School Catering in Buckinghamshire
School Catering in Buckinghamshire
At AiP, we offer freshly prepared and healthy catering for schools in Buckinghamshire. Our on-site and off-site services bring lunchtime to life with bespoke menus featuring tasty, locally sourced, and balanced school meals.
Nutrition and Safety Standards Assured
We deliver the highest nutritional and safety standards for school catering. Our food development team collaborates with expert nutritionists and top chefs to curate tried and tested recipes. A rigorous process from the kitchen to the plate, ensures every meal is superior in nutrition and flavour. We take allergen management seriously, and our stringent approach ensures that all students can enjoy food safely.
Food to make students smile
Founded over 20 years ago and operating in over 400 educational institutions, we’re the experts in school catering. Our local-first approach delivers innovative menus full of tried and tested recipes that support pupil happiness and wellbeing.
Food Smart
Built for primary school pupils, Food Smart is about having fun with food, investing in dining spaces, and offering engaging menus.
Kitcheneers
Retail-focused, our secondary school offering is a fresh approach to health and wellbeing with our health by stealth programme.
The Forum
Food Smart
Built for primary school pupils, Food Smart is about having fun with food, investing in dining spaces, and offering engaging menus.
The Kitcheneers
The Forum
Sustainability initiatives
Sourcing our ingredients locally, we save food miles while retaining peak freshness. Our menus incorporate in-season produce. With free-range eggs, British Red Tractor-certified meat and MSC-certified fish, we choose ethical and sustainable suppliers. We’re committed to carbon neutrality by 2025 and reducing 90% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 with targets vetted by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). We’re constantly seeking new ways to promote healthy eating and our chef-led workshops engage children throughout the academic year.
Sustainability initiatives
Sourcing our ingredients locally, we save food miles while retaining peak freshness. Our menus incorporate in-season produce. With free-range eggs, British Red Tractor-certified meat and MSC-certified fish, we choose ethical and sustainable suppliers. We’re committed to carbon neutrality by 2025 and reducing 90% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 with targets vetted by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). We’re constantly seeking new ways to promote healthy eating and our chef-led workshops engage children throughout the academic year.
Allergen management
Our teams work with schools to accurately identify children with special dietary needs with vegetarian/vegan options and halal meat. We’ve made meal pre-ordering easy with School Food United, our online system for parents to safely and conveniently order school meals for primary school children.
Food safety and nutritional standards
At AiP, our chefs train from the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF), which enables us to continually enhance the nutritional value of our school meals. Our ISO accreditations include ISO 14001: 2015, ISO 9901: 2015 and ISO 45001: 2018.
Our child-friendly menus feature freshly made meals adapted to each age group, promoting balanced nutrition that surpasses School Food Standards and that are compliant with the School Food Plan. AiP aims to consistently raise nutritional benchmarks in Buckinghamshire schools through our catering services.
Awards and accreditations
We’re proud to hold many awards and accreditations that speak to our high standards for safety and sustainability
Why work with Us?
Producing delicious freshly cooked meals
Providing a fun environment for the pupils
Delivering a packed schedule of theme events
Employing happy friendly smiling staff
Offering a range of special offers
Introducing gardening and cookery clubs
Facilitating competitions, prizes and rewards
Inviting parents in for lunch
Working in partnership with the school
A friendly and open management style
Nutritionally-Balanced Student Meals for Schools in Buckinghamshire
Our healthy, flavourful and sustainable school catering in Buckinghamshire, helps children reach their full potential.
AiP aims to foster healthy eating habits in every child through our meal plans that are delicious and freshly made. Food safety and allergy management are paramount in our operations, guaranteeing pupil well-being across schools.
We partner with local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) mindfully to ensure we source sustainably and support local economies and communities. Using seasonal ingredients, we rotate our menus to bring variety and the best of British produce to school children.
Shorter supply chains and sustainable farming practices help lower greenhouse gas emissions in our food system. We use WasteWatch technology to capture real-time data, helping kitchen teams find inefficiencies and make positive changes.
We are currently bronze-certified by Food for Life and continuously evolving our school catering solutions to ensure that each school benefits from our food philosophy.
What food safety standards are followed by AiP?
- We have the following ISO accreditation : ISO 14001: 2015, ISO 9901: 2015, ISO 45001: 2018.
How does AiP address allergen management?
- Any child with a dietary requirement complete our special diets form. The kitchen team and the school agree a plan to identify these children as they come into the dining hall at service.
- The form is then given to the kitchen and our nutrition team. Together, they create the information needed for safe meals. In the instance of allergy or intolerances, they will create a menu with at least 2 daily options (in most instances) from which the parent/carer and pupil can choose their meals.
- Once the parent has chosen the meals, the kitchen prepares the chosen items and holds them separately, labelled with the pupil’s name and allergen. This is then served to the pupil as they come into the dining hall with separate utensils and plates.
Does AiP accommodate special dietary needs for primary school students?
Does AiP accommodate special dietary needs for secondary school students?
What Certifications do you hold to certify menu quality and sourcing?
- Food For Life Bronze
- MSC licence
- All meat used is British Red Tractor Certified
Key considerations to take onboard when selecting a caterer for schools?
- What is your number one requirement from a school meal provider?
- Only supplies Education Catering. All of our insight, research, and development is focussed on providing freshly prepared, healthy, and tasty meals to schools, using the School Food Plan and Public Health information as our starting point.
- Can you meet the needs of our diverse school population?
- At AiP, we know that one menu doesn’t fit all schools. We offer a selector style menu so that you can tailor the menu to your needs.
- Queues are a big problem at our school, we need to minimise wait times and get children eating within our timetable
- At AiP, we have come up with several strategies to help decrease waiting times such as sign posting along the queue so that students know what is on offer before they arrive, pre-ordering so that meals are ready when they arrive, direct marketing to parents and students so they’re aware of what’s on offer before they arrive, and opening multiple servery points to split traffic. In addition, our primary school pre payment solution, School Food United, allows parents to pre order via the app to help improve speed.
Do you cater for different types of dietary preferences?
- Yes, we offer at least 2 vegetarian options each day.
- We strive to make our vegetarian options vegan friendly as well. We do offer at least one vegan option each day.
- We participate in Meat Free Mondays.
- All of our dessert options are vegetarian. Some of them are also vegan friendly.
- We do not use pork gelatine in any of our desserts.
- We can offer Halal meat if requested by the school.