Our Food Development Chefs
Our team of Development Chefs work alongside all of our catering teams in kitchens to enhance and develop our dishes and menus. Our commitment and focus ensures that we always comply in food safety and nutritional standards while keeping pace with current food trends and the ever changing tastes of consumers.
Building Popular Menus
We hold tasting sessions ahead of each new menu cycle where children give each new dish a rating. We also gain feedback from parent/child/school surveys, parents evenings and student councils which enables us to build menus that have high uptake rates.
Seasonal Produce
Our menus work on a three week cycle and a new menu is launched twice a year so that we can make the most of seasonal produce. This means that our food is fresher and has better flavour. It also reduces food miles and reduces costs as the produce is cheaper to procure.
Our menus are 100% compliant to School Food Standards, ensuring that they meet the nutritional standards as part of a healthy, balanced diet.
Quality Assured Ingredients
We use only the best ingredients. In support of British farmers our fruit, vegetables, meat and milk come from local suppliers. We believe in high standards so we only use Red Tractor assured meat.
Red Tractor
Our meat is Red Tractor assured, to guarantee high standards of animal welfare, environmental protection and food safety.
Quorn and Linda McCartney
We use Quorn and Linda McCartney vegetarian/ vegan products.
Certified Sustainable Seafood
Our fish and seafood is from a wild, certified, sustainable source (MSC).
Food for Life
Bronze Food for Life is our minimum standard within all of our school catering.
Our Butchers
One of our local suppliers, award winning butcher, Malony’s, sources beef locally, they said: “Our succulent and tasty beef is sourced locally. Animal welfare is paramount to us and the farmers we use and they are all Red Tractor assured.”
Where our Food Comes From
Our food comes from fully traceable sources. We actively seek to source all our provisions locally where possible to minimize food miles.
We have robust and rigorous procurement controls in place, ensuring that suppliers undertake a formal procurement process, with reliability and quality of products tightly monitored by our Food Development Officers. Our corporate procurement team manage the +£2m food purchases each year using our online purchasing system used by our teams.
Carbon Neutral Commitments
We are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our operations. Our suppliers are required to actively seek to reduce their carbon footprint linked to our operations, reducing food miles and using recyclable packaging wherever possible.
We are committed to:
- Eliminating non-recyclable goods from our products and packaging
- Reducing food and waste products in all our kitchens
- Improving energy efficiency of our operations
- Helping children to grow and cook their own food in schools
- Implement Carbon Offsetting activities with schools
- Promoting reusable cups and containers to our customers
- Use local suppliers to reduce carbon miles
- Being Carbon Neutral by 2028