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Fleet based contract caterer, Pabulum is celebrating after achieving the Soil Association’s highest Food For Life Catering mark Gold standard. Pabulum Catering solely provides school meals within a 125 mile radius of Fleet to ensure it is fully able to provide local children with the highest quality and freshest meals.

One of the main requirements for Food for Life Gold is 75% homemade food; Pabulum achieved 94% fresh food to achieve the accolade. Pabulum does not use frozen meat and has a 19% food spend on organic food. Continuous training is provided by Food for Life Champion, Richard Tiley and Fleet based Executive Chef Jack Sykes. They worked very closely with a cluster of five Primary Schools, serving over 2000 pupils, to make changes to procurement and supply chain management. This was to ensure correct traceability with British Premium Meats and Coastline.

Nelson Williams, managing director, Pabulum Catering commented on these findings “We put a huge emphasis on fresh food and provenance so it was fantastic to see all the hard work from our head office team and individual schools being recognised. Local sourcing is something that’s very important to us, which is the main reason we only provide school meals within the local area. Whilst we’re proud of what we’ve achieved, we’re not stopping there and are continuously looking for new ways to improve and drive up school food standards for the local community.”

Richard Tiley, Food for Life Champion at Pabulum commented “There has been a huge amount of work done behind the scenes at Pabulum to source fresh food and this is the driving force behind all our meals and menu planning. We believe pupils deserve the highest quality food at break time and lunchtime to give them the right energy to concentrate better in their afternoon lessons. Our development chefs work very closely with clusters and individual schools to source ingredients locally and so we were delighted this work was recognised by the Food for Life team.”

To mark the achievement and continue its commitment to food education the school catering company has teamed up with YouGov to complete a survey on the UK’s misunderstood food terms. The respondents gave a big thumbs up for school meals with just over 7 in 10 (71% of those respondents) saying they would prefer their child to have a school meal that had a good selection of menu items that are prepared from mainly fresh ingredients that will help the child be more attentive in class. Just 19% said they would prefer to send them with a packed lunch so they know they have something they will eat.
Nelson added “It was really refreshing to see the percentage of parents backing school meals at a time when many children are trying them for the first time with the introduction of Universal Infant Free School meals. A recent study from the School Food Plan highlighted that school meals provide 25% to 33% of a child’s nutrition needs for a day so it’s vital parents are seeing school meals as the first choice. We’ve worked hard to create awareness with parents on our fresh ingredients and how we opt for quality ingredients.”

For further information including more research findings and/or an exclusive quote or interview with Pabulum please contact Fran Weeks via fran@digitalblondemarketing.com or call 07876 365427

Note:

- Schools that have achieved Gold Food for Life status have to achieve the following:-; meet the Gold Food for Life Catering Mark which shows the food served is healthy, ethical, uses lots of local ingredients and is animal and climate friendly, including a minimum of 15% organic and 5% free range; have more than 60% of their pupils choosing to eat a school meal; are actively involved in the life of a local farm and active in planning and growing organic food for the school.

- Pabulum has also been awarded the following accreditations: Fairtrade, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, Red Tractor, CHAS, MSC Award, Good Egg Award, MSC, CIEH Accredited Training Centre.

- Pabulum is the school caterer for Calthorpe Park and recently retained the contract for 4 years after fierce competition.

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,040 adults of which 736 were parents or grandparents of school age children. Fieldwork was undertaken between 14th - 15th October 2014. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all UK adults (aged 18+).