"We come from the trade, not from theory"

I come from the field, in the most concrete sense. I started in the kitchen, worked my way up through every station, and ended up running catering systems serving several thousand covers a day. For more than twenty-five years, I have known the stoves, the purchasing, the teams, the suppliers, the executive boards, the public tenders and the budget constraints. This is not expertise I read about, it is expertise I lived.

First of all, real joy, and a sense of purpose. I am joining a venture that makes sense, and I bring to it everything I have built over more than twenty-five years, as very concrete skills and services. The need is real, most firms that advise on catering have never actually run one, whereas organisations are looking for someone who understands both the strategy and the kitchen. As a field person, I speak as easily with a CEO as with a chef, a buyer or a team on the line, and it is precisely that bridge, so often missing, that I come to build.

It changes everything. A leadership team that entrusts us with its catering does not receive a theory, it receives people who have already solved its problems elsewhere. We do not stop at a report of recommendations that the client would then have to translate on their own into concrete action. We go all the way to delivery, into the kitchen, supporting the teams without replacing them. It is this continuity, from strategy to the plate, that makes Aligea's value.

Measured results, and public ones. In five years, we brought the carbon footprint down from 6.2 to 4.1 kilos of CO₂ per kilo of food served, and raised the share of vegetarian meals from 5 to 56%. Behind these figures lies rigorous steering, year after year, costs kept under control, waste reduced and guest satisfaction preserved, with the teams already in place. These are not slogans, they are measurement points.

It all depends on who is listening, and that is exactly where the craft lies. To an administration, I would say that in five years more than half of the meals served became vegetarian, well ahead of the 2030 targets. To a school, I would say that today one pupil in two discovers every day that a meal without meat can be good and filling, a habit that will stay. Same reality, two stories, without ever distorting the truth of the project.

We start with an honest diagnosis, on the operational, economic, nutritional and environmental levels. Then we set a direction with the leadership, objectives, priorities, a roadmap. We put steering indicators in place, food cost, cost per plate, waste, carbon footprint, satisfaction, attendance, to decide on reliable data rather than intuition. And above all, we train the teams, because no change holds if it does not reach the gestures of the kitchen.

Until the changes are real. Collective catering is a demanding world, you have to surprise your guests, offer food that is healthy, tasty and sustainable, all with very tight food costs. We support the teams through hands-on training, plant-based cooking and proteins, new culinary techniques, waste reduction, recipe and cost optimisation, applied nutrition, digital tools and artificial intelligence. I deliver a large part of these trainings myself, and a network of chefs and trainers absorbs the peaks at constant quality.

For more than twenty-five years, we have worked with every kind of player in the sector, producers, distributors, wholesalers, manufacturers, universities and specialists. This network lets us bring in the right skill at the right moment, know the supply chains, the prices and the innovations, and save our clients precious time. The field knows us, and we know the field.

Wherever meals are served at scale with a demand for quality and cost control, cantons and municipalities, state, private and vocational schools, university campuses, collective catering, companies, international organisations, care homes and hospitals. Each has its own constraints, and it is precisely this diversity that has shaped us.

Innovation in service of the real. We work on making the offer more plant-based, on the sustainable transition, on reducing the carbon footprint, on steering by data and applied artificial intelligence, not as buzzwords but as concrete levers. And we commit to measurable results, a snapshot of performance at the start of the engagement, a measure of the gap achieved at the end. That sets us apart from a firm of intentions.

Entrust us with your catering the way you would tell us about a concrete problem, not a concept. We come from the trade, we are recognised by the sector, we have a solid network and we have already led measurable transformations. We do not sell a promise, we support a change, all the way into the kitchen.