Discover how Litmus Partnership helped Affinity Learning Partnership run a compliant tender process for their catering contract across all schools within the trust.
Pricing & Competitor Benchmarking
Understand how your food and beverage pricing compares to the market. Litmus benchmarking identifies savings and ensures competitive, best-in-class value.
measure up against the market
In competitive markets, understanding how your prices compare to others is essential for maintaining value, competitiveness and confidence in your procurement strategy.
Litmus Pricing & Competitor Benchmarking helps organisations assess how their Food & Beverage (F&B) product prices measure up against both market averages and direct competitors — providing clear, actionable insight into where savings can be made and where pricing is already strong.
From schools and universities competing with high street food outlets, to hotel groups and large organisations managing multimillion-pound supply chains, our benchmarking service provides the intelligence you need to make informed commercial decisions.
How it works
Our Pricing & Competitor Benchmarking service analyses your purchasing data against our extensive sector-wide database of verified supplier pricing.
We compare your F&B product costs to similar organisations and high street equivalents to identify variances, opportunities and trends.
The process typically includes:
- Data collection & validation – reviewing your purchase ledger and product mix.
- Market comparison – benchmarking your prices against verified industry averages and competitor pricing.
- High street analysis – comparing catering prices to relevant local or national high street alternatives.
- Sector segmentation – identifying what “best-in-class” looks like across education, healthcare, hospitality, and business sectors.
- Dashboard reporting – providing clear visual reports that highlight opportunities for savings or improvement.
- Actionable insights – recommendations to optimise pricing, supplier negotiations and menu strategy.
The result is a robust, evidence-based view of how your organisation performs in relation to peers and competitors.
What you'll gain
Working with Litmus Partnership gives you access to one of the UK’s most comprehensive F&B pricing datasets and over 30 years of industry experience.
Our benchmarking provides:
- Transparent visibility – see exactly how your prices compare across products, suppliers and categories.
- Competitive positioning – understand where you stand versus peers, sector averages and high street competitors.
- Identified savings – pinpoint where costs exceed benchmarks and how to reduce them.
- Performance insight – see what “good” and “best-in-class” pricing looks like.
- Data-driven decision-making – use verified information to negotiate better deals and improve supplier performance.
- Strategic value – assess pricing without needing to re-tender, saving time and avoiding disruption.
Example in practice
A major hotel group with an annual F&B spend of £6 million used our Litmus Metrics Service to analyse its supplier pricing.
By benchmarking their product costs against market averages and competitor data, they identified multiple categories where they were paying above the sector norm. The outcome:
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- Significant cost savings achieved without changing suppliers.
- Improved confidence in procurement performance.
- A clear roadmap for renegotiating key contracts.
- Significant cost savings achieved without changing suppliers.
Trusted by leading organisations
Our high street pricing analysis has been delivered to TUCO (The University Caterers Organisation) and its members for several years, helping them ensure their university outlets remain competitive against local high street offers.
The service is also widely used across schools, trusts, care providers, leisure operators and hospitality businesses — wherever food pricing and value are critical to performance.
Why choose the Litmus Partnership?
Litmus Partnership combines deep industry experience with advanced data analytics to deliver practical, reliable and sector-specific insight.
Our benchmarking reports and interactive dashboards make complex pricing data easy to interpret — enabling your team to take immediate, informed action.
By using our independent data, you’ll gain a trusted view of your competitiveness and the confidence to make better commercial decisions.
Client Success Stories
Discover how we’ve helped organisations across education, healthcare, business and the public sector achieve measurable improvements in quality, efficiency and value.
Discover how Litmus Partnership helped Marlborough College approach a re-design of their historic dining space through consumer insights.
Discover how Litmus Partnership helped Marlborough College approach a re-design of their historic dining space through consumer insights.
Discover how Litmus Partnership helped Marlborough College approach a re-design of their historic dining space through consumer insights.
Discover how Litmus Partnership helped Marlborough College approach a re-design of their historic dining space through consumer insights.
Discover how Litmus Partnership helped Wellington College & Eagle House School successfully negotiate and improve their facilities services.
Insights And News
Stay informed with the latest industry insights, expert commentary and project updates from the Litmus Partnership team.
- EducationRead More
Benchmarking and performance – are you really in control of your school’s operational contracts?
- Consumer Insight | Education | Public SectorRead More
Coming Soon: A new Consumer Insight Programme for special schools
- Education | Public SectorRead More
Financial Awareness Day 2025: How schools can drive greater financial efficiency through smarter catering management
Take the next step
If you’d like to understand whether your organisation is paying the right price for its food and beverage products — and how you compare to competitors — Litmus Pricing & Competitor Benchmarking can provide the clarity you need.
Get in touch to discuss how we can benchmark your pricing, highlight savings, and help you achieve best-in-class value.
Contact Us
We love to connect with business leaders that want to make a change. Contact our friendly team to request a no obligation chat about your current challenges and goals.