Warwickshire-based school caterers, Educaterers, and Warwickshire County Council have cooked up a recipe for success on social media by sharing the secrets to making some of their most popular scho...
Warwickshire-based school caterers, Educaterers, and Warwickshire County Council have cooked up a recipe for success on social media by sharing the secrets to making some of their most popular school lunches!
Meanwhile, dedicated Educaterers employees have continued to serve up nutritious meals to the children of key workers and vulnerable children who have been attending school - as well as the school staff caring for them - in over 125 schools since the closures were announced on 20th March.
The school caterers have also been providing lunches for children who are not currently in school but are eligible for free school meals. To date, they have served up over 22,700 school meals during lockdown, with Educaterers employees working in the schools that were open on Good Friday and Easter Monday.
This week, the Educaterers catering team at The Canons CE Primary School in Bedworth even put on special VE Day lunch for pupils.
Recognising that the many children remaining at home during lockdown were missing their usual school lunches, however, the County Council and Educaterers have been sharing a ‘recipe a day’ on the Council’s social media channels – and there has been a real appetite for them.
They started by sharing the recipes that feature in the Educaterers Recipe Book, which was developed last year to help pupils and their families to re-create some of the school meals they enjoy at home and to encourage healthy eating. You can download it at https://educaterers.co.uk/downloads/educaterers-recipe-book.pdf.
The online recipes have proved so popular with parents - with families sharing photographs of what they have cooked at home on social media - that Educaterers are now publishing even more of their recipes in response to special requests!
Far and away the most popular recipe so far has been that for Chocolate Cracknell – described as a ‘legendary’ school lunch treat for anyone that went to school in Warwickshire – with the recipe post already reaching over 54,000 people via Warwickshire County Council’s Facebook page after being viewed thousands of times and shared by hundreds.
The Educaterers recipe posts have even been shared by a national government Minister - and one tweet sharing the recipe campaign tagged the Education Secretary and the Prime Minister himself!
One parent commented “It is very cool. I’m glad they are doing it as lots of kids miss school and the lunches and puddings”.
Other popular shared recipes have included Sausage Rolls with a Twist, Up-Beet Chocolate Muffins, Rainbow Cupcakes and Tuna Pasta Bake – with many more to come.
Managing Director of Educaterers, Terry Tredget, said: “Our dedicated staff continue to pull out all the stops to give those children who are attending school at the moment – who may be vulnerable or have parents who are key workers – a really great school lunch experience, and they have made sure that children at home who are eligible for free meals and have requested them have received lunches too.
“I think what our team at The Canons CE Primary School has done this week, with their special VE Day lunch, is an example of how committed our staff are and just how much they care about the pupils, even in these extraordinary circumstances.
“On top of this, we have been blown away by the interest in our school lunch recipes on social media. Parents at home with their children right now are looking for something positive and fun that they can do with their kids - and lots of them are obviously missing their regular school dinners.
“It’s been lovely to see the photographs that people have been sending in of what they have made at home and it’s just great that children, via their parents, are requesting the recipes for specific meals from the Educaterers menu.
“There are a few treats, like Chocolate Cracknell, but it’s good to see that the healthy, nutritious meals that make up the majority of our school menus – like Tuna Pasta Bake, Organic Pork Meatballs and Burrito Stack – are also getting requested too.”
Follow Warwickshire County Council on Facebook (www.facebook.com/WarwickshireCountyCouncil) and Twitter (@warwickshire_cc) with the hashtag #Educaterers to get the daily recipes.
Educaterers normally serve up over 120,000 nutritious tasty meals a week in over 200 schools and colleges in Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Birmingham and Oxfordshire.
For more information on Educaterers, visit www.educaterers.co.uk.