3663: The food company that ate Britain
Order from a menu today and chances are the food on your plate has come from one source: 3663. This behemoth supplies a quarter of all Britain's catering needs - and few of us even realise. Guy Adams meets the men and women behind a very big number
If you look on the shelves of more than 50,000 of Britain's commercial kitchens, you will find a slim, A4 catalogue with a purple cover that carries details of roughly 10,000 items of fresh, frozen and chilled food.
The catalogue belongs to a very important company, but one with a very low profile.
Its name is 3663, which spells "food" on your telephone keypad.
Three Double Six Three, as the firm's name is normally rendered in speech, is officially the largest player in a mushrooming industry called "foodservice," and which supplies raw materials to restaurants, pubs, canteens, and any other outlets from which people buy or are served cooked meals.
Some of their 10,000 products are fresh, high-quality ingredients, destined for the smartest restaurants in the land.
Others, are artery-clogging, processed, "basics," chucked into the deep fat fryer of your local fast-food outlet.
For any Briton who eats meals prepared outside a private home, 3663 is almost impossible to avoid.
The firm boasts 30,000 customers who run the more than 50,000 outlets - a staggering 20 per cent of the commercial kitchens in the country.
