TUCO signs 20-year deal to continue online procurement platform


The University Caterers Organisation Ltd (TUCO) has awarded a 20-year partnership to leading technology provider, Access Hospitality, part of The Access Group. extending its partnership to provide a procurement platform for its members.

TUCO Online is powered by Access Procure Wizard and is available to all TUCO members. It has been developed to help university purchasing teams save time and money by streamlining their procurement processes, reducing costs, improving controls and automating invoicing. It also provides a full kitchen management system, including advanced stock control, waste, allergen and nutritional management.

Announcing the agreement, Henry Seddon, Managing Director of Access Hospitality commented, “We know that 80% of hospitality operators use a procurement system but this number drops significantly, to below 5%, in the education sector.

'The technology is available to make the user experience as straightforward as possible, so we are thrilled to continue our partnership with TUCO in the delivery of TUCO Online, enabling more universities to have access to the tools that allow them to focus on what they do best.’’

Mike Haslin, CEO of TUCO, (pictured) added, “After a thorough process, we are delighted to renew and extend our contract with Access Hospitality. This means our members can continue to enjoy the many financial and cost-saving benefits of TUCO Online in partnership with Access Procure Wizard.

'We are proud the benefits of our system extend beyond efficiency and deliver complete purchasing visibility and compliance across whole organisations with one simple login.”

Mike Hornsby, Systems Manager from the University of Brighton - who have been using TUCO Online for two years, added “TUCO Online has given us the ability to place an order with multiple suppliers at the same time – everything is in the same place. Also, we’ve never been able to easily compare pricing across products – that’s now at our fingertips and is invaluable.”

In addition to the obvious procurement benefits of TUCO Online, it also integrates with other Access Hospitality solutions including reservations, facilities management, EPoS and Workforce Management, providing even greater clarity and efficiency.

The system incorporates stock management and menu engineering modules and integrates with over 50 accounts packages, providing a truly dynamic online portal across an entire organisation with just one login.