New Catering Arrangements

12 Oct New Catering Arrangements

As you will be aware, JRCS has engaged a new catering company to work with the school. This has been a major change, both for the catering team, the students and staff and, no doubt you at home too. We wanted to take a moment to thank you for your patience as we develop new systems to ensure both the food quality, service time and costings are improved.

Some of the issues we have dealt with so far have not been a result of the new caterers (Aspens) but due to the re-structuring of the physical space and changes to queueing systems.  The school has now grown to 10 form entry and next year will see us reach our full capacity with 300 students in each year group.  This means that catering spaces are limited and we’ve had to work creatively with the new caterers to meet the needs of an ever hungry student body; including the introduction of mobile service units and investment in a new till system.

As with any restructuring there have been some issues around pricing and charging, this is in part due to a completely new biometric till system which we needed to populate from scratch. There have also been difficulties which has, in some cases, led to students spending more money as they get used to the new food menu and meal deals available.  We apologise if this has caused financial distress at home.  Please be assured that I have personally investigated all these issues and will continue to do so until I am happy that they have been resolved.

We now have menus that will run until Christmas; these will be published on the school website by the end of this half term and then updated every half term to reflect seasonal produce. Please remember you can set a daily spending limit for your son or daughter, please contact the main school office to set this up.  We have waited until now to give you this information as we wanted to speak to students about their initial experience and allow Aspens to test a range of different food offers to see what works best.  We now have this information and data and will be making some changes over the next half term.

We are also looking to produce more freshly baked goods on site which will reduce the current reliance on ordered baked goods and will further reduce the prices.  We are also reviewing the feedback process for parents so you can have some direct contact with the caterers and have an input into the menu offered here at JRCS.

So you are aware:

• The menu of the day and pricing is displayed and the actual meal is presented so that the students’ can see exactly what the meal deal is.
• Free School Meal students should always use the Meal Deal to get value for money for the funds provided as the allowance is not carried over to the next day.
• Student Voice – after the election of the Hospitality Team in the student council elections we will take student voice feedback from the student body and meet with the Aspens management team to make reasonable changes to the provision.

Mr Donovan

Assistant Headteacher