us. We have an ongoing commitment to improving the health and care services for the 900,000 people we serve across Berkshire, Hampshire, Surrey and south Buckinghamshire.
We are proud of the ambitions laid out in our strategy, Our Future FHFT, including our vision to be a leader in health & wellbeing, delivering excellence for our communities.
We continue to invest in our services and facilities, including a £10 million upgrade to the hospital maternity unit as well as £49m major new Emergency Assessment Centre on our Wexham Park site. The opening of a brand new £100m state of the art hospital which replaced the existing hospital facility at Heatherwood and are planning to invest further in diagnostics and inpatient capacity at Frimley Park.
We have also made significant investment in our quality improvement and digital programmes to support our vision and we will ensure that we achieve our aim of providing the highest quality healthcare to our patients. Our new EPR – Epic – went live in June and we are already beginning to reap the benefits of this ambitious investment.
Our three core values, and the behaviours that support them, guide everything we do and set out what we expect of our staff in the way they treat patients, visitors, service users and each other, Committed to Excellence, Working Together and Facing the Future.