On a weekly basis our school kitchens cook and serve over 3000 meals, with over 60 individual diet plans or special diets. The catering team produces meals based on a school by school bespoke menu – no one school has the same menu as any other. Where possible the menus are created with the help of the young people who will ultimately be enjoying them.

Meals are produced using fresh ingredients – frozen or readily prepared food forms less than 10% of the ingredients.

Having said all this working on a fixed 3 week menu cycle can be monotonous for the young people and ourselves – it is for this reason that we fully embrace working with the schools to deliver relevant theme days, for example curriculum linked events, specific school focuses, diary events such as “World Book Day”.

Here are a few theme events we have worked on in the last few months:

· Japanese Day – A school cultural day, we produced a Japanese themed menu and decorated the dining room.

· French Themed Tea

· National Pie Week – The young people helped to create the menu and even helped make some of the pies and fillings.

· Comic Relief

· Easter Lunch

When creating the menus we try to source authentic recipes and ingredients, we then encourage the young people to try new flavours and textures.