A new food-to-go enterprise is dishing up meals from school kitchens in a project bringing additional funding directly to schools.
School Kitchen uses existing cooking facilities inside the host schools on weekday evenings and weekends to prepare and serve meals for the public.
Following a revenue-sharing initiative, money goes directly into the pocket of the host school, which can be spent on costs such as staffing, school meals, infrastructure and other projects.
Diners can place orders across four different menus including Mexican, Thai, Sri Lankan and Spanish in one single order via the School Kitchen website, or order on Deliveroo and Just Eat.
“School Kitchen is a community initiative first of all,” founder and CEO David Nicholson told The Grocer.
“It is a big help for schools. Based on our projections, once we’re fully up and running we’ll be generating enough for schools to get two or three members of staff.
“And alongside the food-to-go aspect, we are providing the school’s breakfast club for kids on free school meals, and we are involved in upcoming festivals, where all proceeds will be diverted to the breakfast club and to free school dinners.”
Nicholson added: “School Kitchen is also an eco-conscious project. We only use electric vehicles to do deliveries, and we compost all packaging into our own kitchen garden, another project we are proud of.”
The business opened its first branch in Carr Junior School in York, and has plans to quickly expand throughout the north, with a central kitchen planned along the M26 and further schools set to join in Leeds and Sheffield.
“I’d worked in food retail for many years, and I was increasingly feeling that the big corporations I worked for had lost their connection with their customers and the communities they were based in,” said Nicholson.
“That’s why I decided to leave and start my own socially conscious food business which prioritised customers and communities, rather than focusing exclusively on returns for shareholders.”
Earlier this month, charity School Food Matters reported four out of 10 schools in the UK are forced to dip into their own budgets to provide meals for children, due to lack of funding.
School Kitchen said it would launch cookery classes and gardening workshops for children by the end of the month.
No comments yet