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20% increase in food, and other costs including staff and energy are placing a significant strain on catering firms working within the education sector. It’s feared that by September catering firms will be forced to pull out of contracts before the start of the next academic year. Catering firms have warned that school children will be served “poorer quality meals” as businesses look for affordable alternatives.
The 7p uplift in funding for Universal Infant School Meals (UIFSM) was described as “just not enough” by campaigners. In a statement Jacquie Blake, chairman of LACA, described the increase from £2.34 to £2.41 : “Whilst all increases to funding for UIFSM are welcome, caterers are experiencing average food price increases of 20% which is likely to get worse in the coming months. Today’s increase of 2.9% is therefore inadequate.”
The education sector is being hit hard, and headteachers have previously had to replace hot meals with sandwiches due to the cost of living crisis. This continues to underline the broader issues faced in the UK in the wake of the Global Food Crisis.
Procurement teams can support the catering provision by managing their supply chain and risk management. Public food procurement impacts 24% of the English population and is an important leveller to promote healthy, sustainable food systems whilst 40% of catering is managed by local authorities with the remaining 20% managed in-house and 40% managed by outsourced private sector caterers.
By utilising local suppliers, procurement teams can ensure their food purchases are locally sourced and suitable route mapping is in place to reduce food milage and reduce food provenance where some wholesalers may purchase aboard. Several questions to ask suppliers to ensure they meet this standard could include;
- How do you implement quality assurance systems internally and throughout each stage of the supply chain?
- How is quality continuously reviewed and improved?
- How do you evaluate your suppliers during sourcing, and post contract, manage, monitored and review?
- How is food quality continuously reviewed and improved?
- How do you work with supply chains to ensure that your products are sourced sustainably, avoiding issues such as modern slavery and deforestation?
- How do you provide provenance/supply chain mapping of your supply chain to demonstrate reduced carbon footprint and targets towards Net Zero?
- What actions are you taking to reduce your environmental impact and annual reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases?
School meals are important as for some children, it’s their only hot meal of the day. As the UK Poverty 2022 report states: More than 1 in 5 of our population (22%) are in poverty in our country – 14.5 million people. Of these, 8.1 million are working-age adults, 4.3 million are children and 2.1 million are pensioners
Our procurement team have recently worked with a North East based academy to deliver an outsourced catering service. The partnership is committed to ensuring meals assist the Academy to achieve its vision of Outstanding Education as well as the outcomes of the government’s Every Child Matters initiative. This aims to provide all children the support they need to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy, and achieve, make a positive contribution, and continue developing throughout their school years.
In addition to providing healthy, balanced meals the focus is on providing curriculum linked support and continued efforts on reducing the environmental impact of the service. Local fresh and cooked meats are delivered by local North East wholesalers who have been selected based on a number of criteria that also included environmental and social impact to deliver the service.
