Partnering with Harvest & Caterfood to provide 1,375 Cooking at Home boxes to families this Summer!
We are extremely passionate about supporting local families at risk of food poverty, during the school holidays.
We are a local charity, serving school meals throughout the city. As a charity, we exist to make a tangible nutritional difference in children’s lives, doing this through serving School Food Plan and Food for Life Served Here compliant meals in over 40 of Southampton’s schools. We currently, deliver more than 8,700 hot lunches to children every single day during term time.
Our charity advocates for access to healthy food and we are acutely aware of the challenges many children face in the school holidays, where the risk of food poverty significantly increases. As a result, we work hard to support the increasing need for holiday provision for schools in Southampton.
In 2020, we launched the Cooking at Home project to support and inspire families at risk of food insecurity to cook healthy, low cost and enjoyable meals at home. Through the Cooking at Home programme, our charity provides recipe-led grocery boxes to vulnerable families for their use in the school holidays. Since the Summer of 2020, we have distributed over 15,500 Cooking at Home boxes to Southampton families.
Although the programme has been a huge success, last year the funding support from Southampton City Council, ceased.
Calling upon the support of our suppliers, we have brought together a funding partnership to ensure that the initiative can be maintained during these current tough times. For Summer 2024 Harvest Fine Foods Ltd a Totton-based wholesale supplier to us and to many other Southampton businesses, along with Caterfood Buying Group have generously co-funded the grocery boxes. Gary McMahon, our CEO, was over the moon to hear the news and comments below:
“we are so thankful to both of our suppliers, Harvest Fine Foods and Caterfood Buying Group for agreeing to co-fund our Cooking at Home boxes this Summer. We want to take the pressure off families over the school holidays. It’s an expensive time for parents/guardians, with childcare costs, activities to keep the children entertained and the cost of feeding them and kitting them out for school can stack up too, especially children starting secondary school. This is why what we do is SO important and it must continue. Our suppliers never hesitate to say yes when we ask for their help - it is a huge team effort and I want to thank everyone for going the extra mile to make sure the Cooking at Home project is a success.”
The Cooking at Home boxes were delivered from the 17th July 2024 to school sites by our suppliers and partners, Harvest Fine Foods, ready for onward distribution and collection. The boxes will contain all the ingredients to make five simple, tasty, easy to cook and energy efficient recipes. Tomato & Garlic Butter Beans, Spanish Omelette, Poached Eggs in Spicy Tomato Sauce, Easy Flatbreads & Simple Homemade Pizza. Overall, there are twenty meals per box.
The Cooking at Home recipes are packed with nutritious ingredients and can easily be adapted to suit each family. City Catering Southampton have a range of delicious recipes on their website and cook-along-videos on their YouTube channel for anyone to access.
We’ve received some amazing feedback from parents, after receiving their Cooking at Home boxes.
“The recipe cards were a brilliant addition with easy-to-follow instructions which my 7 year old daughter loved following. Not only did it provide healthy meals for us, also gave me quality time with the children as we could cook together really easily. Thank you.”
“It’s a really good program and enables families to eat really balanced foods that aren’t always available on a tight budget if you don’t know necessarily how to cook without relying on less healthy, cheap options.”
“These boxes have been great and helped get the kids involved with the prepping of meals. Also, it has lessened the burden of the cost of living crisis for which we are truly grateful for.”