From mystery meat to good food on the plate

How Bury increased their spend on organic produce for school food to 25% - and still saved money

When Andrew Cowan took over as Senior Operations Manager for Bury School Catering during Covid, he took a look at the menus and found them them sorely lacking. So he decided to completely rewrite the script. Here's his story in his own words.

Rip it up and start again

There was a lot of food on the menus that I didn’t know what it was. It was kind of like that grey mystery meat, covered in breadcrumbs.

I threw it in the bin. I said I wanted to start again. I wanted fresh produce, good food on the plate.

Naively I thought, “I’m going to write a fantastic menu.” Then I was asked, “Do you know about the School Food Standards?” I was told, “You’ve only got about 75 pence on the plate.” So I ripped it up and started again.

Getting people on board

The biggest change for us was getting people on board. We had kitchen managers who had worked here for about 30 years or more, and things had been tried and failed in the past.

We took a hands-on approach, showing them the produce, moving forward together and starting small. There was resistance - there was more prep work that needed to be done. We didn’t increase any prep time; we might have tweaked rotas, perhaps bringing somebody in a little earlier so they could leave a bit earlier. That resistance to change was probably our biggest challenge.

From opening bags to preparing fresh food

Before, there was a lot of pre-prepared, bagged produce. You were literally just opening a bag, sticking it in the combi oven or putting it in a bowl.

Now the produce comes in bulk. That’s how we’ve managed to save some money. It means washing the vegetables, making sure the kitchen managers know how to wash and prepare them, and making sure they have the knife skills. We’ve upskilled all of our kitchen teams and made sure they have the right equipment, including decent knives, so they can prepare the vegetables.

Our kitchen teams now know how to prepare food, not just open bags. They’re more hands-on with food and have that connection with it. We’re excited about it, they’re excited about it, and they can pass that knowledge on to the children and get them excited about it too.

Making organic produce affordable

We introduced organic produce into our schools, and we now have 25% organic spend. I knew we could do it. I knew it was possible, and I knew we could get local suppliers.

I did a price comparison between the non-organic produce we were getting and the organic produce we were going to get. I did it for the volumes we were using, and we saved £50,000 by doing so.

If you go to your nearest supermarket and look at organic produce, you’re getting it in a small bag. It has probably changed hands a number of times, and every time it changes hands, you get an increase in labour costs. We were going straight to the farm. That’s how we made the saving: nobody was putting their overheads on top of it.

I want good produce on the plate. If there were any issues with the organic produce, I’d send it back. But the organic produce we’re getting is exceptional. It’s next to none. Kitchen managers send me pictures saying it’s the best produce they’ve ever seen.

To other councils that think organic food is too expensive, I would say: do a price comparison. Don’t presume it is too expensive. Speak to local farmers. They want guaranteed sales and they want to sell produce.

Working with local suppliers

It’s great for the local economy, and it lets me hold my suppliers accountable. If I wasn’t getting produce, I wanted it easily available. If a delivery was missing, we still had children in school who needed to be fed. I wanted to use local suppliers so we could get that produce quickly.

It’s about food security. It’s about making sure we’ve got food in school kitchens so children are getting fed. It’s about the good-quality produce we grow in the UK; and it’s also about helping the economy.

A local supplier offers genuine passion for what they do and quality produce that isn’t mass-produced. It’s about speaking to local farmers, finding out about their produce, how they’re doing, what they’re struggling with and whether the weather has affected the crops. It’s having a real connection with food. It’s the true value of food.

We used to have a central production kitchen where all the meals were made, cooked, frozen and delivered months later. We got rid of that central production kitchen, and now we have production kitchens in our schools.

Produce comes from a local farmer, goes into Organic North, and we place our order. Organic North drops it off and it goes straight into the kitchens. Organic North doesn’t hold additional produce. It’s the same with Dunsters Farm: it comes from the farm to Dunsters, Dunsters delivers it to us, and we prepare it on site that day.

Reducing food waste and listening to children

If you’re reducing food waste, you’re saving money because it isn’t going in the bin. We started using Cool Food Pro to look at our food waste. We weighed the food waste from the plates after service, and then changed the menus based on that.

If waste is high on one day, we look at the menu and see whether that’s across the board or only in one school. Maybe that menu doesn’t suit that demographic. We assess it, and then we can change the menus.

We have meetings with the children about what they think of the food, and we create the menus around what they like. We always try new recipes, go into schools, get their opinion and see what they like. At the end of the day, if they don’t like it, we’re not going to put it on the menu.

I went into a school expecting them to say, “We like pizza.” But they said they liked spicy curries, and when I asked what they wanted to see on the menu, they wanted sushi. I said, “I don’t think we’ve got the budget for sushi.”

Healthy meals don’t need to be bland. It’s not beige; it’s delicious food. It’s about making food tasty and nutritious so children get on board with it.

What the changes mean

The children love what we’re doing. If they didn’t, they’d all be on packed lunches. If they were all on packed lunches, we wouldn’t have a service. A lot of the schools are academies now, but they’re still using us because they value what we do.

If we’re making pasta sauce, we put organic produce into it. The tomato sauce is made with organic tomatoes, celery and onions. With a Bolognese, we make sure we have organic produce in the sauce and lentils, with a 75–25 split. We test the product with the children and see whether they like it.

Giving a child a healthy, delicious meal means everything. It helps with attainment. In this day and age, there are children who come to school and have only one hot meal a day. If we can make sure they get a healthy, nutritious meal, we’re helping with attainment in school and helping with their development. That means everything.

Food on our plates and nature in our fields

I think people are starting to make the links between food on the plate and nature in the countryside. Those links were completely lost. Some children thought food came from a supermarket, rather than from a farm or from the care that has gone into it.

The big thing for us as school caterers is the education side. We work with our suppliers, we want to get children out to farms, we want to invite people in, and we look at our food miles. We’re not just giving children a meal on the plate; we’re showing the full cycle and the true value of food and where it comes from.

What comes next

I’d like children to understand the work that goes into food: from the farm, whether it’s rearing animals or taking care of the soil and growing produce; how that produce is handled; how we go through procurement and try to get the best-quality produce; how we create the menus; and the people involved in putting it on the plate.

Hopefully, the children enjoy it and think about where the food has come from, rather than dismissing it, expecting it or potentially wasting it.

We’re working with Public Health to put into policy that the Food for Life standards, particularly the Silver standard, need to be adhered to across the borough, whether a school uses Bury School Catering or not. We want that standard rolled out. That’s something we’re working towards.

I hope children inherit a healthier world: one where we’re not looking at an obesity crisis and where we can make links between food and health.

I’d like good food to be normal. If I could change one thing about the food system over the next 10 to 20 years, it would be to ensure that everybody uses local suppliers. I don’t see why we can’t use our local farmers and local suppliers and strengthen our food resilience.