Our charity provides 1,531 grocery boxes to local families this Christmas, in partnership with Bidfood, Harvest Fine Foods Ltd & Comax UK.
We have been running our community food project for 4 years now, providing free grocery boxes to vulnerable families, via our member school network. It’s been a huge success and the families in receipt of the Cooking at Home grocery boxes are extremely grateful.
The grocery boxes have been co-funded by City Catering Southampton, Bidfood and Comax UK. Harvest Fine Foods Ltd continues to support our initiative by once again packing and delivering all 1,531 boxes. Each box contains enough ingredients to make 16 meals, so more than 25,000 meals are provided. The support of our suppliers made it possible for us to help local families, this Christmas.
Harvest Fine Foods are delivering the first batch of grocery boxes on 16th December 2024 to Southampton schools, mainly where City Catering operate but on occasion if funding allows, to other school locations as well. The schools then arrange for them to be distributed to families, ready for the Christmas holiday.
According to the Food Foundation tracker, 15% of UK households, the equivalent to approximately 8 million adults and 3 million children, experienced food insecurity this January. The stats are shocking to read and many families are relying more and more on food banks and community kitchens.
“Our Cooking at Home project is extremely close to our hearts at City Catering Southampton. We want to help tackle food insecurity and know many families are feeling the pinch this Christmas. The rise in food and energy costs are forcing families to make impossible decisions between switching the heating on or buying food. It’s distressing to think of families going hungry, especially at Christmas - we want to do everything we can to help.”
Our charity support families during the school holidays that would usually be entitled to Free School Meals. These are vulnerable families on reduced income. We continue to raise awareness of Universal Infant Free School Meals to parents, as many don’t realise that all children in Year R, Year 1, and Year 2, are automatically entitled to free school meals.
We provide nutritious school meals to over 40 Southampton schools. The Food Development Team at City Catering get their inspiration for the Cooking at Home recipes, from our school menu. The Butternut Squash Macaroni Cheese is loved by many school children and is one of six recipes, in the Cooking at Home Christmas boxes.
The remaining five recipes are Homemade Tortillas, French Toast with Fresh Fruit, Christmas Biscuits, Build your own Veggie & Bean Fajitas and Butternut Squash & Sweetcorn Cakes.
The boxes come with a recipe card for each main or baked treat. We also create, easy to follow recipe videos, for families to watch. Our aim is to make the cooking process fun, easy, and stress-free, which is why they provide the visual aids. It gives parents or guardians the confidence to cook something they’ve never tried before, the children can get involved and they can taste the end product together.