Based in Woking, McLaren is synonymouswith precision, performance, and an uncompromising attention to detail. Thatmindset extends beyond engineering and racing into every part of theorganisation, including the hospitality and events experiences delivered onsite.
With a constant flow of internal meetings,partner engagements, and large-scale events, hospitality at McLaren plays acritical role in supporting teams, stakeholders, and global sponsors.Delivering that experience at scale requires clarity, control, and confidenceacross every order.
Restaurant Associates delivers hospitalityand events catering on behalf of McLaren. At the heart of this operation sitsSpoonfed, providing a single platform to manage the complexity of afast-moving, high-pressure environment.
We spoke with Thomas Gilroy, Head ofHospitality and Events, to understand how Spoonfed supports McLaren’shospitality operation day to day.
Calendar views, dashboards, and reporting support planning, forecasting, and performance tracking.
Supports around 950 events per year, including large-scale events for up to 4,000 guests.
Mandatory PO capture ensures budget control, approval discipline, and smoother invoicing.
Restaurant Associates delivers a wide rangeof hospitality services across the McLaren site. This includes everything fromday-to-day internal catering — breakfasts, lunches, and meetings — through tolarge-scale internal and external events.
The events operation is substantial. Eachyear, the team delivers around 950 events for groups of 10 or more, withapproximately 50 larger events hosting 80 or more guests. At peak times,single-day events can exceed 1,200 guests and represent £80,000 or more inhospitality activity.
All food is produced in-house, and eventsfrequently involve high-profile guests, sponsors, and partners. In thisenvironment, accuracy, timing, and professionalism are non-negotiable.
As Thomas explains:
“We do everything. Internal meetingsday to day, and then big events, gala dinners, conferences, and productlaunches. Anything over about ten people, that’s us.”
Spoonfed serves as the central hub for allhospitality and events information at McLaren.
Internal bookers, including EAs, projectteams, and department leads, use the online ordering platform to placeday-to-day orders for meetings and workplace hospitality. These orders feeddirectly into the hospitality team’s operational view.
For the hospitality and events team, Spoonfedprovides full visibility across all bookings, updates, and requirements.
Thomas is clear about how central the systemis to daily operations:
“If the order’s not on Spoonfed, thechefs aren’t going to make it. It’s literally our Bible. Everything goes offit.”
Dietary updates, special requests, timings,locations, and notes are all captured in one place. This ensures that everyteam — front of house, kitchen, and management — is working from the same,up-to-date information.
Unlike many corporate hospitalityenvironments, McLaren’s events are rarely static or repetitive.
Menus change frequently. Race-themed events,sponsor activations, and bespoke experiences are common. One week might requirea sushi bar, the next a bowl-food menu tailored to a specific audience.
Spoonfed enables the team to build fullybespoke quotes covering every element of an event, including food and drink,additional labour, furniture hire, floristry, and production hospitality.
For Thomas, the ability to add and adaptbespoke elements quickly is essential:
“Adding bespoke items is really keyfor us. You literally just add the item, type in what it is, and add the cost.It’s super, super easy.”
This flexibility allows the team to respondto changing requirements without creating workarounds or manual processes.
“Everything changes all the timehere. If there’s a race on in Mexico, we’re doing a Mexican menu. The fact thatwe can do all of that so easily makes a huge difference.”
For McLaren’s hospitality operation, kitchenclarity is essential.
All event details are captured centrallywithin Spoonfed, including quantities, timings, locations, and dietaryrequirements. Production sheets and PDFs are generated directly from thesystem, breaking events down into clear “drops” by room and time.
This structure ensures chefs know exactlywhat they are producing, where it needs to be delivered, and when.
As Thomas notes:
“When there’s a lot of moving parts— different rooms, different times, different people — it just really helpshaving everything organised in one place.”
With all information visible and up to date,the kitchen team can work with confidence, even during complex, multi-locationevents.
Financial governance is a critical part ofhospitality at scale.
Working with Spoonfed, the team hasimplemented mandatory PO number capture within the ordering process. Orderscannot be placed without the correct PO information.
These rules vary by department and areenforced at the point of order, ensuring costs are approved and accounted forbefore hospitality is delivered.
Thomas explains the impact clearly:
“Before, people could order thingswithout a PO number, and then finance would question the invoice later. Now, ifyou don’t have a PO number, you can’t place the order, so the cost is alreadyaccounted for.”
This approach has reduced invoice queries,improved payment timelines, and prevented unapproved or unbudgeted orders fromslipping through. Bringing greater confidence to both the hospitality andfinance teams.
For managers overseeing a large and variedhospitality operation, visibility is key.
Spoonfed’s calendar view provides ahigh-level overview of daily and weekly activity, showing what’s happeningacross the site and how busy each day is expected to be. Revenue figures arereadily visible, helping the team anticipate pressure points and resourcerequirements.
For Thomas, this level of oversight isinvaluable:
“For any manager, having oversightof everything is huge. I don’t want to spend hours going into every event. Ijust want to know, ‘That’s an £80k week, we need to be ready.’”
The dashboard supports deeper insight,including month-by-month tracking and year-on-year comparisons, making iteasier to understand performance trends and plan ahead.
Reports can also be exported to Excel forcreating crib sheets, staffing plans, and supplier orders. Ensuring theinformation captured in Spoonfed feeds directly into delivery on the ground.
With Spoonfed in place, McLaren’s hospitalityoperation benefits from a highly organised, scalable approach to managingcomplexity.
The platform reduces ambiguity, removesreliance on informal processes, and gives teams confidence that nothing ismissed, even when events are large, bespoke, and fast-moving.
As Thomas puts it:
“I’ve never had this level ofvisibility on any other system I’ve used.”
This structure has helped the team supportrecord levels of activity while maintaining the standards expected in ahigh-performance environment.
Spoonfed provides the operational backbonebehind McLaren’s hospitality and events programme.
By bringing structure, flexibility, andclarity into a single platform, it enables teams to manage scale and complexitywithout adding administrative burden. From day-to-day meetings to large-scale,high-profile events, Spoonfed supports a consistent, professional experiencefor everyone involved.
As Thomas reflects:
“Spoonfed is the best system I’veused. It gives us oversight, flexibility, and confidence, which is exactly whatyou need in an operation like this.”
For organisations operating in high-volume,high-pressure hospitality environments, Spoonfed offers the control andadaptability required to deliver at pace, even when everything is bespoke.
