“The plan contains exciting aspects such as the focus on quality of ingredients, increasingly sourced from within the UK with nationally recognised accreditations such as Red Tractor and Freedom Foods. Seeing school children as customers who will only use the service, and persuade their parents to use the service, if it good enough, is another interesting perspective offered by the report.
“Brakes has been asked to work in partnership with LACA, CEDA and Annabel Karmel on food solutions, be they ingredients, recipes or innovation supply chains for schools that, due to their size, struggle to achieve financial viability. “As a close partner to our customers, be they a contractor, a Local Authority team or a standalone school, we seek to understand the specific issues that school caterers face and provide support and sustainable solutions wherever possible.
We have recently launched a new and comprehensive programme of support for school caterers. This covers everything from guides to working towards Food For Life awards, enabling access to Children’s Food Trust training and resources, to details of top selling dishes, menu cycles, recipes and emerging meal occasions and food trends.
“A good food provision can lead to healthy, happy children and improved academic performance and should be an integral part of the school day for all pupils. We will continue to do everything we can to ensure the profile of school food is raised among pupils, parents and head teachers in a positive way. We can do this by providing good value, great tasting, nutritious food for pupils which which is easy for cooks to prepare and widely available, in addition to providing marketing solutions that will also help to drive uptake.”
