Bidfood delivers passion and exceptional service to the food service industry

On a wet and cold day filled with hail, an enthusiastic group of Youth Service clients and students from Mana College visited the Bidfood Porirua site to meet staff and learn about what they do.

The company is New Zealand’s largest supplier of food and kitchen consumables to the hospitality and food service industry.

The tour started with a health and safety briefing from the Compliance Manager, Justin. Then a round of introductions from different area managers and the General Manager who spoke about their pathway to work for Bidfood and pathways within Bidfood. Hayden, the Supply Manager, has been with Bidfood 19 years, Justin came from a courier driving background and Frederic was a chef and a former client of Bidfood before becoming the current Operations Manager.

We all shared some delicious kai and drinks from their clients – Subway, pastries, and amazing lolly cake. Then it was time to zip up our Hi- Vis and go on a tour of the Bidfood warehouse.

First stop was the freezer. We barely lasted four minutes there, but a normal freezer warehouse shift is eight hours long. Staff who work there are given special freezer PPE including big artic looking jackets, beanies and gloves. Many of the experienced workers don’t end up wearing it, as they get warm from all the physical packing and picking.

From there we moved to the chiller – which was warmer than the freezer but still cold. We saw a small sample of the 6,000 goods Bidfood stock for their clients. From there we moved on to the dry goods warehouse, then outside to the interchange area and yard to see the class 1 and class 2 trucks. We heard about how they are loaded, the different runs and the geographical area covered, and we spoke to a driver, Rob, who has been with Bidfood for 16 years.

The last stop on our tour was the packaging warehouse which stores all the various takeaway/storage container/reusable cutlery and coffee cups.

After this we headed back to the main office for final questions and the young people were given the opportunity to fill out expression of interest forms for work with Bidfood. Our rangatahi jumped at this exciting opportunity after hearing from this passionate local employer, who delivers exception customer service and offers everything their customers need to produce culinary magic.