Gold food from B&NES
Bath and North East Somerset Council (B&NES) Catering Services offers Food for Life bronze standard menus across the area, serving 4000 hot meals every day. B&NES is among the first handful of local authorities to achieve the FFL Bronze Catering Mark.
In addition to the bronze menu offered across the area, B&NES Catering Services supplies silver and gold-accredited menus to the Food For Life Partnership schools in the B&NES area that have achieved silver or gold accreditation for the whole range of FFLP criteria. This includes the country’s first Food for Life Partnership Gold Award school - St John’s Primary School in Midsomer Norton.
The bronze standard requires seasonal menus with 75% of meals being freshly prepared and without additives; meat must conform to welfare standards and eggs must be from cage-free hens. For the silver standard a range of local organic food is served, with poultry, pork and eggs being free range or Freedom Food accredited. Fish supplies must conform to Marine Stewardship Council guidelines, with no fish from the ‘Fish to Avoid’ list. The gold menus must include in addition at least 30% of ingredients from certified organic or MSC certified sources, and 50% of ingredients must be locally sourced.
B&NES are already using free range chicken and pork in their bronze menu as well as free range eggs and this recently won them The Good Egg award.
How did we get started?
We first came to hear about FFL through Carolyn Banfield, the headteacher at St John’s Primary School in Midsomer Norton, who was very keen to achieve the Food for Life Partnership awards. The school was subsequently taken on as a flagship school along with another school in B&NES and the hard work really began. Catering Services already provided the meals service in both these schools.
What were the challenges?
It has to be said that the first couple of meetings to talk about food provenance and quality felt like they were conducted in a foreign language because it was all so new. Little by little we started to understand what it was all about, the mist began to lift and the way forward became a lot clearer.
We did find ourselves running round the houses looking for suppliers and finding organic vegetables all year round was a challenge. We also found that working with producers and suppliers to meet the criteria was at times difficult but through perseverance and a spirit of co-operation this has been achieved. Take the sausages for example: finding a supplier for sausages that were consistently the right size took some discussion!
Feedback from staff and pupils
The feedback from staff and pupils has been fantastic and many comment on how much the dining experience has improved. It’s great to see how the school cooks have started to become a part of the team and start to get to know the children.
School meal take-up still needs some work although in the schools that are working towards the Food for Life Partnership awards the whole school approach to food seems to have a very positive impact on the uptake of school meals.
Costs
There has been an impact on cost which is in part down to the cost of ingredients although in some cases we sourced our free-range produce more cheaply, but management time to find and maintain sources of supply did increase.
Any regrets?
Being part of the Food for Life Partnership has been a great experience and now our confidence has improved we can appreciate what we have achieved.
We’ve learned a huge amount both in the workplace and on a personal level too (the organic vegetable patch at home is abundant!)
Tips
Make sure you understand what it’s all about. That goes for kitchen staff too who may require some additional training.
Make best use of the resources available to you on the Food for Life Partnership website and don’t be afraid to contact the team for support if necessary; they will be only too happy to help and they are good at finding solutions.
From the beginning be clear with your suppliers and producers and collect the certificates and supporting evidence as you go.
Tackle the criteria in bite-size chunks rather than trying to achieve everything straight away.
Expect to have to invest a fair amount of time in the process but know that it will all be worth it in the end.
Get in touch
If you would like to learn more about the Food for Life Partnership or have any questions, please contact us.