Cost pressures, supply chain challenges, staffing shortages, and tighter regulation all mean care homes must do more with less. At the same time, UK procurement is transforming – driven by social value, digital technologies, resilience, efficiency, and compliance.

If you’re managing care home procurement, you’ll need solutions that rise to these demands. Freshmarkets, EF-group’s industry-leading procurement platform, delivers exactly that, bringing simplicity, insight, efficiency, and assurance to your supply chain.

1. Social Value & Sustainable Procurement Are Non-Negotiable

Trend Insight
Across the UK, procurement is no longer purely about cost, it’s about value. From government guidelines to public and NHS frameworks, care homes are increasingly expected to demonstrate green sourcing, supplier transparency, and community benefits.

How Freshmarkets Helps
Through access to over 700 UK-based suppliers, Freshmarkets makes it easy to prioritise local and sustainable options. With consolidated ordering and visibility into supplier provenance, you reduce waste, cut complexity, and enhance social and environmental responsibility – all within one system.

2. Digital Procurement & Data-Driven Purchasing

Trend Insight
Digitisation is reshaping care home procurement, delivering real-time spend visibility, supplier performance tracking, and smarter budget control.

How Freshmarkets Helps
Freshmarkets provides a seamless purchase-to-pay solution with:

  • Centralised budget management, with site-level control and flexible date ranges
  • Real-time price lists, stock, and order status updates
  • Tailored insights and reporting to support spend optimisation and trend spotting

By moving from manual paperwork to digital workflows, the platform increases efficiency and reduces risk, letting your team focus on resident care.

3. Building Resilience & Local Supply Chains

Trend Insight
Pandemic lessons remain. Care homes must diversify suppliers, localise sourcing, and stay adaptive to supply chain disruptions.

How Freshmarkets Helps
Freshmarkets taps into EF-group’s robust supplier network and Foodbuy Group’s £2.5bn buying power – covering food, cleaning, medical, and non-food categories. You can integrate preferred or legacy suppliers and access stock tracking and visibility features to pre-empt potential shortages or delays.

4. Operational Efficiency – Saving Time and Money

Trend Insight
Budget constraints and workforce pressure mean streamlining processes is a must.

How Freshmarkets Helps
Freshmarkets automates repetitive tasks – from placing orders and managing purchases to consolidating invoices and resolving billing queries. Features like Click & Collect, bulk purchase orders, and single consolidated invoices simplify administration.

For example, customers of EF-group have reduced invoice clutter and improved purchasing control through consolidated invoicing. Similarly, care providers using Freshmarkets benefit from faster processes and a real-time view of spend.

5. Compliance, Reporting & Quality Outcomes

Trend Insight
Care homes face rigorous requirements, from nutrition and allergen compliance to cost-per-resident tracking and CQC standards.

How Freshmarkets Helps
Freshmarkets provides full audit trails and clean billing. When paired with CaterCloud, EF-group’s menu management system, operators gain powerful tools for nutrition and allergen tracking, recipe control, meal planning, and Cost Per Resident Per Day (CPRD) reporting. Together, they ensure compliance, safety, and quality across all care settings.

The future of care home procurement in the UK demands innovation, agility, and deliverable value. Freshmarkets gives you all that and puts you ahead.

Contact Chris Kirton today via email chriskirton@ef-group.co.uk or call on 07484 521996 and let’s help you transform care through smarter procurement.