Preparing for Universal Infant Free School Meals

It’s now only a few months until schools will be required to offer free school meals to all pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.

While many schools have great enthusiasm for the changes, there are also a number of schools who feel daunted by the challenge and don’t know where to start! PKL have been active in the education sector for a number of years, supplying a whole range of catering infrastructure solutions, so here are my top tips to get you started.

Kitchen Facilities

This is one of the greatest causes of worry at some schools, but this need not be the case. There is government funding in place to assist schools with procuring kitchen facilities, and although the timeline may seem short, I can assure you that there is plenty of time to have everything in place by September!

The first thing to do is calculate how many meals your kitchen will need to produce each day. It’s worth bearing in mind that the pilot schemes found that school meal take-up also increased in other year groups following the introduction of free school meals for infants.

You should then make a list of all your current catering equipment and facilities (if you already have some) so you can ascertain what you’ll need in order to provide the meals required. Now’s also the time to consider new menu options and ideas, and plan accordingly.

It might be that you need to start from scratch with a new kitchen building and catering equipment, or you may just need to upgrade existing buildings or equipment. Either way, help is available in terms of both funding and advice. Visit our dedicated website, schoolkitchens.com to see our school solutions and relevant funding info. There is also an excellent “Q&A for Head Teachers” page on the School Food Plan website, which should help answer a lot of the questions you may have.

PKL Kitchen Options: If you need to install a new school kitchen or extend an existing one, take a look at our KitchenPod options, or if you need to procure or upgrade your catering equipment, take a look at our specially-designed KitchenFM for Schools option.

Dining Space

As well as your kitchen facilities, you should also consider how your dining space will cope with an increased take-up of school meals. You might need to think about options such as staggered lunchtimes or additional sittings in order to help tackle queues and congestion in the dining hall.

Now is also the time to think about the practicalities of your dining space and how it can be optimised. You may be fortunate enough to have a dedicated dining hall, or you may use other spaces such as the school hall or classrooms. Whatever your current setup, there are likely to be ways in which you can tweak things to work better, be it new décor or layouts, an extension, additional dining areas or a whole new dining hall. The dining environment has been shown to have a real impact on pupils’ behaviour and engagement with school meals, so should not be overlooked.

Did You Know? PKL can also help with supplying dining areas as well as kitchens and catering equipment. Get in touch to see how we can help.

I appreciate that preparing for the implementation of free infant school meals may seem like an impossible challenge for some schools, but it needn’t be the nightmare you imagine. At PKL, we have a dedicated team who provide kitchen and catering equipment solutions to the education sector. They can help advise you on the best PKL products to suit your specific school, and offer a wealth of experience and expertise to help you through the procurement process. Take a look at schoolkitchens.com and please do get in touch if you’d like to explore your options further.

Lee has had over 19 years’ experience providing schools across the country with catering infrastructure solutions. He is passionate about school meals and was a driving force behind PKL becoming the founding corporate partner of the Children’s Food Trust. He is also a member of the Small Schools Taskforce, helping to provide solutions and support for small and rural schools in implementing the School Food Plan.

LACA Conference 2013

In this post, Ian from our KitchenPod team blogs about the LACA conference which we attended last week.

If you follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn, you’ll know that a team of us from PKL were at the LACA Conference in Birmingham last week. In case you missed out on attending or didn’t get the chance to come and see us, here’s what you missed!

As well as having a stand in the exhibition itself, we also took one of our Food Cubes along and set it up in the car park. The Cube we took is a special one we’ve created for Pasta King, who were also exhibiting at the conference. It drew quite a crowd, and delegates were able to take a look around and see all the different features of the Cube – it’s always nice to see things in the flesh!

On the final day of the conference (Friday 12th), we attended a talk about the new School Food Plan which had launched earlier that morning, so it was hot off the press! The talk was given by the founder of the Leon restaurant chain John Vincent who, along with co-founder Henry Dimbleby, worked on the development of the plan. LACA Chair Anne Bull was also on the stage to tell us more, along with Garden Organic's Chief Exec Myles Bremner, who will be heading the plan up going forward.

The School Food Plan represents a significant milestone for school meals, and we’ll shortly be announcing some info on how we can help schools implement positive changes to their school meal provision through our innovative school solutions. Watch this space…
 

Help measure the state of the nation’s school kitchens

Are your school’s kitchen facilities up to the job? Here at PKL, we are helping the Children’s Food Trust to carry out the first national survey of school kitchens across the country.

They are hoping the survey will provide them with information on a number of issues facing school food provision, enabling them to help more schools across the country with their tailored advice.

The Children's Food Trust are gathering information by asking a few short questions covering a number of topics. Are school kitchens big enough and modern enough to cope with feeding hundreds of children every day? Are schools having to allocate valuable budget for repairs and maintenance to ageing kitchens or equipment? Would schools benefit from more information on funding options to replace or improve their kitchen facilities?

To fill out the Children's Food Trust's quick survey to help them gather this vital information, click here and please encourage other school business managers to do the same before Wednesday 17th July.

Read why the Children’s Food Trust wants to see more support for schools to improve kitchens on their blog, and don’t forget they can help if your school is struggling with its kitchen facilities or food provision.

International School Meals Day

PKL KitchenPod Consultant Ian Selwood guest blogs today on the topic of International School Meals Day, and addresses the challenges faced by many schools requiring new kitchen facilities.

With International School Meals Day taking place today, we are turning our thoughts to those schools in the UK which do not have adequate facilities to be able to provide fresh, hot school meals. It’s fantastic to see such a huge buzz around International School Meals Day, and really exciting to see how many schools are taking part, but I know that there are many more schools who would perhaps like to take part but are being held back by their catering facilities (or lack thereof).

I have worked with hundreds of UK schools over the past few years, and understand the various constraints and challenges which many schools have to overcome in order to be able to produce school meals on site. Since today’s focus is on school meals, I thought it may be helpful to share some info on our KitchenPods, which have enabled over 100 schools throughout the country to produce school meals for their pupils. Here are some of the top things I think you need to know about our KitchenPods, based on the topics previous clients have asked me about:

• Traditional brick construction is not the only option for new kitchen buildings. PKL KitchenPods are purpose-built permanent modular kitchen buildings which offer schools an innovative alternative to traditional construction. In fact, Galliford Try’s publication “The Optimum Primary School” recommended modular buildings as being preferable for school buildings!
  
  
• KitchenPods cost far less than traditional builds, and we offer flexible procurement options including contract rental, lease hire or capital purchase. There are also various funding streams available for procuring KitchenPods, and my colleagues and I are experienced in helping schools identify funding options and assisting with filling in application forms.
  
  
• Our KitchenPods are sturdy, high-quality facilities. They are purpose-built kitchen buildings and comply with food hygiene and health and safety standards as well as building regulations. Due to their size, I’ve found that they are also likely to be fast tracked through planning regulations as a permitted development.
  
  
• PKL KitchenPods can be supplied as single units or larger open-plan facilities, depending on the individual requirements of each school. For schools with limited space, a single unit KitchenPod is ideal, whereas I’ve also worked with several schools to supply larger, open-plan KitchenPods. KitchenPods can be connected to existing school buildings, or can be stand-alone facilities if preferred.
  
  
• KitchenPods are built off-site and delivered on one of our lorries all ready to put into position and connect to services. This means they can be up and running within just a few hours of delivery. Many clients have expressed concerns about disruption on site. We can arrange delivery to schools during the holidays or at weekends – problem solved!
  
  
• Our KitchenPods are the ultimate, flexible kitchen option. Not all schools are the same, so choices include the size of the KitchenPod and the catering equipment installed inside. We also offer a huge range of external finishes. For schools wanting their KitchenPods to blend in with existing buildings, we offer various brick-slip finishes as well as painted exterior options with any colour from the RAL spectrum. For schools who would like their KitchenPod to be a real feature, we can also offer stunning wood cladding options or custom-designed vinyl wraps.
  
  
• Although KitchenPods are permanent buildings, their modular construction enables them be relocated if the school’s needs change over time, providing a much greater degree of flexibility over traditional builds.

I hope the info is useful and helps answer some of the questions you may have about modular kitchen buildings. Please feel free to get in touch if you’d like a chat about how a PKL KitchenPod could help your school.

Finally, I wish you a fantastic day if your school is taking part in this year’s International School Meals Day - I’m sure it will be a huge success, and I know that a lot of hard work has gone on behind the scenes to make it all happen. With any luck, facilities like our KitchenPods will be able to help even more schools be able to take part next year, and help grow school meal uptake in the UK even more.

PKL wins Educatering Innovation Award

PKL are delighted to announce that we have won the Innovation Award at the 2011 Educatering Excellence Awards last night, for our joint work with Flourish.

PKL and Northamptonshire County Council (Flourish) worked together to enable 225 schools to provide hot meals for their pupils. The schools involved in the project had inadequate kitchen space, and in many cases, no kitchen facilities at all. To provide a solution, PKL and Flourish developed a range of specially designed modular kitchen solutions, which would provide these schools with instant hot cook kitchen facilities in a permanent kitchen building. The product was based on PKL’s existing KitchenPods (themselves a recent innovation to the marketplace), which were then developed to suit the needs of the schools in Northamptonshire.

Working together, PKL and Flourish developed three standard sizes of KitchenPod, specifically for the schools, with three separate internal equipment designs capable of providing anywhere between 75 and 150 hot meals in a single sitting.

During the design and build of the KitchenPods, PKL and Flourish came up with a number of innovative ideas and solutions, including a range of external finishes, including wood cladding and brick slip, which allowed the pods to be matched to existing school buildings, or individually designed. A contract rental solution was also created, whereby all service and maintenance of the pods and equipment was included, providing schools with the peace of mind of having a known fixed cost.

As the construction and fitting out of units took place off site, it caused minimal disruption to the schools, as the only work required onsite was the ground and services preparation. This meant that the fully equipped kitchen unit could be delivered to site on a lorry, craned into position and connected to services within half a day. Due to the short installation times of the KitchenPods, PKL and Flourish were able to undertake the vast majority of the kitchen installations over the summer holidays, causing little if no disruption to each school.

Although a permanent solution, KitchenPods are fully re-locatable so if the needs of a school change in the future, or if there is ever a requirement to extend school buildings over the current kitchen location, it can easily be moved. In addition, as the kitchen is a modular building, it can easily be extended by adding more units to it, should there be a need to significantly increase catering capacity over time.

The Innovation Award was collected by Lee Vines, Sales and Marketing Director, who said “We pride ourselves on our innovative approach and can-do attitude, so we are delighted to have received this award for our work with Flourish on the school KitchenPods”.