SCHOOL COMMUNITY FOCUS

Libelle is a nutrition focused food service provider, with a high focus on the school community. Founder and Executive Director reflects on 2022 and shares his perspective looking forward to the new year in school catering.

progress that was. Then, when the later Key Government rolled it all back, but nutritional standards stayed, driving school expectations of our Champion Tuck Shops.

This quality push from principals helped us engage students directly, in our ongoing menu and recipe R&D. Together, we developed the EAT SMART menu, we currently deliver over 20 menus at any given time, all delivering optimal nutritional payload, in-school.

• Staff

• Contracts and payroll

• Stocking and supply chain management

• Cost Control, auditing and reporting

• Consistency

• Service styles and speed

• Student experience and faculty engagement

• Menu development rotation and refresh

• Meeting nutrition guidelines in every meal, every week and whole term to students

“Reviewing 2022, I wonder, has there been a bigger year in school catering and nutrition in Aotearoa?

I’m coming up on 20 years since my wife Rochelle and I opened our first tuck shop, and I haven’t seen a more momentous year.

We, as a sector, are now enjoying the fruit (excuse the chef pun) of decades of work on school nutrition.

I think back to 2006, working with the Clark Government setting up the F&B Classification Guidelines for school canteens and kitchens. The huge change and

The school nutrition world changed in 2020 and Ka Ora Ka Ako (KOKA) arrived, a chance to feed hungry learners at a scale we had only dreamt of. Principal and school expectations we were embedded in, with Champion Tuck Shops collaboration, had set us up to contribute. We are just one provider, serving regions from the remotes of Northland, to New Zealand’s largest cities, making up over 30,000 students.

Reviewing 2022 we see a maturing programme and the chance to assess our achievements. For a supplier at scale like Libelle, to a single in-school operator, consider just how much work is involved in providing meals;

• Cleanliness

• Food safety

• Packaging, waste minimisation and sustainability

Every participating school can look at the scale of what KOKA is achieving and feel proud. The success of getting a programme of this magnitude up and running, feeding Tamariki, hungry learners at school, at mass scale is sensational!

Is the programme working?

Is it having the desired outcomes? Absolutely!

Can it be improved? Are there efficiencies that could optimise the nutritional payload to the student customer and the social impact? Most definitely!

The Select Committee report into attendance put a spotlight onto the programme, a source for celebration and for renewed rigour in 2023.

The Committee requested data on the impact of consistently feeding hungry learners nutritious meals - how it impacts engagement, learning, behaviour and attendance? How do they then measure its value and effectiveness?

We are fascinated in these questions and are asking a few more ourselves:

• What is optimal nutrition for kiwi kids?

• What are the health needs nutrition can address?

• How does it vary by environment and region?

• How to achieve sustainability?

• Are we utilising data for all of sector success.