School Kitchen is a new takeaway food model which aims to support local communities, provide great tasting food from around the world and prioritise sustainability. By partnering with local schools, School Kitchen uses their kitchens when the schools aren’t using them and runs home delivery takeaway restaurants from them.
Produce from the kitchen garden will be used by both School Kitchen for its four restaurants as well as by pupils for school cookery classes to show them where food comes from, with any surplus going to parents in need. The garden will grow broccoli, onions, potatoes, chillies, basil, courgettes, spinach, lettuce, and other crops.
Nial Moran, commis chef at School Kitchen, is the main onsite gardener and has been joined by a landscape gardener Tom Brown to set up the growing space. School Kitchen and the pupils of Carr Junior School will be able to use the produce as soon as it has grown and is ready to eat.
Sustainability is another key aim, with the initiative installing solar panels at partner schools to generate electricity, as well as using bikes or electric mopeds for all deliveries. School Kitchen are also sending out compostable bags with every order, into which customers can put the biodegradable packaging.
David Nicholson, managing director of School Kitchen, said: “We came up with the idea of setting up a kitchen garden during the tasting session for Pirivena, the Sri Lankan restaurant, back in February. The menu includes a Seasonal Vegetable Kari, so we were discussing how to get fresh seasonal vegetables and Neil Meyer, head of operations suggested setting up a kitchen garden on a piece of land by the kitchen that the school wasn't using.
“It was clearly a great idea – not only would we have the freshest possible ingredients to put in our dishes, but we’d be able to teach the pupils at the school about growing food, tying in nicely with the cookery lessons we’re running for them. It turned out that Nial was an avid gardener and was keen to develop his gardening skills, so we asked Vicki Kerr, headteacher. She loved the idea.”
The community-focused initiative will also be providing apprenticeship jobs for school leavers, with the purpose of offering opportunities to the next generation. All of School Kitchen’s employees, from chefs to delivery riders, are being paid at least the current living wage of £12 per hour.