Dear Arun, this is in addition to what other members have said. Why is your friend making the decision about the management with a negative mindset? Tell your friend to give his best to provide quality food. He can do the following:
a) Study the systems of cooking and find out whether there is any scope for improvement. Is there any wasteful expenditure happening? Are there any food wastages?
b) Let him study 5S methods and teach those methods to the staff. He can improve the housekeeping in the canteen as a whole. Let the kitchen be so neat and clean that it should look as if it were a front office.
c) Let him teach hygiene and sanitation to the staff working in the canteen. This is also very important.
d) He can control the unwanted buildup of inventory of food items at the canteen. He can help the caterer in fixing various stock levels like minimum stock, maximum stock, buffer stock, etc.
e) Is the contractor's vehicle making any unnecessary trips from the contractor's warehouse (where food items are stored) to your company? How can these be curtailed?
Your friend has a chance to implement his managerial knowledge here. Every saving that he makes for the contractor should be passed on to the company. This will help your company when negotiating future contracts.
If your friend shows real interest in doing all this, then possibly it will help him in launching his own catering company. After all, there is more money in these contracts than slogging at the HR desk.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar