Bon appétit, Jerry Brand

Schools Bon appétit!

But if you can’t read the small print stay out of the kitchen

The Jamie’s School Dinners series was a TV campaign that achieved a very positive public response. School dinners have not always had a good culinary reputation and food is something that almost everyone is interested in. Since one of the most important things that schools teach is how to get along with other people, eating together should be high on the life skills curriculum.

Just as it is said that ‘the family that eats together stays together’, so schools can reckon that what happens when and where the pupils eat is significant and important. Independent boarding schools traditionally valued house feeding very highly as it gave the housemaster or housemistress, the matron and the members of the house themselves a very accurate guide as to how things were going individually and collectively. Bursars have largely put a stop to this civilized practice, but central feeding does allow a far wider range of meals to be served to the choosier contemporary clientele.

What happens in the dining hall or canteen is still important in terms of a good education, one that encourages pupils to share and enjoy ‘down’ time together and even to become aware of the skills and enthusiasms of the catering staff. Gone are the days when a prep school matron could distribute the breakfast cornflakes by the bare fistful from the giant communal vessel to the individual bowls of the pupils as they passed before her.

Schools now have free-standing counters where food is cooked on demand, most have salad options and all have vegetarian provision. The concept of unappealing and sometimes positively indigestible school food is an increasingly outdated trope that gave rise to a Japanese Rock group called School Food Punishment which flourished from 2004 to 2012. But even their debut album proclaimed that ‘school food is good food’! Jamie Oliver disagreed and school dinners became, for better or worse, a cause célèbre.

Food provided in schools is often brought in and not prepared on the spot, and that approach is now, of course, a huge slice of the food industry. Take-away lunches and ready-made meals are part of the staple diet of individuals and households, providing supposedly ‘world’ cuisine and a riot of mouth-watering copy promoting every package. People have also become thoroughly accustomed to labels providing detailed information about what is and is not inside the packet and how many calories can be counted.

Just as eating habits have changed over the last 20 years, so have eating problems, and all those concerned with making, supplying and endorsing what people eat have to take immense care in the preparation of food, in maintaining the highest standards of cleanliness and in the avoidance of allergens.

How does this affect the major catering companies? Jerry Brand explains.

This is a very topical question right now, particularly as we are more than a year on from the date when the new allergens legislation came into force in December 2014. There has been much debate and hysteria this year around the impact that these new laws are having on the catering and supplier industry in terms of daily management and the consequent impact that this is having on resource.

We’ve seen celebrity chefs signing petitions regarding the suggestion that the new legislation is hampering innovation and chef creativity, and we also uncovered some interesting statistics ourselves in a recent independent survey we commissioned across the catering sector. We asked how managers are coping and adapting and found that a whopping 98% admit to having concerns about managing the new legislation.

We also found that almost one third of catering managers said that one of their biggest concerns is that staff may give out incorrect allergens information to customers which could result in serious consequences. This was matched by a further third who say their main current concern is keeping on top of allergens advice on a daily basis.

Making mistakes and being fined is another concern for 25% of businesses and ensuring that suppliers provide the correct information on allergens is also a worry for 11%. Only 2% were able to say confidently that they don’t have any concerns at all regarding how these regulations are managed moving forward, which shows how much uncertainty there is in the sector.

At one level, school catering teams, suppliers and manufacturers are having to adapt to the changes unless they want to face some pretty hefty fines. Last year it was all about getting ready for the impending deadline; now it’s about keeping your head above the water and your eye on a rising tide of information and requirements. Ensuring that people get the correct allergens information is vital and can be literally a matter of life and death, so it’s understandable that this is

“What do you mean, allergens?”

a concern for many servicing the education catering sector, especially those who manage their catering services in-house.

Equally, keeping on top of allergen advice daily can be a huge drain on resource and this is where the real ongoing worries lie for catering teams and their suppliers. But having the right processes and plans in place in the first instance is a good starting point.

School catering teams need to start to build a bank of recipes on their systems and to keep an allergen directory that contains all the necessary information easily to hand for any pupils who wish to know. Creating peace of mind through initial compliance will ensure that creativity and innovation is allowed to thrive in the school kitchen, but in a sensible and controlled way that is safe for the consumer.

Benefiting from the intervention of fit-for-purpose technology will also clarify the detail involved in managing allergens legislation and reduce the time that takes on a daily basis. Thankfully, technology has progressed to a point where it is now entirely possible for schools to manage the burden of these new regulations without having a direct impact on the catering team in terms of the level of the time and resource needed to find a way through existing requirements and to keep on top of any future changes.

Schools can also keep costs down by using a technology system that incorporates live supplier pricing and online eProcurement. That way, the product updates, recipe and stock costing is all automatic. The key is to recognise the impact that allergens legislation will have on your school, deal with it and then plan around it.

Jerry Brand is the managing director of Caternet (www.caternet.co.uk).

Source: Independent research conducted by Censuswide Ltd and commissioned by Caternet Ltd.