Educaterers’ business award nomination
Educaterers, our school catering Local Authority Traded Company, has been shortlisted for Business of the Year at this year’s Lead Association for Catering in Education (LACA) Awards.
The LACA Business of the Year award recognises catering teams or organisation that have made an outstanding contribution to catering for schools in their local area. The awards ceremony takes place on 11 July.
Educaterers was the first local authority service in Warwickshire to be set up to run as a Local Authority Traded Company, around 18 months ago, having formerly been Warwickshire County Caterers.
County Caterers were being confronted with dramatic changes as a result of more schools becoming academies and the commercial competition that accompanied this.
It was apparent that our school catering business model would have to change to reflect the changes taking place.
Setting up our school catering arm as a Local Authority Trading Company would enable the organisation to act in a more commercial way in terms of creating new income, as well as greater freedom to compete for the contracts they might want to go after.
And so Educaterers was established. Many of Warwickshire County Caterers existing 700 workforce became Educaterers’ employees and the company has been focused on making sure that staff are given recognition for good work.
Educaterers has turned over £10.5 million in its first full year of operation in 2018 and, to date, it has managed to secure £2 million worth of new contracts, including two from outside the county council’s catchment area in Oxford and Birmingham. It provides some 125,000 school meals a week.
The first 18 months of Educaterers’ operation have also seen three centres of excellence at three individual schools established, in a secondary, junior and infant school, to further improve the cookery skills of Educaterers’ staff.
This allows Educaterers to train both new and existing employees, as well as test-drive new ideas in service and menu development.
Over 75% of what Educaterers put on school dinner plates is homemade and that requires giving staff a greater set of skills. The centres of excellence are enabling Educaterers to showcase what they can do.
Brand development has also been an important part of the company’s growth, including the overarching Educaterers ‘Food Story’ (which can be seen on their website www.educaterers.co.uk).
A ‘Nutrigang’ cast of cartoon characters has been launched for nursery and primary schools (“On a mission for nutrition!”) and the ‘Meet and Eat’ brand for secondary schools and sixth forms, where catering reflects high streets trends and provides healthy eating on the go.
There was a 30% increase in sales in one of the first schools in which ‘Meet and Eat’ was trialled.
Most recently, the ‘GoGo Chicken’ brand has been developed with one of Educaterers’ main suppliers for the ‘inbetweenie’ junior school market, to promote hot chicken and salad wraps.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Educaterers will get the recognition it deserves at the LACA awards and brings home the Business of the Year award to Warwickshire!