SV GROUP

ABOUT THE SV GROUP
FIf you live in Switzerland, it is highly likely that you have visited one of SV Group's facilities: you may have discussed important topics as a student in an ETH canteen, had lunch in a cafeteria of a major company, enjoyed a cup of coffee while visiting a trade show or spent a night at the "Courtyard by Marriott" hotel. Founded in 1914, the SV Group is the oldest and the longest established of the large catering companies in Europe and the leading provider of staff catering in Switzerland. The company serves 22 million main meals at 328 staff restaurants every year. The SV Group operates the restaurants of Swisscom, the Swiss Post or the World Health Organization (WHO). The company was organised as an association until 1999, when it was transformed into a public limited company (Aktiengesellschaft) with SV Stiftung as the majority shareholder. In 2003, a holding structure with various business areas was created. Today, Patrick Camele (*1965) is at the helm of the SV Group. He knows the catering business from the inside out - he started waiting tables as a high school student and used the money to put himself through business school. As a manager in the food industry, he worked in Switzerland, Germany and Sweden. After the birth of his third child, Patrick Camele took one and a half years paternity leave and used the time for a career reorientation. In 2010, he became the CEO of the SV Group Schweiz, and in 2012, he was appointed Group CEO.

Patrick Camele, CEO

Else Züblin-Spiller was appointed head of the SV and set up a number of these centres for soldiers along the border in a very short period of time. By the end of the war, there were more than 1000 of them, set up by converting classrooms, dance halls, barns or chicken sheds. In the "Soldatenstuben" centres, "soldiers' mothers" served the soldiers coffee, tea and cake, as well as hot meals at affordable prices. In this way, SV offered the soldiers a sensible alternative to alcohol consumption and made an important contribution to public health in the First World War. At the same time, Else Züblin-Spiller was both pragmatic and very effective in promoting emancipation. This is because the "Soldatenstuben" concept allowed her to cross the dividing line between volunteer social work and professional, paid social work.
When the war was over, the "Soldatenstuben" centres were largely no longer needed, and SV transferred its pioneering commitment to the civilian sector, opened company canteens and became involved in workers' welfare. To reflect this, the organisation changed its name from Verband Soldatenwohl to Schweizer Verband Volksdienst, or "SV" for short. Their mission was again to provide as many people as possible with good nutrition and thus contribute to the health and wellbeing of the population. Instead of - as it was often the case at the time - eating their food in the shadow of the machines, they wanted workers to be able to sit comfortably in a clean staff restaurant and receive a well-balanced meal. With this concept, SV became the leader in the catering industry in Switzerland. In the following decades, SV continued to focus its efforts on healthy nutrition. New nutritional findings were quickly incorporated into the menus of staff restaurants. The training of employees was a high priority from the beginning. Following in Else Züblin's footsteps, Susy Brüschweiler was the second dominant figure in the company. In the 1990s, she transformed the traditional association into a modern and powerful service company. Together with longtime chairman and sustainability expert Ernst A. Brugger, she successfully led the SV Group into the 21st century.

WHY WE DIFFER
The SV Group does not want to be the "diet police". As in the case of "Soldatenstuben," the company wants to convince and inspire its guests by offering healthy and at the same time tasty alternatives. "Make the healthy choice the easy choice", stresses Patrick Camele. While they offer specific health menus, the chefs of the SV Group aim to prepare all meals to be as healthy as possible. This includes cooking with rapeseed oil, preparing salad dressings without mayonnaise and using salt sparingly. No guest is forced to follow any particular nutritional doctrine. Instead, guests are encouraged to make healthy choices, e.g. consume less sugar. Because soft drinks contain a good deal of sugar, they are placed at the bottom of the fridge in SV restaurants, while bottled water and flavoured water are placed prominently at eye level. For example, the SV Group was able to increase water sales in Switzerland considerably and reduce the consumption of sugary drinks by 12 per cent between 2012 and 2015. Patrick Camele is relaxed about the fact that the soft drink manufacturers have since removed their free refrigerators. In any case, 95 per cent of the SV restaurants offer free tap water. Another small trick promoting less sugar consumption is that sugar sticks have been reduced in size from 5 to 4 grams. This saves the company 11.5 million sugar cubes per year - and the guests benefit.
It is particularly important for children to learn about healthy eating as early as possible. This is why the SV Group Schweiz offers "Meals for Kids," which supplies more than 100 schools, kindergartens and nurseries with food that is both "healthy and tasty." Since 2014, the company has also been a partner in the "actionsanté" initiative supported by the Federal Office of Public Health. The owner of the company, the SV Foundation, also pursues the mission of "Healthy nutrition for all" and supports projects such as the "Gorilla" school programme, which promotes healthy body weight, the Swiss Tafel, community cooking of different cultures and a study on meal services for senior citizens.
Since 2013, SV Group Schweiz has also been engaged in a sustainable nutrition as part of the "One Two We" programme, supported by the project partner WWF. For Patrick Camele, sustainability stands on three pillars. First, he aims to reduce CO2 emissions. This is why the catering company is now increasingly using regional and seasonal foods in its recipes. Goods transported by air, such as strawberries in November are avoided as much as possible. Second, Patrick Camele wants to reduce the meat consumption in his restaurants, because the production requires substantial resources - in addition, high meat consumption is considered unhealthy. Camele has sent 500 chefs to the pioneering vegetarian restaurant Hiltl to attend cooking classes: "If you can cook vegetarian meals, you will also become more creative and versatile when preparing meat dishes," explains Camele. Third, the CEO of the SV Group has set himself the goal that by the end of 2019, 80 per cent of the meat used should come from animal-friendly sources.
At the beginning of 2018, the SV Group was already successful with all three sustainability goals: It has managed to reduce CO2 emissions by 10 per cent. At the same time, the consumption of meat by SV guests also fell by 10 per cent during this period. What is always important for Patrick Camele is: "We do not want to force something on our guests; we want to inspire them to eat vegetarian dishes more frequently. As sustainable nutrition is very often both easy to prepare and healthy. And more and more guests appreciate this." The first milestones have also been reached in terms of animal welfare: By the end of 2017, 50 per cent of the meat already came from animal-friendly sources. Thanks to optimised logistics, SV Group was able to achieve this at no extra cost. On balance, half of the SV restaurants already can be described as sustainable - "that makes me proud."

WHY IT WORKS
For Patrick Camele, healthy, sustainable nutrition is a matter of conviction. From a strategic point of view, the commitment makes sense, because a responsible diet is becoming increasingly important not only to corporate customers, but also to restaurant guests. While the transition to sustainability and the choice of high-quality, healthy foods costs money, Patrick Camele and his Chairman of the Board of Directors, Silvio C. Gabriel, are convinced that the investment makes economic sense. "Because we now want to know more about where our food comes from, we know much more about our value chain than before, which helps us to optimise our processes." In addition, the menus of our restaurants have become much more varied. "The guests are more satisfied and consider our product and services to be much better." Employees are also comfortable in this environment - "many are proud to be committed to sustainability. This commitment makes a difference, and it is appreciated by both restaurant and hotel guests."