Is your school catering service still delivering?

The school meal is a critical part of the day, but can sometimes disappoint because of the dining environment, poor quality ingredients or unimaginative food being served to pupils and staff. This can impact on school meal take up and therefore the financial viability of the service. Whatever the issue, it is important to establish what is wrong with the service and then to set out how the situation can be improved.

School meal services benefit from on-going management and regular audits of the catering provision. An observation by Educo, a specialist catering consultancy, is that over time catering service levels drop from those that were agreed at the outset or were delivered at the start of the service.

To support schools that might be experiencing this decline in services, Educo provide a full audit service of the catering provision. The audit highlights good practice, areas for improvement and non-compliance with regulations and best practice. The Educo Audit reviews all aspects of the service from the development of the menu and ordering of the ingredients through to how the food is served and cleared away.

After the audit, Educo will provide a clear written report with a detailed action plan that the Caterer can easily implement to get the meal service to the required level within an agreed time frame. Educo have great relationships with many catering contractors and will often have multiple schools working with a single contractor. As a result Educo are often in a position to negotiate improved prices on behalf of a school, often securing a discount. This will achieve the goals of the school and help develop the on-going relationship between the school and the contractor.

The Secondary and Primary schools that Educo work with will have their catering provision audited semi-annually and annually respectively. For Schools who are not currently clients Educo provide a one-off audit which will kick start the process of improvement and upgrade.
Click here to find out more about how Educo can support your school.