In the everyday life of Helsinki residents
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1,600 professionals
Palvelukeskus Helsinki employs 1,600 professionals in duties such as food and cleaning services, care services, customer and lobby services and support services. Together, we take care of Helsinki residents’ basic services.
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Involved in 100,000 meal times every day
We prepare meals every day for Helsinki’s daycare centres, schools, educational institutions, hospitals, senior centres and service homes. We also provide home care clients with home meals.
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We have 500 offices
Our food and cleaning services operate in 500 locations across Helsinki. Our main offices are located in the Vallila district of Helsinki and in Vantaa, where we also have food production premises.
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More than 600,000 passenger transports provided
Our services via Helsingin Matkapalvelu provide more than 600,000 transports annually for severely disabled and elderly residents who are unable to use public transport. Our customer service at Helsingin Matkapalvelu is open around the clock every day of the year.
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Approximately 200,000 contacts per month
Our telephone and wellbeing services take care of roughly 200,000 contacts per month. We are responsible for aspects such as the City of Helsinki’s telephone exchange, the transport arrangements provided by Helsingin Matkapalvelu for the severely disabled and the elderly, and remote care and security telephone services. We also provide seasonal assistance in services such as vaccination and exercise service reservations.
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Nearly 30,000 kg of fish from the Baltic Sea
Fish from the Baltic Sea is a staple on our menus, and in 2021, we used nearly 30,000 kilograms of it in our food services. Since 2019, we have also been involved in the Baltic Sea Day organised by the John Nurminen Foundation by providing a Baltic Sea menu in our food services for up to 75,000 Helsinki residents. For more than a decade, our food services have followed the recommendations of the WWF seafood guide. We are also pioneers in using Finnish cyprinids such as bream.
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Careful financial management
In 2023 Palvelukeskus Helsinki’s turnover was €113 million. The target result set for us by the Board of Commercial Services is zero.
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Customer satisfaction
We conduct annual customer satisfaction surveys in our services. In 2023, the average of our customer satisfaction ratings was 3.9 on a scale of 1–5.
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Best together
Awards from the PRO competition
In 2024, our food waste ambassador and food service manager Mika Marttila won the professional kitchen staff category at the industry gala that rewards the best professionals in the kitchen and restaurant sector.We were also victorious in 2022. Our food service manager, Marjo Niskanen, won both the professional kitchen staff category and the PRO award given by the press, and our service supervisor, Jaana Bremer, won the professional kitchen manager category. For several years, we have also reached the finals of the PRO competition.
The largest number of automatic medicine dispensers in the world
The automatic medicine dispensers that we have provided to Helsinki’s home care services dispense up to 75,000 medicine doses to home care clients per month, ensuring safe and correctly timed medication. In early 2024, Helsinki had the largest number of automatic medicine dispensers for home care in the world.More than 100 years of food services
We have been involved in Helsinki residents’ everyday life as a food service producer since 1917. We have prepared summer food for Helsinki’s playgrounds since 1942, while 2023 it marked the whopping 80th anniversary of free school meals in Helsinki. Today, the schools provide two main dishes to choose from and a salad table every day.Responsible public procurements
Our professional procurements have been acknowledged on several occasions as exemplary public procurements. In 2021, our food service procurements were mentioned in the EU Green Public Procurement publication. The publication focuses on procurement practices implemented in calls for tenders by European authorities, with which operators have managed to improve the environmental friendliness of public procurements.EcoCompass
We renewed our EcoCompass environmental certificate in 2023. The certificate of the EcoCompass environmental management system shows that we are committed to continuously improving environmental measures in all of our services and locations across Helsinki.Multiple Finnish championships in organic food
In 2022, the daycare centres of Helsinki enjoyed two Finnish championships’ worth of organic food. Together with the daycare centres, we took home victories in two series of the Finnish organic food championship competition, Luomu SM: the series for public food service producers with the largest increase in organic products and the series for major public food service producers. Together with the daycare centres of Helsinki, we have won five awards in the Luomu SM competition.Anonymous Recruitment
Promoting a diverse and non-discriminatory recruitment culture through anonymous recruitment methods. In 2023, there were 50 anonymous recruitments. This group primarily included all supervisory and expert positions, summer jobs for youth, and many other employee positions.
Strategic emphases
The strategic emphases and objectives of our operations are based on the City of Helsinki’s ‘A Place for Growth’ City Strategy. The implementation of the strategic emphases is steered by an action plan drawn up based on them, as well as Palvelukeskus Helsinki’s development and productivity plan for 2025. Each point of emphasis involves objectives related to the customer experience, productivity, the staff experience, sustainability in services and renewal measures.
- Improving Helsinki residents’ wellbeing and health
- Responsible financial management as the basis for sustainable growth
- Attracting employees to Helsinki
- Ambitious climate responsibility and nature conservation. We are bringing the City of Helsinki’s carbon neutrality objective forward to 2030.