City Catering to support thousands of children eligible for free school meals during the summer holidays

As summer is well underway, City Catering Southampton have been busier than ever in support of holiday provision for families over the summer holidays. This summer City Catering have approximately 16,000 School Food Plan and Food for Life Bronze awarded hot meals to be served. City Catering will act as one of key stakeholders in the Holiday Activities and Food Programme (HAF) programme supporting thousands of children eligible for free school meals in Southampton through Southampton City Council funding.

The HAF programme has provided healthy food and enriching activities to disadvantaged children since 2018 in Southampton. The funding enables City Catering to continue the project during the summer holidays.

City Catering will be supporting families this summer through their Lunch Crowd initiative. The Lunch Crowd initiative works in collaboration with activity partners by opening school kitchens at free-to-attend holiday clubs, to serve free, hot nutritious lunches to families.

The Lunch Crowd project is bigger than ever before in response to central Government funding via the Holidays, Activity and Food Fund.

The programme will be supporting active partner’s holiday activity clubs such as The Saints Foundation, Super Star Sports, Active Me 360 and supporting member schools, Fairisle Junior, Holy Family, and Thornhill.

Charitable Impact Manager Jessica Clasby-Monk who spear-headed the initiative spoke of her delight:

“As a charity, we have been running our Lunch Crowd initiative since 2016 - something we are very proud of. The funding this year is so very welcome to ensure that, across England, children eligible for Free School Meals, can not only access good food, but enjoyable and enriching activities too. We have working closely with partners over the recent months, and are so proud of all of our teams getting involved and cooking fantastic meals for the community".

Karla, from one of our production kitchens saying hello!

Louise, Catherine and Emily from one of our Lunch Crowd production kitchens on day 1 of serving

Sharon, dishing up meals ready for transport to HAF funded clubs in the city

Children will get the chance to give us their feedback on the summer's menu

Iris, ready to serve at Holy Family' Super Star Sports club

In addition, many of the meals served this summer will feature on City Catering’s Cooking at Home programme, and children will be able to take recipe cards home to explore healthy home cooking with their families. Every child will also be able to provide feedback, and rate their meals to make sure their voices are heard in shaping future initiatives.